The Sphere of Chesed: How Are You Showing Up?

through loving-kindness
create a culture of care
strengthen connections

This is part of a series about the journey through the lower 7 spheres of the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

The first week focuses on the sephirah[1] of Chesed.

What is Chesed?

Like many Hebrew words, and all of the sephirot, the word Chesed doesn’t have one exact translation into English.

The most common translation of chesed is loving-kindness, love, or charity.

But these don’t quite do it justice.

Create a Culture of Care

Chesed is about creating a culture of caring, community, and connection.

Some of the core Jewish positive commandments are about acts of chesed:

visiting the sick
comforting mourners
celebrating with a bride and groom

Chesed projects also might include

delivering food to the hungry
helping residents of a city after a natural disaster
visiting the elderly who live alone

We do these things not because someone “did something” to deserve it, but because that’s what it means to be in community.

This view of chesed fits with Rabbi Yonassan Gershom’s definition of chesed as grace, something that is freely given.[2]

Show Up With Presence

Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder defines chesed as

the willingness and capacity to be present and make contact despite unknowns, anxieties, and uncertainties.[3]

One of the paradoxes of life is that as much as we seek to love and be loved, we often close ourselves off to love. Sometimes we may avoid difficult situations or conversations out of fear that we will be rejected or hurt.

The vulnerability required to show up with full presence, to open our hearts to the flow of love, can feel overwhelming.

It’s easier to stay within the confines of safety, even when that “safety” feels uncomfortable or oppressive. The pain we know is preferable to the pain we haven’t yet experienced.

According to Goldfeder, the central feature of chesed is the initiative to enter into unknown, uncomfortable, or difficult situations or conversations.

In the realm of chesed, what we give or what we say is secondary to how we show up — or even that we show up.

Consider how it feels to have someone by your side in a moment of grief; you don’t need anyone to say anything. The person’s presence is what matters.

Your presence is enough. Your presence is a gift.

Refining the Element of Chesed

The first week of the Omer journey invites us to explore:

what does it mean to show up with full presence and caring — for ourselves and others?
what gets in our way?
how can we create a culture of care internally and within in our communities?