Remembering with kindness

One man turns his personal sorrow into a worldwide organization spreading tales of human compassion.

By NADAV ROITER
daily dose of kindness 311 (photo credit: Partners in Kindness)
daily dose of kindness 311
(photo credit: Partners in Kindness)
Ten years ago a terrorist carrying a guitar case filled with explosives entered the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing and wounding over 100 victims. Among the dead were Shoshana Greenbaum and her unborn child, leaving her husband Shmuel as well as the couple’s New Jersey community devastated and shocked.
“The senseless murder could have prompted me to seek revenge.
Instead, just two months after 9/11 and three months after the attack that killed my wife, I vowed to teach the world kindness,” said Greenbaum.
The kindness he spoke of came in the form of a daily e-mail newsletter called "A Daily Dose of Kindness," offering readers stories of compassion and generosity.
“The newsletter slowly turned into an organization called Partners in Kindness. An e-mail list of 150 soon expanded around the world to an audience of well over two million.
Hundreds of organizations requested permission to reprint the kindness stories in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet,” said Greenbaum.
Eventually, he decided to compile many of the stories distributed through the newsletter and publish a book which was appropriately titled A Daily Dose of Kindness.
“The kindness stories were having such an impact on people that the next natural step was to publish the stories in book form,” said Greenbaum. The book, which is a diverse compilation of stories and practical lessons, is being endorsed by an assortment of leaders of major faiths including the United Kingdom’s chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks.
“This lovely book will restore your faith in human nature and remind us all – for we need reminding – that it is by our acts of kindness that we bring the Divine presence into the world,” said Rabbi Sacks, who has become an enthusiast of the book.
In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the bombing that killed Shoshana Greenbaum, Partners in Kindness is donating thousands of copies of A Daily Dose of Kindness to libraries across the US.
In an effort to promote his book and generally spread kindness, Greenbaum often speaks publicly. In these encounters, “there is one question people always ask me: ‘How can you believe in God?’” he said.
“Our natural tendency is to focus on the bad, especially when we are immersed in a horrific tragedy. In an instant, I became the loneliest man in the world. I lived in fear that terrorists would track me down and kill me and perhaps kill hundreds of people in the United States as they had my wife and my unborn child,” he reflects.
But then he started to look around him at different acts of kindness. “It takes great effort to see the good. But seeing the good is the only hope we have for our sanity and for our society.
Seeing the Godliness in people is the only way we can be Godly,” he said.
“So how can I believe in God? After reading about acts of kindness and Godliness every day and doing acts of kindness myself, how can I not believe in God?”