The term gemillat ḥasadim is usually taken to mean, in Jewish life, a free loan. I think it has a deeper meaning. There are two kinds of ḥesed: one is the ordinary and immature kind, and the other is a more mature sort. The first type of ḥesed is where the one who does the favor secretly or unconsciously expects some kind of compensation, for he thinks to himself, “Maybe someday I will need this man’s favor, and therefore it is worth my time doing something for him now.” It is basically utilitarian – a form of trade or barter. The higher kind is motivated not by a sense of trade, but by genuine human kindness. It is a mature sort of ḥesed. Hence, the term gemillat – not from the word gamol, “to pay,” but from the word lehigamel, “to be weaned,” as in beyom higamel Yitzḥak. When a man is weaned from childishness of character, when he grows up spiritually, he learns how to do a ḥesed for its own sake. This is the type of ḥesed that you of the ḥevra kadisha do for those who have passed on to their eternal reward.

A thousand years ago, the great Rabbi Saadia Gaon thought that our Torah is reasonable and that the human intellect, by itself, can ultimately discover the great truths taught in Scripture. As an example of how reason can provide us with these principles, he offers: gratitude. The very first thing our reason tells us is that one ought to be grateful. Hence, from this principle of gratitude, we learn that a man ought to pray. It is reasonable that we pray to G-d out of gratitude to Him.Intelligent people should not be ingrates. That is why Jews recite the Modeh Ani immedi-ately upon arising, why they say the Modim as part of their prayer, why they recite the Birkhat ha-Mazon after eating. It is the first dictate of human reason.It is all the more amazing, therefore, to learn of a remarkable comment of our Rabbis on the Bible’s narrative concerning the birth of Leah’s fourth son. She called him Yehudah (Judah) because “this time I shall thank the Lord” (Gen. 29:35). Our Sages say, “from the day G-d created the world no one had thanked Him until Leah came and thanked Him upon giving birth to Judah, as it is said, ‘this time I shall thank the Lord’” (Berakhot 7). Noah, Shem, Eber, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—the founders of the true religion—were they so callous and indifferent that they never acknowledged G-d’s gifts to them ? Were they, then, unfeeling, unthinking ingrates ?Indeed not. For a deeper understanding of gratitude reveals that there are two levels of gratitude. Gratefulness can be understood as courtesy—or as conscience; as a social gesture —or as sacred grace; as a way of talking—or as a state of the soul; as an aspect of personality —or as a part of character.

The most illustrious example of this nobler kind of gratitude, “thankfulness", is our Mother Leah. Her life’s greatest ambition was to marry Jacob and to be sincerely loved by him. When our Torah tells us that “the eyes of Leah were rakkot," dull or weak (Gen. 29:17), the Rabbis ask: what does rakkot mean? Rav says, literally dull; and this is not meant to discredit Leah but is said in praise of her. For she had heard people saying that Rebecca has two sons and Laban has two daughters, the older will marry the older (that is, Esau will marry Leah) and the younger will marry the younger (Jacob will marry Rachel). She went about inquiring: what are the characters of these men ? She was told that Esau is a wild and evil man. Jacob is a decent, respectable, scholarly young man. And she, therefore, was slated to marry the despicable but successful thief! As a result, she wept so much and so bitterly and so loudly that her eyes dulled, until her eyelashes fell off because of her many tears ! Her red, dull, uncomely eyes were beautiful indeed, for they had become so out of protest against being mated to Esau IHow pathetic is Leah’s story! Her love of Jacob is so great that she even submits to her father’s nefarious plan to substitute her for her sister Rachel, whom Jacob dearly loves, deceiving Jacob thereby. She is even willing to go to the huppah, and throughout life, playing second fiddle to a more vivacious, dazzling, beautiful sister, married to the same husband. And when she finally is married to him—how tragic her frustration, the blow to her selfesteem !Pathetic indeed—yet Leah does not give up hope. Her desire for Jacob’s love and respect is too precious to yield so quickly. She has a son and feels that now he will love her, so she calls the child Reuven, adding: “now my husband will surely love me." But he does not. A second child comes, and she calls him Simeon, “for G-d has seen how despised I am" and will make Jacob love me. And then a third child, Levi—“Now …

It is here that the greatness of Leah shines forth in all its glory: her fourth child is born – and she calls him Yehudah. Why? – “For this time I shall thank the Lord.” This time, when I realize and accept the fact that the greatest, most overwhelming desire of my life will not be granted to me by God – this time I will thank Him! Despite all my failures and disappointments – I thank God! Ha-paam – “this time” – for the first time in history, a great soul reached into the heights of the spirit and recognized that thankfulness is more than thanksgiving, that it is a way of reacting to God’s very Presence and not merely paying a debt for His favors. Ha-paam – “this time,” though my hopes are doomed, my love unrequited, my ambitions dashed – I am yet grateful. I do have a great husband nonetheless. I do have wonderful children. I do have the Lord’s promise to be the matriarch of a great people.Let me know if you’d like a more formal version or if this is meant for publication. This was not the thanksgiving of Compensation but the thankfulness of Consecration. This was not Leah’s social gesture, but her spiritual ascent. Would that all of us in our affuent society learn that even if we do not get all we want—and who does ?—yet there is so very much to be thankful for. We ought to be grateful al nishmotenu ha-pekudot lakh, for the religious freedom we Jews enjoy in our beloved America. Compare our situation with those of our brothers in Russia, where the Jewish neshamah is stifled cruelly. We ought be grateful al nisekha she’be’khol yom imanu, for life, health, family, friends. In our Nishmat prayer we speak of thanks al ahat me’elef alfei ribei revavot pe’amim—thousands and millions of thanks. For in this prayer, mentioned in the Talmud, wethank G-d for rain—indeed for every single raindrop! And it is not only things that we thank G d for. Gratitude is a state of mind, a psychological attunement to G-d, a climate of conscience, a cast of character, a matter not so muc…

Ultimately, the ability to achieve this higher form of gratitude is an integral aspect of character – it requires a humility based upon deep insight. That insight is – our own weakness and inadequacy in the presence of Almighty God. When we are grateful to Him, we are cognizant of the infinite distance between our moral failings and His exalted spirituality. Basically, gratitude to God means acknowledging our dependence upon Him. We confess our need of Him – our inability to get along without Him. No wonder that in Hebrew, the words for “I thank” – Modeh ani – also mean: “I confess.” I confess my need of You; I thank You for coming to my assistance! The Modeh prayer we recite upon arising each morning means not only “Thank You, God, for returning my soul to me” – it means also, “I confess, O God, that without You, I would never wake up alive!”This gratitude, the kind we have called thankfulness rather than mere thanksgiving, is what we Jews have not only been taught by our Tradition, but what we bear as a message to the world by our very names. The concept and the practice are deeply ingrained in the very texture of the Jewish soul, and this is reflected in the name “Jew.” For the word “Jew” comes from “Judah,” which is the English for Yehudah—meaning “thank G-d.” This is the name of Leah’s fourth son, at whose birth Mother Leah reached the heights of sublimity in fashioning, for the first time, an expression of thankfulness issuing from a profoundly religious personality. “Jew” is a name that we ought, therefore, bear with great pride and a sense of responsibility.We conclude with the words of David : Hodu la-Shem ki tov, ki le’olam hasdo. Usually this is translated, “Give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, for His love lasts forever.” I would paraphrase that, in a manner that is consistent with the syntax of the Hebrew verse : “Give thanks to the Lord, for it is good,” i.e. it is good for the heart and soul of the thankful person to be grateful, “for His love i…

There are two interpretations of gratitude: one pagan-philosophic, and the other Jewish-moral. Aristotle in the Greek world, and Cicero and Seneca in the Roman world, had little use for gratitude. According to Aristotle, to be in a predicament of gratitude meant to be indebted and inferior. It placed you under obligation, and therefore marked you as subordinate. The "high-minded” man, therefore, would immediately pay back a favor, and even in greater measure, thus tipping the balance in his favor and becoming superior, the creditor instead of the debtor.Gratitude is thus a prudential quality, it is a question of cleverness in establishing the social relation to your own advantage instead of to that of the other. Gratitude is therefore an element in social mechanics, and is an obligation that should be gotten rid of as soon as possible in order to retain your own social position. This is the normal attitude of most people. It is probably why ingratitude is so common, while those whom fate has destined to be in a position to help others, learn by experience not only not to expect any thanks but to be very happy if they are not repaid with enmity and resentment. If gratitude is a debt, then just as the borrowerusually resents the lender because he feels obligated to him,so is the person who feels called upon to express gratitude . Judaism, however, never saw it in this light. That gratitude is important, goes without saying. The very word ,Jew״ comes from ״Judah" which in turn, according to the Torah, means thankfulness, for Leah named her son Judah, saying:הפעם אודה את ה', ״. This time I will thank God.״ Furthermore, Saadia Gaon saw gratitude as the first principle in attempting to construct Judaism on a rational philosophical basis. The fact that we are the creatures of God automatically implies gratitude to Him, which in turn accounts for a large number of the Commandments.Gratitude, in Judaism, is not prudential but moral; it is not primarily social but personal. …

This mishnah has a parallel in Chapter IV, where, in the name of R. Elazar HaKappar, we read of three similar qualities that “take a man out of the world” – עין רעה, יצר הרע, ושנאת הבריות. If we accept this parallelism, then “the evil eye” should be understood not in its usual context as a kind of “jinx,” but rather as a sense of begrudging which harms the perpetrator much more than its intended victim. Jealousy – the evil eye – eats away at the innards of the one who is jealous and slowly destroys him, not only psychologically and spiritually, but even physically. יצר הרע and תאווה are obviously related. And the pursuit of honor usually implies a desire to be superior to others – hence שנאת הבריות. But why only these three? And what is the meaning of the strange phrase “take him out of the world”? Should not the mishnah have mentioned three worse crimes – perhaps the three cardinal sins? I believe that the Tanna was aiming specifically at three qualities or dispositions which lend themselves to misinterpretation. The cardinal crimes or the great virtues are simple enough to observe. The blacks and the whites of life are not what make up the “world” – which is for the greatest part comprised of shades of gray. It is rare that, in crisis, we are confronted with clear-cut options: good and evil, right and wrong. Normally, we have to make subtle distinctions; we are faced with paradoxes and ambivalences and are forced to choose amid uncertainty and confusion. This confusion and ambivalence are most oppressive when we deal with ideas and qualities that can serve both the ends of good and of evil, of the right and of the wrong. At such times, not only is there an element of uncertainty as to whether we are using or abusing a certain quality, but there is a tendency for us to submit to rationalization – to abuse a quality and to assume we are doing the proper thing. Since the world is constituted mostly of such uncertainties and such qualities of double nature, when we c…

With regard to character in the study of Chabad, mention that for Chabad – or sublimation – is a major element based upon their metaphysical conception of evil. In other words, evil is really the divine paradoxically transforming itself through – through the catastrophalistic idea of Luria – into something physical; therefore, the way to approach evil is by reversing the process and going back to the divine. However, this idea of the interchangeability of good and evil leads to a kind of fudging of the boundaries in the view of R. Hayyim, who, therefore, in an important gloss to the parashah, insists that the primal sin of the eating of the etz was the interspersal and interpenetration of good and evil. The moral conduct of man therefore requires their separation rather than the transformation from one to the other. Question: does this mitnagdic and halakhic and pluralistic view of R. Hayyim find reflection in the views of the Rambam – as opposed to the views of Hasidism?

The Talmudic sage Rava compressed his understanding of the human condition into four Hebrew words: O havruta o mituta. "Either companionship or death." Without the possibility of human relatedness, man is empty. Without an outside world of human beings, there can be no inside world of meaningfulness. Personality, liberty, love, responsibility — all that makes life worth living — depend upon a community in which man can locate and realize himself. But man is more than the sum total of his connections with others. There must be a self in order for there to be communication; there must be an inner existence to relate to the outer world. If man is not an island, neither is he a switchboard, a maze of wires that transmits the messages of others but has nothing of its own to say. God created men out of the dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, man became "a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Onkelos, the Aramaic translator of the second century C.E., renders that phrase "a speaking soul." Speech is the vehicle of relationship. Man is a composite of both soul and speech, of self and a society to whom that self relates. Without '"soul" or self, he is no more than an elaborate cybernetic mechanism, lacking content or meaning. Without "speech" or social relations, he is only a species of protoplasm, so withdrawn he might as well be dead.For man to be man he must maintain the delicate tension between self and society, between personal privacy and public relationships. Mediat-ing between them is the family. Juda-ism is concerned with all three as-pects of man's existence. It addresses itself to the question of his inner psychic and spiritual life, his dignity and destiny. But its major concern is with the quality of man's relation-ships to the world around him, and these are usually developed within the family.This emphasis on family and com-munity may best be understood in terms of the way Judaism treats the very beginnings of man. The Bible offers two acc…

Unless it is granted that there is some common element that binds Creator and creature, some minimal resemblance between God and man that cries out for fulfillment, then He is so totally “other" that He does not really matter. If God and man cannot meet on the plane of moral character, then religion is completely deistic, man is utterly alone, and faith is nothing more than unprovable assent to a set of metaphysical propositions totally devoid of ethical consequences. Such a philo- sophical religion is unthinkable to the Hebrew mentality.It hath been told thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord thy God. (Micah 6:8)The ideals of justice and mercy and humility are not rationally ar- rived at or supported by man independently of his religious affirma- tions. Nor are they solely disembodied commands issued forth magisterially by the Absolute out of the infinite recesses of His celestial heights. They are an invitation to man to participate in the divine ac- tivity. God both appeals and commands. He tells us what is both "good" and "required": that we act "with the Lord thy God." (The phrase may be read to apply to all three antecedent elements—"to do justly" and "to love mercy" as well as "to walk humbly.")The passage from Micah is reminiscent of the words of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy 10:And now, Israel, what doth the Lord require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him . . . For the Lord thy God . . . doth execute justice for the orphan and the widow and loveth the stranger . . .Micah uses the verb doresh, "require” or "demand”; Moses uses the gentler sho'el, "ask." Like Micah, Moses sees God as the model for human conduct. At the very beginning he indirectly implies the "withness," or fellowship, of man and God (sho'el me'imak, which literally means "asks from with you," rather than the standard sho'el mi'meka, "asks of you") and…