Brrrr, “It’s freezing outside!” Totty said, slamming the front door behind him against the howling wind and rain.
“Hi Totty!” said Shimmy, taking Totty’s soaking coat and running to hang it up in the laundry room. “Mommy is making hot soup for supper.”
“Here Totty,” Basya said, handing him a cup of hot tea. “You look freezing.”
“Thanks,” Totty said. “You wouldn’t believe how crazy it was driving in this wild weather. Why, just two blocks ago...”
Totty’s voice trailed off as the house plunged into darkness.
“MOMMY!!!” howled little Yaeli, scared. Totty used the light of his cellphone screen to make his way to little Yaeli and pick her up.
BWOOOFMMM! Suddenly the lights in the house came back on.
“That’s strange,” Shimmy said, peering out of the window. “The neighbors’ houses are all still dark.”
“That’s because I hooked up the house to a backup generator,” said Yitzy, walking into the room. “We should have electricity for at least the next five hours.”
Everyone walked into the kitchen, to see Mommy pulling out the largest pots they had and filling them with vegetables.
“What are you doing, Mommy?” asked Shimmy.
“Think about all of our neighbors whose houses are dark and cold. I’m making enough hot soup to feed everyone on our block.”
Basya took Mommy’s cellphone and started calling all of the neighbors, inviting them over for hot soup. Soon, the Greenbaum home was filled with dozens of families and their children. Everyone helped Mommy serve hot soup until everyone was warm and full.
Two hours later, the power returned to the neighborhood and everyone went home. The Greenbaums went to bed exhausted, but happy that they could do such a wonderful chessed for their neighbors.
“Basya,” said Mommy the next day after school. “Can you please wash the kitchen and dining room floors?”
“I hate washing the floors,” Basya said. “Can’t I do something else?”
“Basya,” Mommy said reproachfully. “I spent the entire day cleaning our house from last night’s mess. Do you know how hard it is to clean crusted split pea soup from the crevices of our couch? I am just asking you to do one thing.”
Basya reluctantly headed to the kitchen and began filling buckets of water so she could begin washing the filthy floor. There was smushed carrot under the cabinets, potato spread around under the table, and pieces of hardened celery seemed to have become one with the porcelain tiles.
“Basya, you’re doing such a wonderful job!” Mommy said warmly, walking into the kitchen half an hour later.
“Hmmm thanks,” Basya grumbled as she lugged yet two more buckets of water across the room.
“Come on now, Basya. It can’t be that terrible.”
“I feel like Rivka Imeinu,” Basya complained. “I understand that we had to feed the neighborhood last night, but why do I have to schlep these heavy buckets of water? It’s too much!”
“Are you really comparing yourself to Rivka Imeinu?” Mommy asked.
“Well yeah, she also had to schlep water,” answered Basya.
“Had to?” asked Mommy. “First of all, Eliezer came with ten camels. Now a thirsty camel can drink as much as thirty gallons of water. That’s 300 gallons! It would take you thirty trips with these two five-gallon buckets to carry that much water, and that’s not including the water for Eliezer and his men. And Rivka wasn’t schlepping water across a small kitchen - she had to bring it all the way from the busy well to where Eliezer and his men were standing with the camels!
“And let me ask you a question, Basya. You said we had to feed the neighbors last night?”
“Well yeah, it was chessed - and we have to do chessed.”
“Basya,” Mommy said. “The very definition of chessed is doing something you don’t have to do. We didn’t have to feed our neighbors last night. They weren’t going to starve or freeze to death. We did it because we wanted to do something nice for our fellow Yidden. And Rivka didn’t have to bring water for Eliezer, his men, and his camels. But she wanted to even though she didn’t have to. She was a real baalas chessed and doing this chessed is what gave her the zechus to be the mother of Klal Yisroel.”
Basya thought about this. Then she smiled and picked up the buckets of water with renewed energy. “Sure, Mommy told me to wash the floor,” she thought. “But I’m going to make it sparkle - she didn’t tell me to do that. And this way I’ll be doing chessed just like Rivka Imeinu.”
Have a Wonderful Shabbos!
Let’s review:
- What chessed did the Greenbaums do in this story?
- What makes something a chessed?
