Question:
Kvod Harav,
What is the best type of chessed I can do if I have limited resources of chessed organizations around me? How do I do chessed daily even if I’m not ‘volunteering?’ What’s the best type of chessed and how can I approach it?
Answer:
Hello,
Volunteering with chesed organizations is a wonderful thing, however, believe it or not, there are chasodim that are bigger in Hashem’s eyes than that! This might surprise you, but the best place to do chesed is at home, with your relatives and neighbors! If you are still in your parent’s home, do chesed for them! Do their shopping, clean their dishes, do their laundry, straighten up the messy floor, etc. The Shulchan Aruch regarding giving tzedakah writes, that the order of priority, when giving tzedakah, is “ hakarov karov kodem”- that a person has an obligation to give tzedakah to his needy relatives, before giving tzedakah to neighbors, neighbors, come before people living in the person’s city, etc. It is the same with doing chesed, the first place to look to do chesed is in one’s own home. To your spouse, siblings, and children.
Yes volunteering, will make you feel a lot better, but doing the chesed at home, is bigger in the sense that the person will not be given public recognition by people for it (which also makes the chesed a bigger mitzva!). It is a chesed that has tznius to it, which is especially cherished by Hashem.
This is chesed that you can do daily, and hourly, and you can even “volunteer” you services to help your relatives, and it can be done practically without having to spend any money.
Even when a mother does laundry, clean dishes, and diapers her baby, she should train herself to think that she is now doing a chesed to this poor helpless baby. She is doing chesed to her children, because otherwise they would not have clean clothing to wear. By adapting such an attitude, although it will take time to keep on remembering to think this, it will turn you into a chesed machine, and it will polish your middos tremendously.
I don’t chas v’shalom mean to diminish all the tremendous chesed work that so many people are doing, but you asked me which one is the biggest…
Best wishes
