The small group gathered around Bart Stern, Holocaust survivor, listened intently.

"One day an inmate in my barrack has his bread ration stolen. This was literally a death sentence for him, as the crust of bread that we received daily kept us from going over the edge of starvation. The man's despair was heart-breaking to watch. So, myself and two others, we broke of pieces of our bread and we gave it to him."

He paused as his listeners waited silently, no doubt wondering what they would have done if placed in such a situation. A faint smile broke out of his face. "You know, since the end of the war, I have done well financially, thank God. And I've been able to be generous to many people and organizations since then. But if I were to add up the hundreds of thousands of dollars I have given away in the past fifty years, it wouldn't even come close to the value of the little piece of bread I gave away at Auschwitz."

He paused again as if to make sure we were all paying careful attention; you could hear a pin drop. "Because . . . all the money was something I could spare, I had had plenty more. But that piece of bread I couldn't spare."

It struck me then that every day brings with it hundreds of opportunities for acts of kindness -- a smile here, a word of appreciation there, a helping hand to a person carrying a heavy bag, a patient nod to another driver trying to merge into heavy highway traffic -- all of which cost us nothing, barely a moment in time, moments we have to spare. So rarely do we take advantage of them all.

But all these little acts of kindness prepare us for the "big tests" when we are called upon to do something extraordinary, when we must reach deep inside to stretch ourselves to give something beyond our normal limits. I was thinking about that when I read the transcript of an interview Larry King did with Reverend Robert Schuller for Powerful Prayers, a book we co-authored on how the world's leaders and those in position of influence relate to God.

Reverend Schuller had told us how he had asked Hubert Humphrey for an extraordinary gift of kindness to his arch political enemy Richard Nixon. The two men, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, had been diametrically opposed on most social issues; and, of course, after a bitter campaign, Nixon had narrowly defeated Humphrey in the race for president. And Reverend Schuller knew he was asking a lot.

At the time of Schuller's request, Nixon, disgraced and humiliated by Watergate and forced resignation from office under the threat of impeachment, had been living in isolation at San Clemente for about four years. Hubert Humphrey, who lived nearby, was dying of cancer.

Reverend Schuller appealed to Humphrey and asked him to reach beyond the normal human bounds of kindness and help a human being in pain -- one for whom Humphrey had no reason to feel any pity. Any reasonable Democrat would have undoubtedly advised that Nixon had done more to damage to the presidency and American faith in the political process then any other politician in U.S. history and deserved all the consequences of his actions. But Reverend Schuller asked for the favor anyway.

"I told Hubert," Reverend Schuller related, "that I had a friend who was living twenty-one miles away from him in exile like Napoleon."

"Ahh," Humphrey responded, knowing exactly who the reverend was talking about.

"Will he ever be able to expose his face in public again?" the Reverend asked. Humphrey listened.

"The first time is going to be awful."

Humphrey agreed. "That'll be a toughie."

Feeling he had a sympathetic ear, Reverend Schuller plunged in with his request. "I've been thinking, Hubert, he can never go out again unless it is to a big, national historic event. It's got to be thrown by a Democrat, not by a Republican. Any Democrat that throws that kind of a party and invites Nixon had better not run for re-election."

"I know what you are thinking," Humphrey said. And then he didn't say, "I'll do it." He said something more remarkable. He said, "Thank you."

He understood that he had just been offered that extraordinary opportunity for an act of kindness few are called upon to deliver. And he rose to the occasion.

Indeed, Humphrey made sure that Nixon was invited to a big event thrown by a Democrat. He called Nixon and told him that he was abut to die; he then invited him to sit next to his wife Muriel when his body would be in state in the rotunda in Washington.

And that is how Hubert Humphrey, in death, performed a most extraordinary act of kindness, giving a humiliated man a chance to face the nation again. That was Nixon's first coming out, sitting next to Muriel Humphrey at her husband's memorial service.

God has placed man in the midst of raging battle, between his human desires -- for power, wealth, physical satisfaction -- and his spiritual needs. That battle is called life. But because God is merciful, God gives a leg up, so to speak. God's assistance comes in the form of challenges -- opportunities when we can choose to ally ourselves with our better side, our spiritual side. Each time we succeed, we become closer to God and we know it. That's why doing good deeds makes us feel so -- there is no better word for it -- good.

...My wish is that we all will have a chance this year to reach beyond our limits to do an extraordinary act of kindness and to have that incomparable experience of feeling our spirits soar toward heaven.
Rabbi Irwin Katsof is co-author, along with Larry King, of Powerful Prayers: Conversations on Faith, Hope and the Human Spirit (Renaissance Books, October '98).

He is the executive vice-president of the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, an international educational organization dedicated to awakening the Jewish people to the power and beauty of their thirty-five-hundred-year heritage. He can be reached at: The Jerusalem Fund, 156 West 56th Street, Suite 1201, New York, NY 10019; e-mail: JeruFundLA@aol.com or fax 212-713-0430.