Would We Do the Same Good If No One Knew It Was Us?
Would We Do the Same Good If No One Knew It Was Us?
Would We Do the Same Good If No One Knew It Was Us?
Some acts of kindness are easier to perform when someone sees them. A donation for which we receive thanks, help that others hear about, a project with our name printed beneath it. There is not necessarily anything wrong with this. Recognition is a natural human need, and sometimes publicizing a good deed even encourages others to join. But there is another test, a much quieter one: what remains of my desire to do good when the person who benefited will never know that I gave, and no one else will know that I did anything at all?
During Sukkot something extraordinary takes place in the Temple. The Torah details the additional offerings of the festival, and each day the number of bulls decreases: thirteen on the first day, twelve on the second, and so on, until seven bulls are offered on the seventh day (Numbers 29:12-34). Altogether, seventy bulls are offered during the seven days of the festival. The Gemara asks what this number represents and answers: “These seventy bulls correspond to whom? To the seventy nations” (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 55b). Israel stands in the Temple and brings offerings not only for itself. The nations of the world are included within Israel's festival.
Rabbi Yochanan adds a startling statement there: “Woe to the nations who lost and do not know what they lost. When the Temple stood, the altar atoned for them. Now, who atones for them?” (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 55b). Without entering here into the full meaning of that atonement, the sages paint a remarkable picture: people benefit from something of which they themselves are unaware. There is no ceremony of recognition, no thank-you letter, and perhaps not even awareness that someone in Jerusalem is doing something that has meaning for them.
King Solomon expresses the same universal outlook in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple. After praying for Israel, he adds: “And also to the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel, but comes from a distant land for the sake of Your name... You shall hear in heaven, Your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to You for” (I Kings 8:41-43). The Temple is not meant to be a place in which a person asks only for those who belong to the immediate circle. There is room in prayer also for the stranger, the distant person, the one who is not part of my community and may never know me.
This becomes even more striking when we remember that Sukkot itself is described by the prophet as a festival with meaning for the nations. Zechariah describes a future in which “everyone who remains from all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to bow before the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to celebrate the Festival of Sukkot” (Zechariah 14:16). The very festival in which Israel sits inside its private sukkah opens, in Scripture, a wide window outward toward all humanity.
But here the human question begins. Why does it matter so much to us that people know we did something good? Because beyond the desire to help, we also have a natural need to be seen. A person invests effort and wants the effort recognized. An employee wants the manager to know who solved the problem. A child wants parents to notice what was done. A spouse does not want efforts to be taken for granted. The need for gratitude is not a defect. The problem begins when, without recognition, the motivation to do good disappears as well.
The sages recognized the special level of giving in which donor and recipient do not know one another. The Gemara speaks of “one who gives charity to a poor person and does not know to whom he gives, while the poor person does not know from whom he receives,” and describes the secret giving associated with the Chamber of Secrets (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 10b). Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides, enumerates eight levels of charity, and among the higher levels places the case in which “the giver does not know to whom he gave, and the poor person does not know from whom he took” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:8). Anonymity is not only protection for the dignity of the poor person. It also changes something inside the giver. It removes from the transaction the possibility of receiving status, thanks, or a personal obligation in return.
Pirkei Avot likewise teaches: “Do not be like servants who serve the master on condition of receiving a reward” (Pirkei Avot 1:3). The Mishnah speaks about serving God, but it also presents a deep psychological structure: am I capable of doing something because it is right even when I receive no immediate return? When every good act requires applause, even kindness can quietly become a transaction.
Psychology distinguishes between intrinsic motivation, which arises from the value or meaning we find in the activity itself, and extrinsic motivation, which depends on external rewards such as money, status, praise, or recognition. Research by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan within Self-Determination Theory showed that human motivation is more complex than the question of how much reward we will receive, and that activities experienced as internally valuable and meaningful can function differently from activities dependent primarily on external reward.
This does not mean that we should stop saying thank you. On the contrary, the Torah itself educates us toward gratitude. The question is directed at the giver, not the recipient: if no one thanked me, did the good thing I did lose its value in my eyes? A person helped at home and no one noticed. An employee invested heavily in a project and the boss praised the whole department without mentioning that employee. Someone gave excellent advice, and months later the other person tells the idea as though it arose independently. The pain is understandable. But that moment reveals what else was attached to our action besides the desire to help.
Research on prosocial behavior suggests that giving to others can also be associated with the giver's well-being, and some studies have found that even giving that brings no direct material return can produce a sense of meaning and satisfaction. Yet there is a difference between the internal satisfaction that comes from doing something we believe in and dependence on external approval. The first can remain even when the room is silent. The second needs an audience.
We can test this in the simplest places. Who straightens the chairs after an event when everyone else has already left? Who returns a shopping cart to its place when no one is watching? Who says something good about an employee precisely when the employee will never hear who said it? Who prays for the recovery of someone they do not know? And who can do a favor without later finding a subtle way to make sure the recipient knows where it came from?
The seventy bulls of Sukkot, however, take us one step further. They are not merely anonymous kindness to a poor person who does not know the donor. According to the sages, they correspond to entire nations that are not present to express gratitude. This is goodness that does not even wait for a relationship in return. It is done because the person believes there is value in blessing reaching those outside one's own circle as well.
In a world that measures almost everything through visibility, this is a challenging thought. We know how many people viewed, clicked, shared, and responded. Even kindness can receive metrics. There is nothing wrong with publicizing a good deed when publicity serves a useful purpose, but Sukkot reminds us that another economy of goodness also exists: very important things can happen without anyone knowing who did them.
Perhaps this is why it is worth asking one simple question during this festival: what good thing am I willing to do this year without my name appearing on it? Not because receiving thanks is forbidden, but in order to test whether our goodness can stand without it. We can help someone through a third party, pay for someone who will never know, speak well of a person who is not in the room, solve a problem without claiming ownership of the solution, or pray sincerely for someone who will never hear that we did so.
The seventy bulls of Sukkot remind us that an act does not become less valuable because no one applauds it. Perhaps even the opposite. There is goodness we do in front of the world, and there is goodness we do because this is how the world ought to be. The difference between them appears at the moment when no one is looking.