Danny Siegel is a mitzvah maniac. I’ve never met anyone else in my life who is so single-minded about tzedakah, so driven to do deeds of lovingkindness, so successful at inspiring others that bar mitzvah kids sponsor used carseat drives for needy mothers and collect sports equipment for the local shelter before he even finishes a speech. (See www.dannysiegel.com.)

I had the privilege during my first week in Jerusalem to spend four days with him, going from tzedakah project to tzedakah project, meeting the people he calls “mitzvah heroes,” gleaning onions in a field dedicated to the poor; getting blessings from a rebbetzin who furnishes hundreds of poor brides with wedding gowns, and walking therapeutic dogs that are used in therapy with dysfunctional families (they’re helpful in getting people to open up and share or reveal things).

We gave out muffins at 7 a.m. in the Central Bus Station to soldiers returning to their bases. We studied rabbinic texts on tzedakah and discussed the differences between charity and compassion. We learned how balloon animals can make a traumatized child smile.

I thought a lot during those four days about the upcoming High Holidays. I thought about how when we approach taking stock of our lives, we often use this time to count our blessings and to make “New Years resolutions” to change the world. I thought a lot about my own role as a community leader. Do I do as much as I get others to do? Do I give as much as I get others to give? Could I ever be a “mitzvah maniac” with a daily routine of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and breaking the chains of the bound?

Indeed the very focus of the haftarah of Yom Kippur is Isaiah’s plea to the people of Israel to stop relying on sacrifices and ritual and to start practising deeds of goodness and tzedakah as the “gateway” to the Divine.

As a rabbi, I often hear people say, “I am a good person, which makes me a good Jew.” That statement, I thought, was made in order to avoid having to practise ritual and to get “mitzvah credit” for things such as being kind to animals and walking old ladies across the street. I used to think that was “Boy Scout Judaism,” equating doing good deeds with doing Jewish deeds. I admit that I looked down on that kind of thinking.

But after four days with a mitzvah maniac, I feel differently. Being a good Jew should automatically mean being a good person. I wish we had more Boy Scout do-gooder Jews.

As we approach the High Holidays, it’s easy to become narcissistic with all the self-reflection we are supposed to practise and all the looking inward we are supposed to do. What I discovered from these mitzvah heroes is that actually tzedakah is not about “selflessness” but the opposite. It’s about extending the notion of self to radically include others. If “self” means my family, too, then it also means my community, my neighborhood, my synagogue, my school, my world and my planet.

People with a wider definition of “me” and “mine” are committed to neighbours and community. The mitzvah heroes I met had a very broad notion of self, including as many people as possible. Their neighbour’s problems are theirs. Their city’s problems are theirs. Their planet’s problems are theirs. Their “me” is “we.”

Every Yom Kippur, I feel so inadequate during the Avinu Malkeinu prayer when I sing “ki ain banu maasim” – “though we have no actions, be kind to us.” I know it’s true. So few of us have changed the world, even a little. So many of us want to, but we get lost during the year, busy with our mortgages and work and the million little things that take up our time. But if we could just try, this year, to be mitzvah maniacs, we’d be on our way to being really good Jews.

You can read Rabbi Goldstein’s blog from Jerusalem at http://jerusalemofgoldstein.blogspot.com