One Mitzvah Leads to Another

“One mitzvah leads to another, and one transgression leads to another.” This classic teaching from Mishnah Pirkei Avot 4:2, is correctly understood to mean that our actions effect our disposition and thus influence our subsequent choices. To paraphrase God’s rebuke of Cain in Genesis 4, ‘when we do good, we feel good,’ inclining us to repeat the action that engendered that good feeling. On the other hand, we have only to consider the ranks of prison inmates, which are populated by a high percentage of repeat offenders, to see how one misdeed so often leads to another.

There is, however, another way to understand this classic teaching from the Mishnah. While doing mitzvot certainly inspires those who do them to engage in additional positive acts, it also has a profound affect upon those who are on the receiving end of the mitzvot—the kindnesses we do for one another.

Last month I shared with you Steve Landau’s story about a miraculous reunion between Holocaust survivors. This month, I want to share with you another story of survival that illustrates how acts of goodness set in motion causal chains that can have far-reaching effects. As the Jewish messianic idea teaches, the simplest good deed may be all that is needed to bring redemption to the world. For Edith Kleinman, her kindness saved her life and that of her descendants.

Edith had a reputation for being a caring, compassionate person who always said yes to life. Even though she had recently moved to the small village of Heveningen, Holland from her native Switzerland, she was already known to be a really good soul. So it was not surprising that one morning in 1939 the Christian constable of the village, Herr Schleider, approached her and asked her to do him and his family a great favor. Herr Schleider’s wife had just given birth to triplets, and she did not have sufficient milk to nurse all three babies. Knowing that Edith had just had a baby herself, the constable asked her if he could hire her to help nurse his newborns.

Edith didn’t hesitate. She was delighted to help nourish these babies and give them healthy start in life, and she refused to accept payment. She nursed the babies for nine months and they thrived. When the time came for them to be weaned, the constable expressed his undying gratitude to Edith for giving his family the gift of life.

Three years later, as the Kleinmans were packing to go to Switzerland to spend Pesach with her family, there was a knock at the door. It was the constable. They hadn’t seen him for months, and now he appeared suddenly with an anxious and worried look on his face. He got right to the point. “I know that you are going to Switzerland for the holidays,” he said, “as you do every year. This time, I want you take some extra suitcases, pack them with your most valuable things, and take them with you. Act as if you are going for the holiday,” he whispered, “and don’t come back.”

Edith and her husband were confused, but the constable assured them that he was only trying to help. “I’ve joined the Nazis,” he told them, “and I shouldn’t even be talking to you. But I cannot forget what you did for my children and me. Take only your immediate family and tell no one. For if the Nazis see a mass departure they will stop all of you. I’m sorry I cannot tell you more. I’ve taken a great risk telling you this much. Please trust me and do as I say. Leave and don’t come back.”

On the seventh day of Pesach Hitler’s troops marched into Holland and surprised the unsuspecting Jewish community, dispatching most of them to die in the concentration camps. Only a small percentage of Holland’s Jews survived the Holocaust, among them the Kleinmans, who were safe in Switzerland when the Nazis invaded. From there they were able to procure visas to the United States, where they found refuge and started a new life.

“Down the road, you can never really imagine how your destiny will play out,” said Edith Kleinman at age 90. “Serving as the infants’ wet nurse just seemed like the right thing to do. How could I ever know that when I was saying yes to their lives, I was saying it to my own, as well.” (retold from Small Miracles for the Jewish Heart, by Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal)

The moral of the story is not that doing good deeds will prevent us from all harm. Sadly, bad things do sometimes happen to good people. But that doesn’t mean that our acts of kindness are not of consequence. No good deed is ever wasted. As the Masters of the Kabbalah have taught us, every mitzvah is a powerful force in the world, moving the universe forward, inch by inch, despite the many setbacks wrought by our transgressions, toward the great redemption. And along the way, from one mitzvah to the next, we just might find that our lives have been redeemed, as well.