By: Shaindel Sussman

What makes me happy is doing chesed. Helping someone by saying a nice good word, or holding the door; helping by giving food with a smile. To feed your children is a chesed to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. All my children do a lot of chesed, also to my grandchildren, and that makes me very proud of them.

Today’s generation is very good in doing a lot of chesed. They make all these gemachs that help so many people. Yes, I am very familiar with the old world; it was so different, they did chesed but not as much as this generation. I don’t know the nisayon, maybe because they themselves were very poor. It was a hard life. The toilet was outdoors, there was no washing machine, no car. We had no nosh; if you were lucky, you would get a chocolate on your birthday. But we were healthy; we had fresh food and vegetables and unpolluted air.

Here one of my granddaughters helps her friends by making packages for poor kallahs; everything is new. I was inspired by my other granddaughter, how on a short Friday she went to pick up a neighbor from the hospital with her new baby because there was no one else to bring her food for Shabbos.