Kindness
Be Good to All
When you experience a strong desire to be good to all, realize that an illumination from the supernal world has come to you. How fortunate you will be if you prepare a proper place in your heart, in your mind, in the acts of your hands and in all your feelings to receive this exalted guest, which is greater and more exalted than the most noble of this earth. Take hold of it and do not let go.
Do not allow any delays and obstacles—whether physical or spiritual—that hinder you from taking this holy inspiration into yourself to stop you. Fight for everything. Rise in your strength. Lift your consciousness to the far reaches and imitate the qualities of God, Who is good to all and Whose compassion encompasses all His creatures.
Orot Hakodesh III, p. 316
Kindness
Rav Kook’s father told the following story:
Once, when Avraham Yitzchak was not yet six years old, he was late returning from cheder, and we began to worry. As it grew later, my wife got very upset, and she asked me to go look for him. I left the house and asked a few of his friends if they had seen him. One of them told me that he had seen him go with an old man in the direction of the old part of town (Griva). I set out in that direction, my heart filled with worry. But before I had gone far, I saw him from a distance, running—which wasn’t his usual custom—in the direction of our house. I hurried to meet him, and when he reached me and realized that I had gone to look for him, he hugged me and asked me to forgive him for having been late coming home.
He explained that when he had left the cheder, an old Jew had come up to him and asked him where the house of a man who was known for his charity was. He knew that the old man was a stranger to the city, and that even if he told him where the house was and how to get there, the man still wouldn’t easily find it, because one had to pass through various streets and alleys. And this was an old man with a cane.
And so he decided to fulfill the mitzvah of gemilat chasadim—doing kindness and to bring the man to the house himself.
When he finished telling the story, he asked innocently, “Father, did I not do well? I am sorry if I upset you and mother, but I swear before heaven and earth that I only had the mitzvah in mind. And the man also blessed me that I should become great in Torah.”
(R. Chaim Karlinski, Shanah B’shanah, 5746, p. 362), Likutei Rayah, pp. 423-24