One of my favorite podcasts is Hidden Brain, which explores the hidden psychology behind everyday life. I especially enjoy the episodes that dive into the social and behavioral science behind things I’ve always recognized as true but could never quite put my finger on.

A recent episode, A Secret Source of Connection, examined the disconnect between the motivations and hesitations of the person performing an act of kindness and the experience of the person receiving it. In short, people performing a mitzvah tend to overthink and overanalyze what they’re doing, while vastly underestimating how much it will be appreciated by the recipient.

I won’t try to summarize the entire episode here, but I have found this to be endlessly true at Temple Sinai.

A classic example is when we organize a meal train for someone who needs gluten-free meals or has another dietary restriction. These meal trains are notoriously harder to fill with home-cooked volunteers. It isn’t for lack of kindness or compassion within our community—quite the opposite. Our home chefs care so deeply about getting it right that they worry they’ll make a mistake or accidentally cause harm. It’s an overabundance of concern and caution that can result in very few people signing up.

People don’t lack for kindness. They lack for confidence.

As we design and launch the Kugel Korps project—bringing casseroles to members of our community during times of illness, grief, or financial distress—I’ve been talking with the champions of Temple Sinai’s former Chicken Soup Brigade. As we launch this new community food initiative, it’s important that we learn from a similar project: what worked well, what challenges they encountered, and where the pitfalls might lie.

One of the biggest obstacles has always been simply learning when someone in our community is in need.

To that end, I’d like to borrow a phrase Judy Schumer is known for saying: “Give us the opportunity to perform the mitzvah.” Allow us. Permit us. Grant us the opportunity to help.

If you know someone in our Temple Sinai family who is struggling, please let me, Rabbi Ben, or Mike Stombaugh in the office know so that we can activate our congregation around them. So often, people don’t ask because they don’t want to be a burden. But giving is itself a blessing, and you’re allowing others the opportunity to fulfill that mitzvah.

We hope to hold our very first Kugel Korps Cooking Day on Sunday, August 16, at 2:00 p.m., and everyone is welcome. We’ll provide the ingredients, recipes, and tools—you just bring yourself. Don’t let a lack of cooking experience or a concern about getting it right keep you from participating. This is the perfect opportunity to try a new mitzvah with the support, encouragement, and camaraderie of your Temple Sinai friends.

And I hope casseroles are just the beginning.

Make more phone calls. Offer more rides. Pay more random visits. Check in on someone you’ve been thinking about. Get out of your head and get in touch with your community.

I especially notice this among my own generation and those a bit younger. We can be so hesitant, so deferential, so worried about intruding or imposing on someone else’s life that we end up doing nothing at all. But both the anecdotal stories and the clinical research point in the same direction: recipients appreciate the gesture far more than they are inconvenienced by it.

If you worry that bringing someone a casserole might be misconstrued—“Do they think I can’t cook? Do they think I can’t afford food?”—the research suggests the recipient probably isn’t thinking those things at all. More likely, they’re simply grateful to be remembered by their friends and appreciative that someone cared enough to show up with a meal, even if that casserole waits in the freezer for a while as a backup.

Kindness doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. So be a little bolder with your kindness. Take the risk of reaching out. Offer the meal. Make the call. Give the ride. Stop by for the visit.

You may be overthinking it—but the person on the receiving end will probably just be grateful that you remembered them.

Yours in Service,
Tova McGilvray