PERSPECTIVES → OUTLOOK Issue 904 · March 23, 2022

A Ringside Seat to Klal Yisrael’s Chesed

Jews have reached deep into their pocketbooks to rescue as many of their brethren in Ukraine as possible

A Ringside Seat to Klal Yisrael’s Chesed

 

I recently happened to see a clip of investor warren Buffett, in which he discussed with a group of young people how one evaluates one’s life. Money isn’t the measure, he suggested. Like them, he also eats fast food. And his expensive suits look no different from theirs once placed on his dumpy frame.

Then he recalled the remark of a longtime friend of his, a Holocaust survivor, that every time she meets someone, she asks, “Would that person have hidden us?” Buffett noted that he knows people whom even their own children would not hide.

Buffett’s conclusion was that the quality of one’s life can be determined by how many people would risk their lives to save you from certain death.

I was reminded of his remarks last week when a family of four from Uman arrived at our home around midnight. Now, I have no wish to compare our taking in a family whom we did not know to hiding Jews during the Holocaust. (We knew of them because the husband is my daughter-in-law’s first cousin.) We were definitely not risking our lives or those of our loved ones.

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