Intro

“The world is built on Chesed” — Psalms 89:3

My synagogue is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Normally that would be pretty arbitrary, but they challenged all the members to do 50 acts of “Chesed” (Hebrew for “loving-kindness”) over the course of the year, passing out a pamphlet with 50 different activities of varying degrees of difficulty. I can’t turn down a challenge, and 50 is close enough to 52 that it seemed like a good idea to try one thing a week.

I also figured I’d write about each one, reflecting on the action and its consequences.

In no particular order, here’s the entire list:

• Help prepare a meal for a youth homeless shelter
• Deliver leftovers to a Tent City
• Attend a shiva (prayers in support of someone in mourning)
• Visit someone who is ill
• Host someone new to the community for Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner
• Help a local family for medical treatment
• Volunteer at Mary’s Place (homeless shelter for women)
• Join Be The Match, the bone marrow registry
• Do yardwork around the synagogue
• Become a tutor
• Answer phones at the Crisis Clinic
• Babysit for new parents
• Send a note to your favorite teacher
• Join the board of a non-profit
• Learn more about mental illness
• Return that item that you borrowed from a friend…a while ago
• Celebrate other people’s successes
• Buy a box of thank you notes, and use them
• Help Jewish prisoners and their families through Jewish American Prisoners Association
• Install a Little Free Pantry
• Encourage teenagers in your life to volunteer
• Become a social entrepreneur
• Talk about what you’re grateful for
• Mend a rift in a friendship
• Give someone the benefit of the doubt
• Become a mentor
• Make a donation…to a friend’s favorite charity in their name
• Become a host with “Panim Hadashot” (Sabbath get-together group)
• Be quick to apologize
• Read a mitzvah (“good deed” or “commandment”) self-help book
• Build a house with Habitat for Humanity
• Prepare and serve meals for the hungry
• Befriend someone new
• Return a lost object
• Be a better person today than you were yesterday
• Make phone calls for social action
• Read for those who can’t
• Bring donuts to your co-workers
• Be a reed, not a cedar
• Practice “lashon tov” (“positive tongue”)
• Visit someone at a nursing home
• Help in the synagogue’s vegetable garden
• beamensch.com
• Reduce the number of slaves working for you
• Join the Seattle Limbe Sewing Circle
• Volunteer to cook a Shabbat meal at the synagogue
• Visit someone at The Summit (a nursing home)
• Make a meal for someone who is ill
• Give blood
• Sort groceries at a food bank

I also wrote a wrap-up about the end of the year.