Stop the Angel of Death: The Power of Kindness

A young man once approached Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and asked a simple, personal question: What should I strengthen myself in?

The rabbi’s answer was startling in its clarity: We can stop the Angel of Death only if we strengthen ourselves in honoring other people, in matters between one person and another. Then it will have no control within us.

It is a powerful claim. Not about mystical protection, but about something painfully practical: how we treat the people around us.

“Love Your Fellow as Yourself” Is Not a Slogan

The obligation to be careful with another person’s honor is included in the Torah’s command: “Love your fellow as yourself.” The point is not sentimental feeling alone, but a lived mindset: you care about your friend’s dignity the way you care about your own.

Maimonides (the Rambam) describes it plainly: a person must love each fellow Jew like himself. Therefore, he should speak in the other person’s praise, protect their property, and seek their honor — just as he guards his own and wants his own honor.

Sefer HaChinuch adds a sharp detail: if you speak about someone, let it be for praise. Guard their honor, and do not build your own status on their embarrassment.

In Yad HaKetanah, the picture becomes even more human: seek their benefit, rejoice in their joy, feel their pain, and speak with warmth, affection, and respect.

The Ethics of Avot: Your Friend’s Honor Is Your Business

Pirkei Avot teaches: “Let your friend’s honor be as dear to you as your own.”

Rabbeinu Yonah explains that this is not extra piety, but basic moral development. A person should actively pursue the honor of others and genuinely want them to be respected.

This is where Judaism becomes demanding in the most “ordinary” places: conversations, facial expressions, tone of voice, the small choices we make in public and at home.

When Judgment Grows Strong, Cling to Kindness

The Jerusalem Talmud records a striking message: when merit feels like it has collapsed, God says to Israel: cling to kindness. Why? Because the patriarchs built their lives on goodness and chesed. When we attach ourselves to that trait, we awaken Divine kindness upon ourselves, measure for measure.

The Chafetz Chaim takes this further and makes it urgent: when harsh judgment seems to intensify in the world, and troubles renew themselves day after day, the advice is not complicated: strengthen chesed, so that the “upper kindness” will be awakened.

The message is consistent: the world is not held together by brilliance alone, or by ideology alone, but by people continuously choosing to be decent.

Tanna D’vei Eliyahu describes the Jewish people in Egypt gathering together and making a covenant: to do acts of kindness with one another, to guard their identity, and to remain loyal to the God of Heaven. It presents this unity and mutual responsibility as a reason redemption became possible: when kindness is awakened below, mercy is awakened Above.

Chesed is not only “nice.” It is a spiritual engine that can cancel decrees and open doors.

The Vilna Gaon: Everything Depends on Character

In the introduction to Even Shleimah, the Vilna Gaon writes a line that leaves no room for excuses: All service of God depends on the refinement of character traits. Traits are like the “garments” of mitzvot and the foundations of Torah. Sins are rooted in broken traits. And the core life-work of a person is to constantly strengthen himself in breaking negative traits — because without that, what are life and growth even for?

It is a radical definition of spirituality: not how high you can fly, but how deeply you can repair yourself.

Greatness That Looks Like Warmth

So many stories about the righteous have a common thread: not only learning, not only leadership, but how they treated ordinary people.

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was known for extraordinary humility and warmth. He greeted everyone with genuine light in his face. People remembered not just his mind, but his presence: a smile, patience, and a sense that the person in front of him mattered.

One story tells of how, after delivering his daily shiur, he would receive people for hours. Meals were reheated again and again, because he stayed with those waiting. When it was finally time for him to eat, he would say: How can one eat after hearing so many troubles of Jews?

Even in old age, when family members tried to protect him from visitors, he insisted on receiving a woman waiting outside. When she apologized and said she would return another day because the rabbi was ill, he answered gently: It isn’t illness. It’s my old age. If you come tomorrow, it will be the same old age, plus one more day.

“Be Good People”

In a similar spirit, when Rabbi Aryeh Shechter was asked what a public strengthening gathering should focus on, he answered with three words: “To be good people.”

Not a complicated program. Not a new slogan. Just the core: be the kind of person who adds dignity to the world instead of removing it.

Some teachers train their students to take on concrete daily commitments: do three hidden acts of kindness each day. Help the worker who clears the tables, even if it’s “not your job.” Let someone go ahead of you in line. Lighten another person’s load in ways no one will applaud.

Traits are not repaired by big speeches, but by repeated choices.

The Central Claim Revisited

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s statement returns with new weight: the Angel of Death loses control where people live with honor, decency, and chesed.

Whether you understand that spiritually, morally, or psychologically, the instruction is the same:

• Guard the dignity of others

• Speak with respect

• Refuse to gain status through someone else’s humiliation

• Practice kindness until it becomes a second nature

In the Jewish view, the most powerful “protection” in the world is not fear or force, but a community built on love, honor, and human goodness.