Kindle Edition Amazon Category:  Inspirational ISBN-13: 9781301068036 Secrets of Kindness: A Journey Among Good People is the story of my journey in the altruistic world. The Dalai Lama said, “This is the time to start educating the heart.” I hope this book will contribute, even a little, to educating all our hearts.  “When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.” (William Arthur Ward) Who are the good people? What are their acts of giving? What is their inner world? What do they think about money and power? What kinds of people do they respect? What are their dreams? Secrets of Kindness deals with these and other questions. This book is the story of a journey through the world of altruism. It is a fascinating mosaic of interviews with good people – religious and secular; young and old; people who have come from great deprivation, leading them to change and growth; and others who absorbed the compassion in their parents’ home which became part of their heritage. All of them are people of kindness. These inspiring people are great teachers. It is worthwhile noting their insights, their perceptions of life, and the way they relate to those around them. This collection of stories forms an impressive and inspiring document showing the human spirit at its best. Excerpt Four years ago, I left a good, stable job as a senior economist at the Bank of Israel. I left after 20 years of employment for what I thought would be my new calling in life: art. By chance, I had started to dabble in art six years ago, together with my good friend Helen. I had no knowledge or education in the field, except for my lifelong interest in design. Life brought us together and I jumped in with my characteristic enthusiasm, dragging the sensitive and talented Helen after me. She had been creating her art for many years in her own private sphere without any aspirations of public recognition. My surprisingly rapid connection to art taught me just how unexpected life can be, and how swiftly and acutely some changes in life can occur. If someone had told me several years ago that I would leave my profession as an economist to go into art, I would have been hard-pressed to believe him. That experience enabled me to open myself up again to yet more acute changes that I would undergo later on. We showed our work at several exhibitions in Israel and other countries, and we greatly enjoyed working together. I left the Bank of Israel with the certainty that I was about to conquer the world and that life would once again be full of interest and creative joy. But despite the modicum of success that we enjoyed, the world was spiraling down into an economic recession, which really stymied our ability to promote our art and led me into a period of idleness. Slowly, with the decline in my art activities, a large vacuum began to form within me. I searched for ways to fulfill myself. That emptiness and the accompanying sense of dissatisfaction and boredom motivated me to look within myself and seek what Amalia – a wise spiritual advisor whom I had found in my search for meaning and interest in my life – called “my deepest desire.” And so I began to seek “my deepest desire.” I asked myself what exactly I wanted to do. The most important word in this context is “exactly.” I knew that I didn’t want to return to the world of economics. I knew that I wanted to help others, but I didn’t know precisely how or in what way. At one of my meetings with Amalia – and I don’t remember exactly how it came up – I was talking about the fact that hope is very important to human beings and should be reinforced. At the end of that meeting, Amalia asked me to think about how people could be connected to hope. In the days that followed, I thought mainly about that. How can people be connected to hope? While writing these lines, I opened my notebook and read what I had written at the time. I wrote that hope is the belief that people are basically good; that hope is an engine and that it leads to action; that the way to connect people to hope is to encourage them to recognize their abilities and to cultivate within them the understanding that failure also plays a role. But I still had no idea what I wanted to do. What, exactly, I wanted to do. And then, by chance, I happened upon Mitch Albom’s book, Have a Little Faith. By the middle of the book, I knew what I wanted to do. Mitch Albom has written several books, the most well-known of which is Tuesdays With Morrie. In that book he documents his weekly meetings with Morrie Schwartz, who was his professor at Brandeis University, who had contracted a terminal illness. In those meetings, which went on for seven months, Morrie taught his last course – The Meaning of Life. The relationship that grew between the two changed Albom’s life and mode of thinking. Have a Little Faith is Mitch Albom’s latest book. This book also describes meetings with spiritual teachers – Two of them – One, Albert Lewis, the rabbi of the community in which he lived as a child; and the other, Henry Covington, once a drug dealer and convicted criminal who later became the pastor of a black church in Detroit that also served as a shelter for the homeless. When I reached the middle of the book, which I read with bated breath, I knew how to connect people to hope. I also knew what I wanted to do: to disseminate stories about good people – about their acts of benevolence and, beyond that, about who they are: what makes them happy, what saddens them, what they envy, what they think about money and power, are they forgiving, what kinds of people they respect, what are their dreams, and much more. When I reached the end of the book, I smiled to myself upon reading his last five words. They were: “I’m in love with hope"

Uplifting
Incredibly uplifting book that tells of the extraordinary acts of ordinary people. The setting is in present-day Israel, and the main characters vary from an ultra orthodox woman to former drug dealers to doctors. The thread that binds these protagonists is the simple acts of kindness they bestow onto their fellow man. Greenberg doesn't stop at merely narrating their extraordinary stories, rather she digs deeper and gets to the cause of their civility while also analyzing important moral questions that arise in our day to day lives.

Heart Warming
This unusual book is a collection of uplifting stories about the generosity of the human spirit. The writing is emphatic and sensitive, but never sentimental. Unassuming, accurate and totally believable prose makes the stories stand out. The heroes are unremarkable, down-to-earth characters that seem immediately familiar, until their deeper layers are exposed. The contrast between the mundane and the extraordinary is riveting, sometimes even shocking. Kindness, kinship and unselfish devotion are the tools with which the heroes of the various stories change lives, transforming hellish conditions, lifting up the weak and helpless. I guess it's a book about love and its impact on the human condition. Some of this love transcends the pages and touches the readers heart. A most effective antidepressant!

Secrets of Kindness- A wonderfully written feel good book
The world needed a book like this especially now. For those readers that are sick and tired of the same old plots, try reading this book. I promise you will be energized. You will feel hopeful, you will feel joyous, you will feel that goodness surrounds you. The words are written from the Heart and the stories are so touching. If it was in paperback I would buy 30 books and give them to all my closest friends for the next Holiday Season. A different and great Read!