Living among Christmas Celebrators for almost my entire life, I have picked up on a notion of the “Holiday Spirit” that ushers in the Holidays of Christmas and New Year’s. Folks are generally more friendly and generous under the “guise” of Holiday Spirit.
Seeing as Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) is a mere 9 days away, if we were Christian and the New Year was 9 days away, we would be knee-deep in the “Holiday Spirit”. A congregant of mine told me an anecdote that would fit neatly in the “Holiday Spirit” if we had an equivalent.
This fellow was shopping at the local butcher (Western Kosher) and he noticed an orthodox Jewish woman had stacked her yogurt on top of her chicken. Now, most orthodox Jews don’t think twice about that kind of move, but there are some people who are new to religious Judaism who prefer to keep their milk and meat products separate in their shopping carts. (No, there is no reason to do this, it just happens that fellow in the story does separate his meat and milk in his shopping cart.) So the fellow thinks about saying something to the nice lady but thought it was a silly thing to bring to her attention because he realized that there is nothing wrong with stacking cold yogurt in a package on top on cold chicken in a package.
By now, she had caught his attention and he noticed that she was holding a list with at least 8 or 9 items. Her overhears that woman say to the manager “Please put $1000 in the Schwartz* account. $1000 in the Goldberg account. $1000 in the Cohen account.” and so she went for a few minutes, quite simply crediting at least 8 or 9 families with $1000 out of her own pocket. This fellow was witnessing a true act of charity. Charity given in the most respectful way with no begging, handouts or embarrassment. An estimated $10,000 went to the less fortunate of Los Angeles last week from this woman alone.
That is a universal Holiday Spirit.
*names changed (duh)
Related posts:
