Honestly, I make really bad coffee, but miraculously Neta loves the coffee I make her far more than the coffee she makes for herself.
Why?
For the same reason that scratching our own back is never as pleasant as having someone else scratch it for us.
It’s fun sometimes to be pampered. To receive. To sit back. To know that someone is taking care of you. Especially if they’re taking care of you with all their heart.
The bland coffee I make Neta has a special spice in it that she cannot add for herself. The spice of giving. I cared for her.
Now, it isn’t always easy to be on the receiving side. For some people it is downright impossible. People whose spark of life comes almost solely through giving. Me, for instance — I find it hard to be waited on. After all, I was always blessed with that vaguely Polish blessing: “May you always be on the giving side and never the receiving side.”
Which is, by and large, a good thing.
By and large.
But:
It seems to me that one of the messages Passover echoes is that to be truly free you must learn to receive.
The custom on Seder night is that each person pours wine for another. That each person washes another’s hands. So you will know that a truly free person is a little bit needy. After all, as a slave you only cared for others. Now, as a free person, learn to receive. To go back a little to infancy, when others only cared for you. Come on, here, look, I’ve mashed up something yummy for you, open wide. To know where you, too, are helpless.
In this period there are so many acts of kindness. And truly, how fun it is to be on the giving side. It really is easier. But even the great givers must, every now and then, know how to receive. To reach their point of inability. That very point where they can admit: brother, at this you’re better than me. Pamper me.
It seems to me that this also makes the giving more whole. Out of recognizing your own point of lack, your giving comes from a less patronizing place and more from a place of “sometimes I’m on top, sometimes you’re on top, it’s all good, brother.” Like the lion and the mouse. Everyone’s light will dawn at some point.
In Peduel I had a beloved neighbor from the day I was born, a great man. Ofer Tehori, of blessed memory.
From him I learned this teaching.
He called it “the kindness of receiving.” How beautifully he wrote it:
“I remember from my childhood that dear, kindly Jew who, on Sabbaths and holidays, would pass among the rows of worshippers in the synagogue offering snuff tobacco from a small silver box. That Jew would fill with contentment and happiness at every worshipper who troubled the tips of his fingers and took a pinch of tobacco grains. I remember those few worshippers who would nod their heads and dismiss the dear tobacco man with a polite “no, thank you.” And I made a point of answering “yes, thank you” while gathering a few grains of tobacco with two fingers. I would sniff them for a second, and once the dear Jew had continued on his way, I hurried to shake the remnants of tobacco off my fingers.
To dip one’s fingertips into the tobacco box and sniff in the presence of that kindly Jew, even though I am hardly a devotee of tobacco — that is what I call “the kindness of receiving.”
Yes, I believe such a concept exists in the world of values. To accept something you don’t really need, from someone who so wants to give. It finds expression at almost every step in life. When a mother seeks to give her son love and the son embraces her love. When a friend wants to share an idea or suggestion with a colleague, and he is willing to listen and respond even if it isn’t anything special. When a grandfather wants to give his grandson a gift that is no longer relevant in our era, and the grandson takes it anyway and says thank you, Grandpa. All these are cases whose common thread is “the kindness of receiving.”
