Do Me A Favour

When someone says, "Do me a favour," how do you react? Do you jump at the opportunity or do you think to yourself, "Uh oh, here it comes. I can't say 'no' but this is going to be a major inconvenience...."?
The next time, before you respond to a request for a favour, consider the following: The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Chasidic movement, taught that the whole reason for a person being put in this world just might be in order to do another Jew a favour!

A favour doesn't have to involve a long-term investment of time, energy or money. It can and does include any act of kindness one might do for another.

Doing a favour for someone connects us to that person in a very intrinsic way. This can be understood by considering how Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad Chassidus, expanded on the Baal Shem Tov's teaching. He said that when one does a favour to an individual, it is a favour to all those souls that will descend from him until the end of all generations.

Isn't that amazing and mind-boggling! When you lend a friend money, help someone find a job, go shopping for a shut-in, offer a cold glass of water to the man who came to collect the old furniture for the local thrift shop, or even when you do something as simple as helping a little old lady cross the street, you are doing something that has an effect not only on the person, but on his children and his children's children.

If this is true with monetary or corporeal favours, how much more so is it true when it comes to spiritual favours. But what kind of "spiritual favours" might be within the reach of every person?

Do you know how to read Hebrew? Not necessarily understand it but at least read it? There are many young people and adults who can't read Hebrew but want to learn. You can teach someone!

Or you can invite someone who has never experienced Shabbat to celebrate it with you.

You can schlep someone along to a class at your local Chabad Center.

Or you can tell the new Jewish family on the block about the local Jewish summer camp for their children.

Do any of these possible suggestions click? If not, here's something that everyone reading L'Chaim can do. Share this copy of L'Chaim with one of your friends! We're not trying to toot our own horn, but surely you know someone who would benefit form reading a few of the articles.

Do yourself a favour! The next time someone asks you to do him a favour - or even before - give him or her a helping hand materially or spiritually. That favour might just be the reason why you were born!