In last week’s post, I tried to make the point that beyond our needs for socialization, Shuls serve as a character development arena. In this venue we can work on diminishing our egocentric view of the world to accomodate perspectives other than our own and create deeper connections to acquaintances in the Shul.
Another important roll of a No-Frills Davening Shul is the models our co-members serve to help up improve. One person motivates us to improve our davening, another our learning, and another our chesed. This week one of the “models of chesed” families made a wedding. This family regularly invites single members of the community to their Shabbos table and is involved in many chesed activities. The husband took on the Shul Treasurer position after having served two year as president. And it doesn’t stop there, as a member of the building maintenance committee he is constantly upkeeping the electrical and plumbing systems of the Shul as well as supervising the daily and weekly cleaning activities.
Beyond the institutional chesed involvement, is the personal chesed. This includes attending levayas, visiting the sick, giving rides or helping out in any way. We can’t all be expected to reach the highest level of chesed, but observing a family such as this, we are certainly motivated to make some additions or improvements to our activities. Mazal Tov to the H family on their Simcha. May they continue to take their chesed higher and higher so that we can improve from their rising tide.