Ulla and Rav Chasda were walking together when they came to the gate of the old house of Rav Chana bar Chenelai. Rav Chasda looked up at the crumbling walls, stopped, and let out a long sigh.
Why are you sighing, asked Ulla, surprised. Rav teaches that sighing breaks the body in half, as it is written (Ezekiel 21:6), Sigh, therefore, son of man, with the breaking of thy loins. Rabbi Yochanan teaches that a sigh breaks up the whole constitution, as it is written (Ezekiel 21:12), And it shall be when they say unto thee, Wherefore sighest thou? that thou shalt answer, For the tidings because it cometh, and the whole heart shall melt. Why harm yourself?
Rav Chasda looked at the ruins and began to speak.
How can I not sigh at this house, he said. Once sixty bakers worked here by day and sixty by night, every single loaf going to the poor and the hungry. Rav Chana kept his hand on his purse at all times, so that no poor man of good family would have to wait and feel embarrassed. He knew that even a moment of hesitation can make a person blush and turn away hungry.
And that was not all, he continued. He built four doors into this house, one facing each direction of the heavens, so that a beggar could enter from whichever side he approached and never feel watched. And in years of famine he scattered wheat and barley across the streets outside, so that those who were ashamed to gather by daylight could come at night and fill their sacks in the dark.
That house is now in ruins, said Rav Chasda. The doors are gone. The bakers are gone. The grain in the street is gone. And you ask me why I sigh.
This story from tractate Berakhot 58b, preserved in Hebraic Literature (1901), is a monument to the rare art of giving without making the recipient feel seen. Some houses should be sighed for.