The importance of being nice

Who do you think was the single most influential person in human history?

I looked through many lists that have been compiled over the years. Some focus on religious leaders like Jesus and Mohammed, others on political leaders like Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Still others on scientists and thinkers. In one list, Albert Einstein squeaked in just ahead of Moses! In another, Moses came in only two places ahead of Michael Jackson! One list’s Top 25 most influential people in history had Bruce Lee, followed by Walt Disney, followed by Marilyn Monroe! So much for these lists.

In another list, Abraham came in at number seven. Now, think about it. Abraham is acknowledged as the father of monotheism. So, he is not only the founding father of Judaism and the Jewish people; but the founder of all monotheistic faiths, which includes Christianity and Islam.

Now, to be the father of 14 million Jews is one thing. But to also be the founder of other faiths that stem from Judaism and boast billions of adherents is quite another. There are today about 2.6 billion Christians in the world. And there are about 1.9 billion Muslims. And then, if you add up all the generations of believers since Abraham lived about 4 000 years ago, well, my calculator ran out of zeroes! What comes after trillions? If you really want to know, it’s not zillions but quadrillions!

So, if we think about it objectively and purely mathematically, Abraham has influenced zillions more people than all the others on those lists. That’s why in my book, Abraham is undoubtedly the single most influential person not only in the Bible, but in all of human history.

And yet, if we look in the Torah, we find chapter after chapter filled with Abraham’s life story but only a few veiled references to the fact that he took on the whole world, and won! That he transformed a completely pagan world into a generation of believers. That the whole world was busy bowing down to the sun and the moon, or the stars, or the statue they built in their garage last week, and Abraham changed the mindset of his entire generation.

The Torah is strangely reticent on the most dramatic achievements of our founding father, Abraham.

Where does the Torah go into the greatest detail about Abraham? How he saved his nephew Lot from captivity during a world war. How he tries to save the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And how he gave hospitality to those three passing nomads, who as we all know, were really angels in disguise.

So if you look at all the many chapters in the Chumash from the beginning of Abraham’s life until he passes away, besides the personal stories of his wife, their struggles with infertility, and then the birth of their children, and of course the Akedah story we read in shul on Rosh Hashanah, there seems to be very little about Abraham’s most important contribution to our own faith and the faith in G-d of quadrillions of people throughout history.

There’s one line, “He proclaimed the name of Hashem, G-d of the universe.” And we need the commentaries to teach us that it means that Abraham brought G-d into the world.

But when it comes to saving one man, his nephew Lot, or trying to save a bunch of decadent sinners, or how he fed those three Arabs, we have whole sections of Torah devoted to every little detail!

What does that tell us about the Jewish value system?

That chesed (kindness) is where it’s at. In the Torah, Abraham goes down for posterity not as ish haemunah (the man of faith) or even the man who brought G-d into the world and was the father of monotheism, but as ish hachesed – the ultimate man of kindness.

The other day, I was driving in the car and listening to news about Gaza. Just after the news came an interview with Dwayne Johnson, a giant of a man known as “The Rock”. He’s a former wrestler turned actor and has the chiselled physique that bodybuilders can only dream of. He is the ultimate hunk. And he has no less than 393 million followers on Instagram!

You know what he said?

“It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”

Not bad, coming from a hunk!

When I train new rabbis, I tell them that people will forgive a lousy sermon, but they won’t easily forgive you forgetting their personal needs. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!”

Back in October 1991, the Rebbe was distributing blessings and advice to people and giving every person a dollar bill for tzedakah as he did regularly in those later years. And then something dramatic happened. A CNN film crew arrived at 770 Eastern Parkway. And correspondent Gary Tochman asked the Rebbe for his message to the world about Moshiach.

And the Rebbe replied, “Moshiach is ready to come now. All that is necessary is that we do something additional in the realm of goodness and kindness.”

At the end of the day, being kind is what it’s really all about.

We’re living in a terribly fractured world. The Rebbe understood that goodness and kindness is what really counts, and this is what will finally bring Moshiach.

I’m so proud of all the chesed we do in our community. This yom tov, let’s pledge to grow it even more.

Shana tovah!

• Rabbi Yossy Goldman is life rabbi emeritus of Sydenham Shul in Johannesburg, and president of the South African Rabbinical Association.