Reform Jews Going Kosher?

In the end of days, Jewish people will wake up from the "bad dream" of Exile and return to the ways of their forefathers....

Is Reform Movement Going Kosher?

“The Sacred Table,” soon to be published by CCAR Press, suggests that Reform Jews develop a Jewish dietary practice. CCAR Press

Discussion about kashrut and Jewish values
part of broader discussion about rituals;
new guide to dietary practice is a first.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Sue Fishkoff

JTA

Kosher — it’s the first word in the book. And tackling the “k” word head-on is part of what makes the first Reform guide to Jewish dietary practice so significant.
“The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic,” to be published next month by the Reform rabbinical association, uses an array of essays by Reform rabbis and activists to challenge Reform Jews to develop a conscious dietary practice grounded in Jewish values.
And it’s not shy about suggesting kashrut, both traditional and re-imagined.
“No longer an oxymoron, ‘Reform kashrut’ has entered the Jewish lexicon, although there is no consensus on what this means exactly,” Rabbi Carole Balin, a Jewish history professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, writes in the book, which is being published by Central Conference of American Rabbis Press.
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News Magnate Rupert Murdoch Defends Israel Against the "New Anti-Semitism"

Yet another international figure comes forward to champion the Jewish people. This powerful billionaire openly accuses European countries of  a new sly approach to the the same old hatred. He joins the ranks of many prominent courageous leaders who publicize their support of Israel.

November 13, 2010

THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS

By Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch is founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of News Corporation, whose numerous worldwide holdings include the New York Post, Dow Jones & Company, The Times (London), Fox News Channel, HarperCollins Publishers and 20th Century Fox. This essay is adapted from his remarks upon being presented with the Anti-Defamation League's International Leadership Award in New York on Oct. 13.

Posted Oct 20 2010

We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews.
For the first decades after Israel's founding, this war was conventional in nature. The goal was straightforward: to use military force to overrun Israel. Well before the Berlin Wall came down, that approach had clearly failed.

Then came phase two: terrorism.
Terrorists targeted Israelis both home and abroad - from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the second intifada. The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world. But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government - and they have not weakened Israeli resolve.

Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media multinational organizations NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.
The result is the curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran - a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel's destruction - pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.

For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life. Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel. In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal. And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy only emboldens these extremists.

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Everyday Encounters With Redemption

Everyday Encounters with Redemption

·        Heard in the dentist’s chair from Dr. Robert Goldberger, Endodontist:

“I wanted to do something special for Thanksgiving. So I called a few shelters to see if I could help serve food. They had so many volunteers ….they turned me away! So I had to think of something else. Maybe I’ll take the kids and go around the corner to the nursing home.”

          Years ago the Rebbe said that to bring Moshiach we should “add something additional in the realm of goodness and kindness.” You can see that people are doing this.

·        A Ray of Moshiach Getting Off the Bus, from Rabbi B:

“I stepped onto the bus on my way to an appointment, and an African-American was on his way out. When he saw me he announced, ‘Rabbi, I have the 7 Noahide Laws, and I want you to know I am keeping them.”

          Just about everyone wants to be a part of the Redemption and to do whatever it takes. Okay, there are a few exceptions, but by and large, people want the information and want to know what to do.

          The 7 Noahide Laws are universal laws from the Torah, given to Moses on Mt. Sinai for the gentile nations. These laws are the guidelines for a civilized world, where people can dwell together in tranquility. This is the kind of the world that G-d wants.

For details on the 7 Laws, go to "Not only for Jews" on this site:

·        Is this the one we’ve been waiting for?, from DL

On a recent visit to a government office, I gave the 7 Laws to a lady with a little girl. I had my three year old son with me. She looked at the card with the Rebbe's picture and asked, Is this the Messiah? Yes I nodded. Is this the one we’ve been waiting for?she persisted. Yes, I said. A while later she saw my little boy was getting restless. Is it okay if my daughter gives him a crayon and some paper? she asked. That would be very nice, I responded.  A few minutes later her daughter gave my little boy another crayon. Then another. And another.  Soon she had given him all her crayons. Then she asked him, her eyes wide with excitement, Would you like a marker? When they left, the little girl turned around to my son and waved and waved.

          For a Jewish family, going to a government office in New York City used to be a whole different story. People were hostile and sometimes openly anti-Semitic, Not just the employees but the people waiting to be helped. It’s a totally different atmosphere today. There is such respect. Then when you give the 7 Laws it brings out that spark.

Former Prime Minister of Spain: If Israel Goes Down, We All Go Down."

B"H
How different a world it is when international leaders rally to the side of Israel. They seem to know G-d's words to Abraham, "I will bless them that bless you, and curse those who curse you." (Genesis: 12:3)

The following article by the former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznarwas published in the British newspaper 'The Times' on 17 June 2010:

If Israel goes down, we all go down

Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region

By José María Aznar

For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion. In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

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Star Hollywood Producer Tells Larry King His Personal Miracles with the Rebbe

B"H
Famed producer of Karate Kid, Nashville and other top films, Jerry Weintraub "talks to the Rebbe every day," recounts his deep feeling for the Rebbe and Chabad. Former chairman of United Artists, Mr. Weintraub also produced concerts for Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and was the personal manager of singer/songwriter John Denver.

Rapper Convert to Judaism Has New Album: "Messiah."

Shyne (now Moses Levi) Devoted to New Life As An Orthodox Jew.

Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in Israel

Ricki Rosen for The New York Times

The rapper Shyne at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. “My entire life screams that I have a Jewish neshama,” he said, using the Hebrew word for soul.

By DINA KRAFT

Published: November 10, 2010

JERUSALEM — The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes peeking out takes long, swift strides toward the Western Wall. It’s late in the day, and he does not want to miss afternoon prayers at Judaism’s holiest site.

Audio

Times Popcast: Ben Sisario and Dina Kraft on Shyne

Related

From Behind Bars, a Rapper Aims at the Top of the Chart (August 08, 2004)

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Ricki Rosen for The New York Times

Shyne, whose legal name is now Moses Levi, in the neighborhood of Mea Shearim, in Jerusalem.

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New York State Department of Correctional Services

Shyne, when he was Jamaal Barrow. (The prison department misspelled his name.)

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Ricki Rosen for The New York Times

Shyne in a Jerusalem recording studio.

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Ricki Rosen for The New York Times

Shyne at a protest for a kidnapped Israeli soldier.

“We have to get there before the sun goes down,” he says, his stare fixed behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, the first clue that this is no ordinary Jerusalem man of God. It’s the rapper Shyne, the Sean Combs protégé who served almost nine years in New York prisons for opening fire in a nightclub in 1999 during an evening out with Mr. Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez.
“My entire life screams that I have a Jewish neshama,” he said, using the Hebrew word for soul.
Living as Moses Levi, an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem (he legally changed his name from Jamaal Barrow), he shuttles between sessions of Talmud study with some of the most religiously stringent rabbis in the city and preparations for a musical comeback.
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Unexpected Love: Nurturing and Caring of Species Not Their Own...A foretaste of Redemption? Submitted by YH.

"And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together..."Isaiah 12.6
Please click on video below. (Artwork is for illustration only.)

A non-Jew creates Temple Now blog; Longs for Holy Temple to be Re-Built

"In those days...10 men (of the nations) shall take hold of the skirt of...a Jew, saying, "We will go with you for we heard that G-d is with you." - Zehariah 8.23

What's That Fragrance You're Wearing?

By Cami Davis, http://www.templenow.blogspot.com/

Temple consciousness met me in my kitchen yesterday. I was earning my “Best Mom in the World" badge as I made my kids’ favorite after school snack, cinnamon rolls.

Any time I use vanilla in a recipe, I have to take an extra sniff. “Umm,” I thought as I inhaled, “That is the best smell in the world.” That’s when Temple consciousness decided to jump in the conversation. “No, it’s not. It’s not even close. The best smell in the world is the incense offering at the Temple.”

I’m squeezing these thoughts in during the last days of Cheshvan. The sense connected to Cheshvan is the sense of smell. As most of you know, the sense of smell is the most spiritual of all senses. The Hebrew word for "smell" (רֵיחַ) is related to the word for "spirit" (רוּחַ). Out of the five senses, the sense of smell is the only sense that didn't participate, and thereby was not blemished in the primordial sin in the Garden of Eden. You probably know too, that the sense of smell is related to Moshiach. "And he shall smell with the awe of God" - "he shall judge by smell" (rather than by sight or hearing, Isaiah 11:3; Sanhedrin 93b).

Click here to read more. Scroll down to Nov. 4, "What's that fragrance...."

"In that Era,...good things will flow in abundance..." (Rambam) Couple Wins Millions, Gives It Away.

Thu Nov 4, 1:27 pm ET

Nicest Canadian couple in world dole out lottery winnings

By Liz Goodwin  – Thu Nov 4, 1:27 pm ET

A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away.
"What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter.
She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.
"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."
The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports:
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The knowledge of G-d will fill the earth as waters cover the seas: Cabbie Lectures Religious Jew About Who the Rebbe Is.

Personal Encounter from Shmuel Graybar:

FROM ARAM-NAHARAIM WITH LOVE

I took a cab home from an appointment, and found the driver to be a friendly, talkative Russian-speaking man. I asked him, “Kak tibya zavut?”, or “What’s your name?” Let’s just call him Ivan. Seeing I spoke a little Russian, he asked me where I was from. I told him I was born in America, and had lived all over. I added that my grandparents had been socialists, but now I am a Lubavitcher Chassid.

Well that excited him. He said he was a Russian Orthodox Christian, whose people were descended from the ancient Arameans of the Bible (my language is sister language to your Hebrew!) He compared expressions in both languages, and it was fun to see the similarities. He shared his knowledge of the ancient world, and spoke of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, of Syria and Babylon, of his proud people, now living in Chicago and Detroit and New York, yet tracing their ancestry back 4000 years as if it were yesterday.

Then came the kicker: Ivan had heard a lot of, and seen photos of the Rebbe of Lubavitch, and had said to himself, “This may just be the Messiah!” I smiled and said yes the Rebbe is a great man. He became agitated! “No! Not just great man! The Rebbe is prorok!” I asked him what that meant and he said “Like Daniel in Bible! Like Abraham and Isaac and Yakob!” I said “You mean a prophet?” and he said yes, yes, a prophet!

Before he dropped me off at my home, we exchanged numbers on our cell phones (still a miracle to me…right out of Star Trek and Dick Tracy comics). He told me he was going back to Russia for two months, but agreed he would call me on his return, and we would go to a shiur in the Seven Mitzvahs Bnei Noach. I look forward to learning with him, but that taxi driver had just taught me two important lessons:

First, that the world is certainly ready for Moshiach and second, that as Chassidim of the Rebbe we need not understate what we believe to be true. On the contrary, as the Rebbe repeatedly said, people not only respect you more the more firmly you state your case, but in fact people are starving for true leadership, and someone to look up to!

The most important thing I learned, however, was this: All the old jealousies and competition between nations, between brothers, between Lavan and Esov and our father Yakov, that brought our people so much pain, are melting away. People just have no time or energy for them anymore. People are saying “What are we fighting for?” If a Chassidic Jew and an Orthodox Christian can sit and reminisce about life 40 centuries ago and still agree on so much today, in such a loving manner, then certainly the words of all the prophets, including our Rebbe, are coming true before our very eyes.

"I will make the peoples pure of speech so that they will all call upon the Name of G-d and serve him with one purpose." - Zephaniah 3.9...Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper's speech about Israel

Harper vows to stand up for Israel

Mon Nov 8, 11:05 PM

By Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Stephen Harper says he'll take a forceful stand against anti-Israel rhetoric no matter the political cost to his government at international organizations such as the United Nations and the Francophonie.

The prime minister delivered the opening speech Monday at a two-day conference on anti-Semitism, taking place on Parliament Hill.

He noted Canada's unsuccessful bid for a UN security council seat this fall, saying he believes the country is morally obligated to stand up against those who would attack Israel.

"And I know, by the way, because I have the bruises to show for it, that whether it is at the United Nations or any other international forum, the easy thing to do is simply to just get along and go along with this anti-Israel rhetoric, to pretend it is just being even-handed, and to excuse oneself with the label of honest broker.

"There are, after all, a lot more votes — a lot more — in being anti-Israel than in taking a stand."

The reference to "honest broker" was a thinly veiled swipe at Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

To read more, click here:

Miracle from Arab Ex-Con Converting to Judaism

Arab Ex-Con Would-be Convert's Miraculous Story

by Hillel Fendel

Follow Israel news on and .

As more details on the story of an Palestinian Authority Arab ex-con on his way to converting to Judaism are revealed, the more astonishing it becomes.
Yaniv Ben-David, an Arab from the PA territories and Haifa whose official name until recently was Busmon Abu-Ras, found Judaism and G-d while serving a 12-year term in prison. The full miraculous story has come out in three interviews, including one with Arutz-7’s Hizky Ezra [which can be seen here, in Hebrew] and another on Radio Kol Chai with the head of the Civil Administration, Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, known as Poli.

Yaniv’s speech is liberally sprinkled with “May G-d’s Name be blessed” and the like, as if he had grown up all his life in a traditional Sephardic neighborhood. But in actuality, his story is very different. Without getting into details, he explains that he became involved in criminal activity of which today he is very ashamed, but that once in jail, no one in his family ever visited him. “My crime was not related to terrorism, Heaven forbid, chas veshalom,” he says, “but I don’t want to discuss it.”
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"And G-d will take every Jew by the hand..." in the final Redemption. Polish skinhead discovers he is Jewish. "Even if your dispersed ones are in the furthest reaches of the heavens, [from there G-d will gather you in].

Changing Face in Poland: Skinhead Puts on Skullcap

Adam Lach for The New York Times

Pawel in the Warsaw synagogue. A former truck driver and neo-Nazi skinhead, Pawel, 33, has since become an Orthodox Jew, covering his shaved head with a yarmulke and shedding his fascist ideology for the Torah.

By DAN BILEFSKY

Published: February 27, 2010

WARSAW — When Pawel looks into the mirror, he can still sometimes see a neo-Nazi skinhead staring back, the man he was before he covered his shaved head with a skullcap, traded his fascist ideology for the Torah and renounced violence and hatred in favor of God.
“I still struggle every day to discard my past ideas,” said Pawel, a 33-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew and former truck driver, noting with little irony that he had to stop hating Jews in order to become one. “When I look at an old picture of myself as a skinhead, I feel ashamed. Every day I try and do teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for repentance. “Every minute of every day. There is a lot to make up for."
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Name of Virus Jamming Iran Nuclear Reactor Hints at Queen Esther

Tech Tzaddiks???

Coding of Virus Attacking Iran May Refer to Queen Esther

Tishrei 25, 5771, 03 October 10 09:26

by by Maayana Miskin,

(Israelnationalnews.com) Iranian Intelligence Minister Heider Moslehi said Sunday that his country is under cyber attack, and blamed the United States and Israel. Iranian officials initially admitted that their country had been hit by the Stuxnet computer worm, but insisted that the damage was minimal.

Iran has been forced to push back the opening of the nuclear plant in Bushehr. Senior Information and Technology official Hamid Alipour admitted that while Iranian officials had hoped to clean up the worm's infiltration in under two months, that hope had been proven unrealistic. “The worm is not stable, and since we started the cleanup process, three new versions have been spreading,” he said.
Stuxnet hit Iran much harder than any other nation, affecting an estimated 62,000 systems. A total of 100,000 computers are thought to have been hit with the worm worldwide. The worm was designed to target software created by the German company Siemens; Iran relies heavily on Siemens systems.
Israel has been among the top suspects in the creation of the Stuxnet worm, due both to Israeli opposition to Iran's unsupervised nuclear program, and to the complexity of the attacker, which experts say could only have been created by a team with significant funding, resources and expertise.
Stuxnet is uniquely dangerous in that it can not only cause damage to a system, but can take control of facilities, producing physical, real-world results to an attack. The worm also studies its targets, determining which type of system it has entered before deciding whether or not to attack. To date, it has entered primarily systems that control critical infrastructure.
Even the worm's discovery has not stopped its destructive power. Attackers remain able to communicate with infected machines using peer-to-peer networking.
A detailed analysis released by security firm Symantec revealed two clues that, according to Wired.com, may indicate Israeli involvement in the attack – or may indicate that another country is trying to implicate Israel in the attack. Two file directory names, “myrtus” and “guava,” could be an allusion to the biblical Queen Esther, who intervened to save the Jewish people from destruction at the hands of a Persian king. Persia is now known as Iran.
Esther was also known as Hadassah, a name which means “myrtle” in Hebrew. Guavas are in the myrtle family of fruit.
A second possible hint at Israeli involvement is the halt marker 19790509, a possible reference to the date May 9, 1979, when Iran executed Persian Jew Habib Elghanian, prompting the mass exodus of Iranian Jews from the newly Islamic state.

The Symantec analysis was released in an attempt to get information on what, exactly, Stuxnet is targeting.

Queen Esther seems to be a ubiquitous symbol, imagined or otherwise. Two years ago, an Egyptian cleric called for a boycott of Starbucks' Coffee after he claimed to have identified the image of Queen Esther in its logo.

 

Castro Repents, Part II: "Communism doesn't work for us anymore."

Fidel: 'Cuban Model Doesn't Even Work For Us Anymore'

Regrets Role in Cuban Missle Crisis; Publicly Kisses Head of Jewish Community

  Interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic

Sep 8 2010, 12:00 PM ET

There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I'll get to shortly), but one of the most unusual was Fidel Castro's level of self-reflection. I only have limited experience with Communist autocrats (I have more experience with non-Communist autocrats) but it seemed truly striking that Castro was willing to admit that he misplayed his hand at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis (you can read about what he said toward the end of my previous post - but he said, in so many words, that he regrets asking Khruschev to nuke the U.S.).

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MORE ON Fidel Castro:Jeffrey Goldberg: Castro has misgivings about how he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis
Jeffrey Goldberg: Fidel Tries to Wriggle Out of One

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Even more striking was something he said at lunch on the day of our first meeting. We were seated around a smallish table; Castro, his wife, Dalia, his son; Antonio; Randy Alonso, a major figure in the government-run media; and Julia Sweig, the friend I brought with me to make sure, among other things, that I didn't say anything too stupid (Julia is a leading Latin American scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations). I initially was mainly interested in watching Fidel eat - it was a combination of digestive problems that conspired to nearly kill him, and so I thought I would do a bit of gastrointestinal Kremlinology and keep a careful eye on what he took in (for the record, he ingested small amounts of fish and salad, and quite a bit of bread dipped in olive oil, as well as a glass of red wine). But during the generally lighthearted conversation (we had just spent three hours talking about Iran and the Middle East), I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, "He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country."
Click here to read more:

In the Redemption, G-d will take each Jew by the hand....submitted by YH

B"H

Rashi's commentary on Deut. 30:3: "Great is the day of the In-gathering of the Exiles and it will come about with difficulty as though God Himself will be obliged to grasp each one actually in his hand, each one from his place".

The Discovery of Being Jewish: Ola tells CNN's "Untold Stories" about her experience when she found out her Neo-Nazi husband was also Jewish.

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/international/2010/09/30/wus.secret.jew.bk.c.cnn

Random Acts of Kindness in Ottawa (Thanks to "Anonymous"!) (Also sent by Chaya Seidman.)

Acts of drive-by kindness

 Traveller finds acts of goodwill addictive

By Sneh Duggal, The Ottawa Citizen October 30, 2010 Be the first to post a comment

 

Stefano Andriani, 20, is driving across Canada committing 'random acts of kindness.' One of his favourites is offering an umbrella to a couple seeking shelter from the rain.

Photograph by: Jean Levac, The Ottawa Citizen

When Stefano Andriani sees a couple in the rain, he hands them an umbrella. If he sees hungry people on the street, he asks them to join him for lunch.
The 20-year-old from Dartmouth, N.S., doesn't ask for much in return. He just hopes that the people he helps will go on to be kind to others.
"I'm out there to show people how much fun kindness can be," said Andriani, who is currently in Ottawa, one of the stops on his journey across Canada to do random acts of kindness for strangers. He calls it Travel Kindness.
"Once you try it the first time, you'll quickly get addicted," he said.
It all started during the spring after Andriani graduated from the Nova Scotia Community College where he studied film production and decided he wanted to travel across the country.
"I thought, why don't I make it worthwhile? There are good deeds to do everyday, I saw it as a neat challenge."
He said he had noticed a decline in kindness in society and a lack of social awareness of others.
"We help out and take care of the people around us, but not necessarily those we don't know."
While in the city, Andriani has helped an elderly man paint his house, taken pictures for tourists at Parliament Hill, tried to smile at each person he passes and treated the homeless to lunch among other things.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Acts+drive+kindness/3750449/story.html#ixzz145qHWaPv