Where it comes from
The Talmud (Gittin 61a) teaches that Jews should support the poor of other peoples alongside their own, visit their sick and bury their dead, “because of the ways of peace.” The phrase echoes Proverbs 3:17: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”
What it means
Kindness is meant to be universal. The same care owed to one’s own family and community is owed to neighbours of every background, not as a strategy, but because a just and peaceful society is built from many small acts of goodwill across lines of difference.
In every faith, and for none
Peacemaking is honoured everywhere: “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Gospels, salaam in Islamic greeting and teaching, and the many interfaith and civic groups that bring neighbours together today.
Lives that embody it
Many of the people on Jews Impact lived this value, in laboratories, courtrooms, classrooms and rescue work.
Henrietta SzoldFounder of Hadassah; through Youth Aliyah, rescued thousands of Jewish children from Nazi Europe.
Julius RosenwaldClothier who turned Sears, Roebuck into America’s great mail-order retailer, then helped build nearly 5,000 schools for Black children across the segregated South.
Lillian WaldNurse who founded New York’s Henry Street Settlement, coined the term “public health nurse” launched school nursing in the U.S. and helped create the federal Children’s Bureau.
Stories to read
- The West-Eastern Divan: an orchestra built on listening to the other
- Save a Child's Heart: free heart surgery for children from 75 countries
- The Rosenwald Schools: how a partnership built nearly 5,000 schools
Living it today
- Help a neighbour whose background is different from yours.
- Join or support an interfaith or community project.
- Visit someone who is ill or alone, whoever they are.
This value is one thread of tikkun olam, the repair of the world, and it belongs to anyone who wants to take part.