Unconditional Gifts
When I train Jewish hospice volunteers, I ask them to reflect on a moment when they were in need and someone was present for them. I don’t specify anything else about the interaction, yet volunteers always recall something similar. One man shared his story of a bicycle accident, and of the stranger who sat silently with him on the curb until the ambulance came. A woman spoke of her grandmother knitting in the corner of the hospital’s delivery room throughout her three-day-long labor. When I ask for their reflections, nobody tells stories about getting advice (no matter how helpful), or about someone taking heroic, life-saving actions (no matter how important). Rather, the stories are mostly about silent companionship.
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Upon Entering
In the romantic languages, the title for a person who accompanies a woman as she gives birth emphasizes the role of the laboring woman. For example, the word “midwife,” from the German, means “with woman.” Hebrew focuses its attention on the infant coming into the world: “Miyaledet” means “who delivers the yilod,” the infant baby. I suppose as an English-speaking Israeli, I identify with both titles. Both mother and baby need a kind, professional guide to help them to navigate the journey of birth with attention to both physical and emotional health.
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Hospitality for the Soul
The book of Psalms is known in Jewish tradition as a companion book. The psalms, in all their familiarity from use in the prayer services and Shabbat songs, are like a good friend to whom we can turn in times of uncertainty or distress. We can return to them and find new images. We can see our suffering and yearnings and daily challenges in their words, and we can enter not exactly into a conversation, but into an ongoing discourse, a community built on human words and the experiences, over generations, of people seeking God. Somehow, the comfort we derive from the psalms seems to come from naming, and then resolving, our grief and pain. Psalm 6 offers an example: The psalmist pleads with God for mercy and healing, describing his groaning and the drenching tears that have lasted through the night because of his grief and the torments inflicted by his enemies. God hears the weeping and receives the prayer, and then sends away the enemies, who are ashamed.
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Navigating a Long Life
The awareness comes gradually. It accelerates, or perhaps becomes more present, as parents and then close friends die. There is no timetable for this awareness; it just emerges through the mist of everyday life. All of a sudden, we are aware that the circles of relationships that surrounded us through much of our life have begun to grow smaller.
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NiSh’ma: Levaya
Our three commentators introduce us to Honi the Circle-Maker, Honi HaMe’agel, who returns after a 70-year slumber, unrecognized in the beit midrash. We learn of his lonely death, and draw lessons about the mitzvah of accompaniment
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Consider and Converse: A Guide to Levaya - Accompaniment
Use this guide to facilitate conversations that examine the mitzvot associated with accompanying those in need.
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