Editor’s Note: Chaya (Clara) Hammer passed away on Erev Pesach, 2010 but the Clara Hammer Chicken Fund continues in Jerusalem.
I was fortunate enough to spend last evening with a bunch a lovely parents from our neighborhood and a teacher named Sue Ellen. We are trying to start a little Co-Op preschool and would like to hire her to teach for us. Sue Ellen started telling us a little about herself, but I already knew that she was a special person. After she described her teaching experience, she explained that she visited Nicaragua a few years ago and learned that there were no lending libraries in the schools she was visiting. Can you imagine such a thing? If you are an American you probably can not. In our country we have an old and well established network of public libraries from sea to shining sea. The earliest started 1849 in the State of New Hampshire, a freezing cold place where a good book to snuggle up with is a necessity. But widespread, public libraries took hold in the late-Victorian era. Sue Ellen, who is not a wealthy person, decided that instead of merely fretting over the situation she would build a lending library in one school, one community at a time. She said last night, “I know this might sound crazy to you, but I want to put a library in every school in Nicaragua. It sounds crazy, but I really think I can do it.” She started a foundation, TALICA, and has opened six libraries so far. It did not sound crazy to me.
Then this morning I saw a wonderful video on Shalom TV, a Jewish oriented cable channel offered in some places in the States, about a woman affectionately called “The Chicken Lady”. The Chicken Lady, or Clara Hammer of Jerusalem, is in her 90s, although she seems much younger. About twenty-five years ago she learned through her neighborhood butcher that he was giving away the chicken bones, skin, and fat left over from trimming meat to some local families who could not afford the meat. They used the dregs to flavor their stew for Shabbat. Remembering her own brutal childhood trying to escape pogroms in Russia and almost starving in a prison camp she told the butcher to give the families meat from that point on and that she would pay the bill. I’m not sure how she thought she could raise the money, but she did. She now raises over a thousand dollars a week to feed needy families real meat instead of dregs. Clara has children, grand children, great grand children and even great-great grand children. In a way Clara really has around 900 children – the estimated number of hungry people she feeds.
When I learn about people like this, especially if I am lucky enough to meet them, I have a hard time not thinking about them every couple of minutes for what seems like weeks afterwards. There are the obvious reasons for this: they are both unusually generous with their money; they are both using their lives in the service of other people – two biggies. I think another reason they stick with me is that I wonder how they work up the courage to start helping and to stick with it. Instead of helping one family once, one school once, they go back over and over.
Do we all need to start charitable organizations? I don’t think so. Is there anything wrong with smaller acts of kindness and generosity? I don’t think so. After all, TALICA and the Chicken Lady both need donations to keep doing what they do, along with thousands of other organizations. We can be on the team or support the team without being the coach. There could be a hungry person on your block. There could be a person hungry for friendship or kindness on your block. There are charities waiting for the stuff clogging up your home so they can sell it and use the money to help needy people. Clearly, we can support the Sue Ellens and the Claras without trying to turn ourselves into them.
But how do these women go back over and over to help? In The Garden of Emuna, by Rabbi Shalom Arush, in Chapter Five called “Emuna and Emotion” there is a chart that I think begins to tap into what is happening within these women and others like them. And if I am correct about this theory, it is no wonder I can not stop thinking about them. There are two columns in the chart: Yetzer Hara and Heresy Say… and Yetzer Tov and Emuna Say… The Yetzer Hara is the Evil Inclination that we all have within us and are all bombarded by from the outside too. On the upside we all have a Yetzer Tov, a Good Inclination. The chart lists things your Yetzer Hara says to you and ways we can train our Yetzer Tov to respond. I think these women are people who have exceptionally strong Good Inclinations. The good voice in their heads that says, “Yes you can!” is so loud and healthy they seem to have the Evil Inclination on the run. People like this are radiant and joyful people to be around. Their warmth fills a room, builds libraries in Guatemala and Nicaragua, and feeds hungry people who live near Hackers Butcher Shop in Jerusalem.
We are all bombarded by messages from the Yetzer Hara. That is how the Creator designed the world. The stronger the Yetzer Tov gets, the stronger the Yetzer Hara gets, otherwise we would stop growing spiritually. But it is an amazing feeling to even in a tiny way strengthen the voice that tells us the truth, that tells us, “Yes, you can.” You can be more patient with your boss. You can eat the three-grain Vegan salad instead of the pizza. You can give some of your grocery money to the Sue Ellens or the Claras. You can turn off the computer and do some push ups. You can keep looking for work or develop new skills so you can find a job. You can love your fifteen-year-old son even though he seems to think you are the most aggravating and wretchedly boring person on the planet. You can bite your tongue instead of humiliating someone who really deserves it.
I think that what Bnei Noach do is so important there is always a grey thunder head looming over us telling us lies to defeat us. You will never build trust with Jewish people. Your family will never understand why you have chosen this path. This movement will peter out any minute now. Rabbis are never going to be interested in wrestling with the tough questions we need addressed. You will never find community. I think we need to look to these rare individuals who have trained the angel on their shoulder to shout down the EI. We need to support one another so that when we start to feel defeated there is a torrent of voices that say, “Yes you can! You are doing the right thing. You are making a difference. You are making the world the way it should be one small step at a time.” Because the truth is we are.
I don’t think Sue Ellen and Claraa thought they could help so many people when they started. They started with a few books and a few pounds of chicken breast. And then moment to moment the Yetzer Tov started to have a voice in the conversation stealing some thunder from that other guy who wants to hog the microphone.
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