The Chesed Hour Paradox

The end of the semester is drawing closer, which begs the question: have you completed your chesed hours?

Waiting until the last minute to scrap together a couple of questionable signatures to validate your completion of 10 hours of chesed is not the question at hand. Even if you have handed all of the necessary chesed forms to Mr. P, you probably still haven’t really done 10 hours of chesed, and herein lies the problem.

Let’s backtrack for a moment. What is a chesed hour? Any TABC student will tell you that when you spend time doing an act of chesed (or at least pretend to) you must fill out a form that documents your time spent doing that act of chesed. It seems simple enough, but it begs another question: Why are all students required to fulfill a quota of 10 hours of chesed?

These questions are only getting easier, so where am I going with this? Everyone knows that if you don’t meet that quota, you get a zero on all of your midterms or finals (depending on the time of year). So you have to fill your quota. Got it. But what must you fill it with? Chesed. Right? Wrong.

To elaborate, let’s take a look at the godforsaken book of all godforsaken books: the TABC student handbook: “...we require each student to perform a minimum of ten (10) hours of chesed or community service per semester.” (Page 7)

Community service? How is that any different from chesed? Is that just the word ‘chesed’ in English? No, far from it. To paraphrase the student handbook, chesed is defined as assisting the less fortunate while community service is defined as performing volunteer work for non-profit organizations. Ohhhhhhhhh. It all makes sense now. I always wondered why directing traffic for the TABC open house was considered chesed. Because it isn’t. At all. In any way. It’s community service.

So far we’ve learned that both acts of chesed and community service are acceptable means of fulfilling the chesed hour quota. It seems strange that they are called chesed hours if they can be entirely filled with community service and without doing a single act of chesed. Let’s return to the earlier quote from the student handbook. The quote began mid-sentence, so let’s review the sentence in its entirety. In fact, let’s review from the beginning of the paragraph until we reach the end of our quote:

“TABC is a community dedicated to chesed. There are many needs in the Jewish and broader community. We hope that our students are sensitive to those needs and willing to give of their time to help others. In order to encourage our students to seek out chesed opportunities, we require each student to perform a minimum of ten (10) hours of chesed or community service per semester.” (Page 7)

The student handbook sure is a fun read. This quote shows the bigger picture. The chesed hour system is an attempt to entice students to (wait for it...) do more acts of chesed. Shocking.

In all seriousness, this is where the true chesed hour paradox lies. Why is TABC trying to encourage chesed with a system that simultaneously encourages something else entirely: community service? It distracts students from doing acts of chesed, the single purpose of the entire chesed hour system!

TABC even acknowledges this paradox a few lines later.“While we appreciate the importance that volunteers serve for non–profit organizations [meaning community service], our goal is to expose our students to meaningful chesed experiences.” (Page 7)

TABC is trying to cram too many goals into the chesed hour system, and is inhibiting students from doing acts of chesed. It is much easier for a student to put on a suit and go to the TABC open house for five hours, stand in lunchroom or hallways, talk to their friends, and tell a prospective parent where the bathroom is every couple of minutes, than to ACTUALLY do an act of chesed.