An Orthodox Jew Who Increases Kindness in the World
When Rabbi Daniel Cohen was twenty-one years old, his mother (who was forty-four at the time) died suddenly of an aneurysm. Losing a parent unexpectedly at such a young age profoundly affected him. “We were speaking on the phone one day, then she was gone the next,” Rabbi Cohen recalls. His mother had taught him the art of gratitude; his father implored him from a young age to search for his personal mission in life, but despite already being a deep thinker, this tragedy added a sense of urgency to his existence. He didn’t want to waste a moment when it came to improving himself and making the world a better place.
Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by Tilar J. Mazzeo.
Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.
It’s about a bus driver.
It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.
And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.
And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.
and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,
“Where do you need to go?”
And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.
So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.
I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.
We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.
And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.
When slave had the day off work, she woke up early to come do my dishes while I slept peacefully. If she did a good job, I’d let her stay. If she didn’t, who knows when she’d hear from me again.
I’m gonna say it: it would’ve been a better ending if Lee Yeon stayed dead and Rang got to live with his family and started doing good as a redemption in a way that wouldn’t have him sacrificing himself for a brother who wouldn’t do the same. It genuinely sucks because I ship Ji-ah and Yeon so much but that fucking ending just made me resent them and their heterosexual love story that’s stronger and more important then any familial love
Let’s take a lesson from Mr. Rogers for World Kindness Day and remember that: “The greatest thing we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.”
WatchMorgan Neville’s 2018 Sundance Film Festival documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and get inspired to do something nice for someone today on World Kindness Day.
With his gentle voice and heartfelt words of wisdom, Fred Rogers served as a compassionate surrogate father for generations of American children who tuned in to public television. He believed in love as the essential ingredient in life and was able to assist kids through difficult situations armed merely with handmade puppets suggesting tolerance and acceptance. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Mr. Rogers made speaking directly and openly to children his life’s work, both on and off his long-running show. He was at the forefront of a movement devoted to meeting the specific needs of children and was considered a radical back then for saying, “I like you just the way you are.”
Animated sequences are peppered between archival footage of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and interviews with Fred Rogers’s family, friends, and colleagues. Examining Rogers’s legacy, Academy Award–winning director Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom) offers a deliberate and beautiful tribute to an authentic human being and provides a much-needed salve for these often-fraught times.
