Adapted from: Moments of Greatness by Rabbi Yitzchok Hisiger

A yungerman, R’ Yitzchok Zev, visited Kiryas Yoel, the Satmar enclave in the town of Palm Tree in Orange County, New York, and shared the following with me. He was on his way out of Kiryas Yoel and wished to get a ride to the entrance of the community, from where he’d be traveling to Brooklyn.

As he stood at the curb, a car pulled up to give him a ride. R’ Yitzchok Zev immediately noticed that the car, a taxi cab, was being driven by a frum taxi driver. It was a bit awkward for a moment, as R’ Yitzchok Zev had been looking for a hitch — a free lift — and didn’t want to have to pay a taxi fare for the brief ride. He gently informed the chassidishe taxi driver that he was waiting for a hitch, not a taxi.

“No problem!” said the driver. “Come into the car.”

R’ Yitzchok Zev looked at him strangely.

“Come in,” the driver repeated. “I’m not charging you.”

As he sat down and closed the car door, R’ Yitzchok Zev asked, “But… don’t you drive a taxi for a living? What do you mean that you’re not charging me?”

The driver smiled as he pulled away from the curb. Turning to his passenger, he explained, “During the day, I drive this car as a taxi, so I have to charge money. But I don’t have an opportunity during that time to do chessed. Each day, though, I have a one-hour lunch break. During that break, I can do the mitzvah of chessed by providing rides free of charge.”

There’s something so pure and temimusdik about the response of this taxi driver.

You see, most people enjoy performing chassadim, but when it comes to what they do for a living, it’s much more difficult. After all, whatever their profession is, that’s the realm in which they earn their parnassah. Are they to perform that very service for free as a chessed?

Furthermore, say this taxi driver takes his lunch break from twelve to one each day. With his approach, at 11:55, he’s charging his regular fare, but when the clock strikes 12, he’s in chessed mode. Don’t you think there’s a yetzer hara at 12:01 to simply charge the passenger who just entered his car?

For this special driver, the answer is no. Because he’s obviously so trained in chessed, and it’s so much part of his DNA, that there’s no difficulty at all for him to transition from driving for parnassah to driving for chessed.