The Woman Who Changed the World Without Knowing: The Inspiring Story of Professor Carter

Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks shares a wonderful story about an 11-year-old Black child who moved with his parents and family to a white neighborhood in Washington. This happened in 1966. With his siblings, he sat on the steps at the entrance of the house, waiting to see how the neighbors would welcome them – but no one welcomed them. Those passing by looked at them, but not a single one offered them a smile or even a glance of recognition. He felt that all the frightening stories he had heard about how whites treat Blacks were becoming his reality. Years later, he wrote about his first days in the new home: "I knew we weren't wanted here. I knew they wouldn't love us here. I knew we wouldn't have friends here. I knew we shouldn't have moved here..."

While he was having these thoughts, a white woman returning from work passed on the other side of the street. She turned to the children and said with a wide smile: "Welcome!" She went into her home, and after a few minutes appeared with a tray full of drinks and cheese sandwiches with jam, offering them to the children. "That moment," the boy wrote years later, "changed my life." It gave him a sense of belonging he had never experienced before.

The child, Stephen Carter, is now a law professor at Yale University, and what he learned that day he wrote in a book. He called it Civility (civility – meaning politeness, manners, and culture). He tells us that the woman's name was Sarah Kestenbaum, and she died at a young age. He adds that it is no coincidence that she was a religious Jewish woman. "In Jewish tradition," he notes, such civility is called "*chesed*, a term derived from the understanding that humans are created in the image of Hashem."

He sums up, "To this day I can close my eyes and feel the soft, smooth sweetness of the cheese and jam sandwiches that I devoured that summer afternoon, when I discovered how one simple and sincere act of kindness can change lives."

In the Mishneh Torah, the Rambam writes: "Therefore, every person should see themselves the whole year as if they are half meritorious and half guilty; and also the whole world, half meritorious and half guilty: if they commit one sin – they tip themselves and the whole world to the side of guilt, causing destruction for them; if they do one mitzvah – they tip themselves and the whole world to the side of merit, bringing rescue and salvation to them." We can make change – and even change the world. We must always envision this before us.

Rabbi Sacks concludes: if you have changed one person's life, you have begun to change the world. This is how we repair the world: step by step, one act at a time, one soul at a time. We never know in advance what impact one of our actions will have. In many cases, we don't even know after the fact.

Sarah Kestenbaum never had the chance to read in a book the long-term impacts of her deed. But she did act. She did not hesitate. And we too, says the Rambam, must not hesitate. The next action we take might change someone's life balance, and ours too.

We are not leaves blown by the wind. We can change something in our world.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory (March 8, 1948 – November 7, 2020), served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. In 2005, he was knighted, and in 2009 he was made a life peer, taking the title Lord Sacks of Aldgate. He was active in interfaith dialogue in the UK and worked on the significance of Jewish faith in the modern world, a topic on which he authored many books.