Tiny Tales of Kindness 2025
- Leann Shamash
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 18 hours ago
When I think about Parshat Ki Teitzei I think of kindness, so this week I set out to find tiny tales of kindness. After reading more, though, I am not sure anymore that this parsha is about kindness, rather it is about decency. It's about going that extra mile. Doing things like taking that final step and building a parapet for our roofs, returning a lost sheep instead of walking away, leaving the corners of our fields for the poor instead of keeping the profits only for ourselves. The Torah asks us to be decent human beings, to command us to do the right thing instead of leaving it up to us. These pleas for decency go back to the idea that we were slaves in Egypt.
Well, then why tales of kindness? Although KI Teitzei is more about decency than kindness, perhaps decency leads us on a path to kindness? Were the people who committed the acts of kindness seen on this page thinking about KI Teitzei as they helped a stranger? Probably not, but perhaps decency leads to kindness and in turn one kindness leads to another.
Thanks so much to the people who shared this week. I did the exercise myself this week and it took me on a pathway that brought me to my own tiny tale of kindness. I think that it is that path where we think about kindness that is important. The stories are illustrations of your thought pathways and they are meaningful to both you, as one who goes through the thought process, and to us, as the readers who are inspired by your story.
Hoping for better news.
Leann
PS. You are welcome to share your tiny tale with me by messaging me through this post. Take those few minutes to go up the pathway of thinking about kindness.
The best gift you can give old people is your time and attention.
RK
Grocery shopping with baby/toddler strapped to me in a baby carrier… around the end of COVID times. The grocery bagger haphazardly loaded my cart with my shopping bags. As I was leaving the store, one or two bags toppled out and my groceries spilled all over. Two strangers stopped and helped to repack everything back up. I was so overwhelmed in a good way to have strangers helping, especially after a long time of people keeping space from others .
I think one of them even insisted on pushing my cart to my car. Just so nice and unexpected in Boston
MS
I have met a lot of nice people in my life. But my recent experience was in a place that I least expected. It happened in Gare de Lyon international train station in Paris. My brother and I wanted to go to South of France by train. At train station we weren't able to find our way. The place was too big with so many gates, all the signs were in French and we were carrying our luggage. I asked a woman if she could help us although she couldn't speak English but she understood our problem. She went way out of her way to help us. She did not leave us until she made sure that we were in the right place.
HH
This may be considered tiny but it felt huge to me. When at the zoo with both kids, my baby had a blow out and I was changing his diaper and another young mom came over and offered to help. I told her I had it but thanks. And then when I was done she came over and took the diaper to throw out for me and said “im just going to grab this for you, we’ve all been there”.
GL
I was standing in line to pay for some snacks at a museum cafe while on vacation a couple weeks ago. The man ahead of me was buying lunch for his family, saw me behind him with my few items, and said to the server, “I’m paying for the woman behind me as well.” I thanked him, saying there’s no need, I’m happy to pay for my own purchase. He insisted, and I gladly accepted, saying that I would pay it forward in the future. This small act of kindness stays with me, brightening the world just a bit. And now I get to look for opportunities to pay it forward.
MF
We regularly see our sister-in-law, who always worries about me. We went to visit her so that she doesn't worry about me and while there we had the chance to have a great visit. Worrying about us..kindness. Going to visit her: Kindness!
SA
There have been two acts of kindness from strangers that have stayed with me my entire life. The first one was when I was 19 and my stepmother was dying. I was in the hospital visiting her every night and it was very intense. One night when I was leaving the hospital, there was a woman in the elevator with me who I didn’t know. We both left the elevator and she was a few steps in front of me. When we got outside into the parking lot, she just suddenly turned around to me, put her arms around me and said “it will be all right.” I never knew her name and she never knew mine, but I cried in her arms in the parking lot as she hugged me because I was losing the second mother I had when I was just a teenager and she was very comforting.
LS
A person whom I know just the other day helped a friend with transportation to a doctor’s appt. almost 2 hrs away. She sat and waited and then drove her the two hours back, just to be nice and helpful. But that was not the kindness. She came home talking about how concerned she was, trying to figure out how this friend is going to make the transitions she needs to, etc. The kindness was that she obviously was present with this friend. Listened. Cared. That had to make the biggest difference.
DW
Kindness, when a random cut piece among the many others moves to fit in the awkwardest space, quietly and anonymously moving to become part of the ‘big picture’
T.E.
I was at Trader Joe's one late afternoon. The sky opened up into a torrential rain. It was crazy. My car was, of course, halfway across the parking lot. As I was exiting the store, a young man stepped up to me and said he'd like to escort me to my car with an umbrella. Being somewhat suspicious of the act, I gave him a thorough looking over. He was wearing a TJ's shirt, carrying a TJs umbrella, and looked benign. So I accepted his offer and arrived at my car two minutes later, hardly wet at all.
EK
I think the kindest thing that I can think of is my friend who devoted years to caring for her elderly mother who had dementia. She gave up months of her own life to care for her mother’s every need. This friend will also occasionally deliver homemade challot and flowers from her garden for Shabbat for no reason at all.
LS
A teacher I had in 7th grade made everyone who failed a test get a paper signed and she was a tough teacher but she liked me - she knew things were very rough in my house in those years so when I failed a test and she was passing out the slips she told me she ran out of them and didn’t give me one
LS
It was early Spring during Covid when a young Trader Joe’s employee insisted on gifting me a bouquet of beautiful deep purple tulips. I wrote her a note of thanks which she kept on her refrigerator. I will never forget her act of kindness and new friendship was born while shopping for food!
LF
Back in the old days when we camped at Nickerson State Park we relied upon friends to drop by the ranger station there and put our name down for roll-call so that bright and early next morning we'd have a prime spot at the top of the queue. Many times our friends, different ones, drove over there to do that for us and we were very grateful
KL
At 2 A.M Erev Shabbat my daughter and I were driving home with her son whom we had taken to the emergency room. He had trouble breathing, but was ok. 15 minutes from the house on our way home we felt a flat tire. We kept driving because there was nowhere to stop and we were nervous. We drove until we felt the rim of the tire on the ground, then stopped and got out to look. Immediately three sweet young men stopped, told us they would change the tire. In minutes we were on our way home. They could have pretended not to see us but their kindness was so true.
SI
The most special type of kindness is one towards someone you do not know. Just the other day I saw someone waiting for a taxi ride. As a taxi pulled over to pick them up a mom approached with her two young children and hands full of groceries. He kindly offered his taxi ride to them even though he was waiting and clearly in a rush.
LG
After my surgery and to this day my husband helps me out with the things that are difficult or impossible for me to do right now. For example, he drives me everywhere I need to go. But the real act of kindness is that he never makes me feel like it is a burden for him. He does it with humor and lightness.
BG
On our way to New Jersey we stopped to have a picnic in what we thought was a park in the back of a church. We found an elderly woman dressed in torn jeans and a tee shirt down on her knees weeding. She had been a congregant at that church for many years and she regularly volunteered her time to keep the garden weeded. This is a kindness, despite her age, that she could offer.
HS
My young son and I stopped for lunch at a Friendly’s, and to his horror, he spilled his full glass of milk - on the table, the floor, and himself. The waitress returned with a fresh glass of milk and cleaned the whole mess. She told him, “This happens all the time, to kids and adults. Don’t worry about it. When I started working here, I spilled hot coffee in a customer’s lap.” Her story was simultaneously outrageous and hilarious - and it immediately rescued my son from humiliation.
RJ
“I’m going to say something that was illegal to say, in the former Soviet Union where I grew up and lived most of my life. ‘God bless you."
WH
A story my father told me when I was very young. He had stopped on the way home from work to pick up MacDonald’s for me and my brother. At the counter was a woman with a little girl. She had ordered but he could see the way she was searching in her purse that she did not have enough for the meal. He asked her nicely if he could buy them dinner. She was embarrassed and didn’t want to take the money. He insisted and gave her his business card telling her she could pay him back when she was able. Of course he didn’t want the money, seeing the women’s relief and the little girl happy gave him such satisfaction and warmth whenever he thought of it.
Several months later an envelope arrived at his desk. Inside was a thank you note, an old crumpled up $5 bill and a packet of vegetable seeds to plant.
Still 45+ years later he always smiles with that memory.
LC
During the second intifada, when Israeli shops suffered from the decline in tourism, we hosted an Israeli shopkeeper for a Shop Israel event. Our visitor had shlepped his Jerusalem gift shop wares here and had a hectic schedule in Jewish communities across America. My mother lived downstairs and came up to meet him. In no time, she invited him to join her at the gym, intuiting that he could use a break and some time for self-care. He loved it. My mother, straightforward, generous and thoughtful, opened her heart to him. And as I now recall this, my heart opens to her.
BGM
A few months after my mother passed away, I attended her book club luncheon to meet the women who she had been meeting with for so many years. I decided to bring "artifacts" from my mother's home to set up on a table and give to all the women. Each could choose some piece to bring home with them. You might think that I am writing this to claim I did an act of kindness, but the kindness came from someone else.
One of the ladies was wearing a rose colored shawl which I told her was beautiful. And do you know what happened next? She took off the shawl and said to me: Please take this. I know you will enjoy wearing it.
Although I pushed back that of course she could keep the shawl, she gently insisted I take it from her. Whether it was because I was the daughter of her dear friend, or some other reason, I don't know. But, that was a true act of kindness!
NL
You can find part 1 of Tiny Tales of Kindness here. (Compiled in 2023)
........you must not remain indifferent Deuteronmy 22:3
לֹ֥א תוּכַ֖ל
לְהִתְעַלֵּֽם
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