There’s a friend, let’s say he lives in Far Rockaway, and he was making a wedding. One of his children was getting married. He was making a wedding, and his income was impossible. He really didn’t have the means to pay for a wedding at all. He couldn’t even pay month to month. A wedding? He couldn’t pay even $1. So he reached out to me, and right away I felt, “He’s my friend,” and I gave him a check—whatever, $1,000—as charity. Very nice. Then he reached out to me again, and someone reached out to me on his behalf. “You know, Joey, you know him. Can you help?” Whatever. Back and forth, back and forth. I was thinking about it.
Okay, now it’s three days before the wedding, and I get a phone call. I get a text message from someone in the community—we’ll call him David. David sends me a text message. He says, “Rabbi, do you have any people who need…? I know you collect the money for Purim (Festival of Lots). Now it’s near Pesach (Passover). Are you giving? Do you have any money for Pesach?” I said, “Frankly, I don’t really give out money for Pesach.” He says, “Oh, because I just wanted to give something.” So I said, “If I don’t do something about it right now, there’s too much on my mind. I’m going to forget about this.” I called him up right away. I said, “Listen, I’m not really giving out for Pesach, but it happens to be in a few days. So now I have a friend. He’s not in the community. I don’t know if he only wanted to give in the community. He’s not in the community. He’s doing a wedding, and I know he needs. Do you want to help?” He says, “Yeah, Rabbi, I’d be happy to help.” He says, “Tomorrow night, I’m going to put a check in your mailbox.”
As I’m driving home, my friend’s friend calls me up and texts me. He says, “Joey, we needed to raise $70,000 for the wedding, and with all in—with the gowns and everything and all the help, everything, everything, because the guy didn’t have a dollar—we raised $50,000. We’re $20,000 short. Is there anything you could do?” I said, “I don’t know. It happens to be that I’m driving home now. Ten minutes ago, this guy called me up and said, ‘I dropped the envelope in your mailbox.’” I said, “Someone dropped the envelope in my mailbox. Let me see.” So I get to my house, get to the mailbox, and I have this envelope here. I brought the actual envelope. I took a copy of the check. And this is what the check said. I don’t know if you could read it. Could you read the check? $20,000. I’m not kidding. $20,000. I literally fell off my... I was like, “What?” Some random guy. Some random guy in the Syrian community gave a check for $20,000 to some person in Iraq where he never met before, never will meet, doesn’t even know him, barely knows me—the guy. I sent the check to the person. I said, “Your problem is completely and entirely solved.”
Then, two days later, I called this guy up with the check. I said, “Hello, I’m starting a school. Can we talk?” But this is called caring. This is called realizing we’re Jews. I don’t care what community you’re in. We’re Jews. If we are truly Hashem’s children, then we understand two things. If something happens to one of your kids and another child cares, two things happen. First of all, you’re so proud that one child cares about the other. And another thing is, you’re so proud that that means this child realizes that he’s a member of this family. Because if you ever had a kid where, like, something happens to one of your sons and then one of your daughters is like, “Ah, they’re moving on,” you’re like, “Are you joking? You know what happened to your brother? Are you part of this family?” Hashem says to the Jewish people, “Are you part of this family? If you can help, you need to help. If you can’t help, but you can awaken, you need to awaken. But if you can’t help and you can’t even awaken, you at least need to care. Otherwise, you’re not my children.” So caring is central to the Jewish people because it means you’re Jewish. It means you’re part of this family. Just caring. Even if you don’t do anything. If you just sit in your house and care. That in itself is an accomplishment: you are feeling someone else’s pain, and you’re recognizing that this is your ticket to being a part of one nation.