Children’s book author Kate Di Camillo tells the story of standing in the grocery store checkout line as a small boy walked past —once, twice, three times. When he came back the fourth time, he was holding his mother’s hand. “That’s her,” he exclaimed. “That's the author of The Tale of Despereaux that we are reading in class! Can I ask a question?" “Absolutely,” the author responded. This child looked up at me and asked, “What I want to know is will it be okay? Will the mouse be okay?” “Yes,” she told him. “Oh,” he said. “Good. Now I can relax my heart.”
The Israelites knew about heartbreak. They felt their hearts leap into their throats with uncertainty and be crushed by cruel servitude. They were all too familiar with the hard heartedness of Pharoah and the consequences of his cruelty. Yet one of their first acts as a free people is to open their hearts. The root of the Hebrew word for generosity appears multiple times in the Torah portions in these next weeks. “Yidvenu” is a verb literally meaning that the Israelites “made their hearts generous.”
Their transformation is an inspiration to us. It is a reminder that we too can survive hardship without hardening our hearts. In a world where we find ourselves hoarding toilet paper, we can learn from their magnanimity. We pray that our hearts can relax as spring comes. As they do—let us open them wide. For generosity is a verb if only we make it so.
