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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Act as if your next act could change the future of the world, because small acts of kindness, one life and one act at a time, can change people's lives and, through them, the world. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks illustrates this with Steven Carter's story of how a single gesture of welcome from a neighbor changed his sense of belonging.
Key Points
- Steven Carter, an African-American (and Lutheran) boy, moved with his family into a predominantly white Washington neighborhood in the early 1960s, where they were the first Black family.
- On their first morning, the neighbors ignored them, and Carter felt they would never belong there.
- Sarah Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jewish neighbor, crossed the street with a tray of drinks and cookies and said, "How wonderful to have you here."
- Carter says that moment changed his life and taught him he could belong, and he later became a professor of law at Yale University.
- Sacks links the story to a Talmudic teaching, codified by Maimonides, that one should act as if one's next act could change the future of the world.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The transcript gives no step-by-step method. The actionable takeaway is to make a deliberate, kind gesture toward strangers, especially when it is hard, such as welcoming newcomers who feel unwelcome. Sacks calls this kind of kindness "chesed," meaning kindness, especially to strangers and especially when it is hard.
- The welcome Carter received came after a period of being ignored, showing that a first gesture can reverse exclusion.
- Sacks says he did not know Sarah Kestenbaum personally, but people at a synagogue in Washington recognized the story as typical of her and said she had been a member there.
- Sacks acknowledges that the idea that one person can change the world seemed crazy to him, given there are six billion people, and frames life as a universe where changing one's life begins to change the wider world.
- Sacks notes that Kestenbaum died young, so the story is presented as a memory of her rather than an ongoing account.
Bottom Line
Small, deliberate acts of kindness toward strangers can matter enormously to the people who receive them, and Sacks argues that this is the only real way to change the world.
