We are surrounded by stories of sadness, cruelty and violence. Evil arrests our1. But there are also many2stories of selfless goodness. They could3 go unnoticed, but such acts can also change lives forever.
My brothers and I 4 with a story of something that happened to my father, who5 seven years ago. It is a story of family tragedy and astonishing, quiet kindness. My father's father died when my father was 11. His mother was a widow at 34, and as an only child, he6 much of his grief alone. In accordance with traditional7, he began to walk very early to church each morning to say prayers in his father's8.
At the end of his first week, he9 that the ritual director of the synagogue, Mr. Einstein, walked past his home just as he left to walk to church. Mr. Einstein, 10 advanced in years explained, "Your home is on the way to the church. I thought it might be fun to have some11. That way, I don't have to walk alone." For a year my father and Mr. Einstein walked through the New England 12, the humidity of summer and the snow of winter. They talked about life and loss and, for a while, my father was not so13.
After my parents married and my oldest brother was born, my father14 Mr. Einstein, now well into his 90s, and asked if Mr. Einstein could meet his new wife and child. Mr. Einstein15, but said that in view of his age my father would have to come to him.
My father once wrote about what happened: "The journey was long and16. His home, by car, was 17 twenty minutes away. I drove in tears as I 18 what he had done. He had walked for an hour to my home so that I would not have to be alone each morning. … By the simplest of gestures, the19 of caring, he took a frightened child and he20 him with confidence and with faith back into life."
