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6 hours ago
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Several times a week, I write small notes on pretty stationery for my three-year-old daughter to take to kinder the next day.
Sometimes the note is about how she shared a toy with a sibling, other times it is about how she helped someone without being asked and often it is praising her for saying thank you or please.
In our family, we call them mitzvah notes.
The Hebrew word mitzvah is often translated as a good deed, but perhaps the best way to describe a mitzvah is an intentional act of goodness and kindness.
My daughter proudly takes her mitzvah notes to kinder, where her teacher reads them out loud to the whole class. The notes are then pinned to a wall filled with other children’s mitzvah notes, celebrating the good deeds of her three-year-old peers.
So, while other children covet stickers or prizes, my daughter is thrilled when she gets a mitzvah note and loves it when she has one to take to school.
As a parent, I spend a lot of time thinking about what values I want to pass on to my kids. Of course, I want my children to be capable and confident, and I want them to work hard, and develop resilience. But more than anything, I want them to grow into people who notice others, and who care about the world around them. I want them to understand that even the smallest acts of goodness and kindness can have a ripple effect far beyond what we can ever see.
There is a verse in the Bible, in the Book of Proverbs, that says: “Train a child according to their path, and even when they are old, they will not depart from it.”
I have always loved this quote, because to me it represents the idea that children grow into the identities we help them see in themselves.
When I want my children to help clean up their rooms and they are feeling particularly reluctant, instead of focusing on what they are not doing, I usually try to say something like, “I love when you help mummy clean up your room.”
By framing the request like this, I am reminding them of who I think they are. That as their mum, I see them as someone who helps, someone who cares and someone who tries to do the right thing.
This is what makes mitzvah notes so powerful. They are not just about praising a single action, but rather, they are about building a mindset where children want to be noticed for the good deeds that they do. They encourage children to look outward rather than inward, and they teach every human that they are part of something bigger than themselves.
After the Bondi terror attack, many people were left asking what they could do in the face of such darkness.
One response was a renewed focus on acts of kindness, and with consultation from the Jewish community, a national day to perform mitzvot was announced for people of all faiths to try to bring more light into the world. Across Australia, people volunteered at soup kitchens, cleaned beaches, visited elderly people in nursing homes, and found small ways to be kind to others.
None of those acts could undo the tragedy that occurred, but they reflected a belief that darkness spreads when people withdraw from one another, while goodness grows when people choose to do small acts of goodness and kindness for each other.
And perhaps that is why I love mitzvah notes so much.
They are small notes, jotted down in a minute or less, yet they carry a much bigger message. They tell a child, “I saw what you did, and I love that you are doing small acts of kindness,” and they encourage them to continue doing small acts of goodness and kindness.
And if enough children grow up believing that being kind and thoughtful is part of who they are, then perhaps those small notes are doing far more than recognising a good deed. Perhaps they are helping raise the sort of people our world needs right now.
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Nomi Kaltmann is an Australian lawyer and journalist. She is a proud member of Melbourne’s Jewish community
