You are 100% right. Chesed means inviting over people you dont know or new people in the neighborhood. There are anglo areas in Beit Shemesh (like Nofei Aviv) where if you fit in you get invited out all the time. Otherwise, after the first 2 or 3 weeks when you arrive nothing. We left Aviv and moved to another part of Beit Shemesh because we hardly received any invitations although we always saw our neighbors going out every Shabbat and Chag. The Aviv people pride themselves and call their area full of chesed but it only applies selectively (to their friends). In our new neighborhood the people dont brag they are full of chesed like they do in Nofei Aviv but they act it. We've been invited out alot more than the time we were in Nofei Aviv.

I am not sure what your point is.

I read the article by Rosenblum as well. It might be a bit by rote, but it is still a chessed. And just because some people do one chessed and not a different chessed does not mean that first chessed is worthless.
So it is a small chessed - at least it is something. I don't know if it is sucha big deal that an article needs to be written about it, but you are knocking it down and I am not sure why.

I dont get it, anonymous commenter. Are invitations for shabbos meals the only type of chessed there is? if they dont invite you they dont do chessed?

We never get invited out, but I would not say the community I live in is not full of chessed. I know it is. So we dont get invited out. We invite people every now and again and we enjoy our family shabbos meals as much as when we have company and we are not looking for invitations.

I understand you probably felt left out and ignored with everyone else being invited around, if what you say is even true. That still doesnt mean it is not a neighborhood of chessed. Nobody is perfect. You were overlooked, or rejected, for reasons we have no idea what they are, but that doesnt mean the neighborhood is evil nor that it does not do chessed.

Could you post a link to the article? I don't understand that bit about the cups being full, and I'm confused about the garbage (you write that he took out garbage and then a bag burst, presumably the one he was throwing out, and then he left the contents strewn around for someone else to clean up; perhaps the original article is more clear).

In any event, I'm not sure how cleaning up your own garbage is a chesed. Seems more like basic responsibility.

Yanky,
I think Yeshoua was trying to say that it is a given that boys who learn in Yeshivah do chesed why is it something that has to be written up about. He feels that if this considered so great than something is wrong.

baruch

yoni - the article was in the Hebrew Mishpacha magazine. I will look at JR's website to see if he posted it there.
if I remember the article correctly, he was throwing out the garbage and he saw someone else had left a bag of garbage by the side of the can. not him. the chessed referred to regarding the garbage would be when seeing someone elses mess, not leaving it to blow around and dirty the area, but to clean it up.

Personally, I dont clean up other peoples garbage, nor do I expect others to, as I dont feel the need to dirty myself. Let the garbage men do it, as that is what they get paid the big bucks for. I am disgusted by the fact that people are lazy and cant put the garbage in th can and abdicate on their personal responsibility, or send down the trash with kids who cant reach up. But I would nto demand that other people clean that mess up. Its dirty and I understand why people dont. I dont.

Rafi,

Thanks for clearing that up. If that's the case, he should have written "when he went to throw out the garbage into the dumpster [[that]] he saw that a bag of garbage had burst and it contents were strewn on the ground for someone else to clean up" (omitting the word in double-brackets). The way he writes it means that it burst when he went to throw out the garbage.

Cleaning up someone else's garbage may be a good middah, but I don't see how it crosses the "chesed" threshhold in most circumstances.

Leaving the cup full for the next person is a 'kindness', fitting in more with 'darchei noam' as the path of Torah observance.

My only inquiry is, many people find it easy to perform chesed for their own (yeshiva chaverim, family members, shul members, block/building friends, fellow republicans, etc.) and many are just the OPPOSITE, it is easier to perform chesed for those outside of their regular 'circle'.

Picking up garbage....is a difficulty for most people for reasons we are aware of (if it is open and strewn around).

maybe I'm just crazy I hate when other people fill up the cup for me. somehow I was under the impression that one is actually supposed to do it for themselves, and sometimes I see people letting their hands drip back into the cup I don't know the halacha but it seems to be better to dump that out.

anomymous -good point. when I see water in the cup I always spill it out and refill the cup. I dont know how long it sat there, what might have fallen into it, what might have dripped into it.

But perhaps in Philadelphia yeshiva (the subject of the article), with the water before davening, everyone is coming quickly enough that it is not sitting there for more than a oment or two, and everyone knows that it was just filled by the guy before him in line.

As long as we are talking about garbage, I have another garbage peeve. Why do all the "Tzaddikim" leave their breaad tied to the top of the garbage bin. Make french toast, croutons etc but don't tie it on the garbage dumpster. It's still baal tashchit.
Freezer full of bread in Efrat

The first comment and number eight are correct. The whole idea is to do chesed to those you dont know. We too lived in Nofei Aviv and we also saw all the chesed going to the inner circle - those who were there for many years, good friends and family. We rented there and were treated as outsiders. People asked us why we are leaving so I told them we had no kesher to the Rav (he doesnt invite people over unless they are machers or others who can poltically support him in the shul) and we were alone quite often on Shabbat. The reactions we received were like disbelief and how dare we question their community. Anyway, my point is doing chesed means reaching out past your circle of friends to new people and to those who need support. Chesed does not mean inviting pople over you are already buddies with or those who can help you "move up" socially or employment wise. That is what they do in Aviv - invite over their friends/family/those who can help them socially and job wise.

Annie I think people are allowed to dispose of food they don't plan to use, and I'm not sure whether one can create an obligation to invent second-chances for leftovers.

We wrap our bread and then put it *in* the garbage. I didn't know there was a chumra to treat it like we do lulavim. But I also only learned this year there's a chumra to put tzitzis in sheimos too.

anoymous,
I don't think you understood Annie's comment about the bread. If people threw out the bread in the dumpster she would not have mentioned it what the people do is they hang the bread on the dumpster or they put it on top because they think this way they are not throwing it away.