The measure of a successful, compassionate community is how a community comes together to improve the lives of its less fortunate. Kindness Initiative was created as an assistance system, infused with dignity, kindness and Jewish values at its core.
Kindness Initiative’s mission provides an opportunity for individual volunteers and donors to meet their religious and/or moral obligations, to assist other Jews in need. The Torah’s underlying precept is that all our material possessions ultimately belong to our Creator, and we merely hold them as a trust on G-d’s behalf, with an obligation to use them to benefit the needy among us.
All Jews are responsible for each other. We are like a ship where a hole has been ruptured in one room. It cannot be said that one room has been ruptured.; the entire ship is ruptured.
Midrash, TanaDevei Eliyahu Rabah
Those in need will never cease from the earth; therefore I command you to open, open your hand to your brother, to the poor and to the needy of your land.
Deuteronomy 15:11
If a community lacked a synagogue and a shelter for the poor, it was first obligated to build a shelter for the poor.
Rambam (Seder Hasidim)
Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil…
Elie Wiesel, quoted in US News and World Report, Oct. 27, 1986.