by A somewhat obscure text, some 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide over the last few years, and my north star these past few months, as many of us have felt as if we had drowned in a ocean of sadness and helplessness.
Buried deep in the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the 3rd century, is an ancient practice that reflects a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: when your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and with a tendency to withdraw, you show up. You trust your pain to the community.
The text, Midot 2:2, describes a pilgrimage ritual from the Second Temple era. Several times a year, hundreds of thousands of Jews ascended to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning en masse to the right, circling counterclockwise.
Meanwhile, the bereaved, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn left and circle in the opposite direction: each step against the current.
And every person who found someone suffering I would look that person in the eyes and ask, “What happened to you? Why does your heart hurt?
“My father died,” a person might say. “There are so many things I was never able to tell him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. “I was completely surprised.” Or: “My son is sick. “We are waiting for the test results.”
Those who walked on the right offered a blessing: “May the Saint comfort you,” they said. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue walking until the next person approached.
This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year you walk the path of the distressed. Maybe next year it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.
I read many profound lessons in this text, two particularly pertinent in our time, when many of us feel like we are going broke. First, don’t take your broken heart and go home. Do not isolate yourself. Take a step towards those you know will embrace you tenderly.
And on your good days, the days you can breathe, show up too. Because the very fact of seeing those who walk against the current, people who can barely stand, and asking with an open heart: “Tell me your pain,” can be the deepest affirmation of our humanity, even in terribly inhumane situations. times.
It is an expression of both love and sacred responsibility to turn to another person in their moment of deepest distress and say, “Your pain can frighten me, it can disturb me. But I won’t abandon you. I will face your pain with relentless love.”
We can’t magically fix other people’s broken hearts. But we can meet each other in our most vulnerable moments and wrap ourselves in a circle of care. We can humbly promise each other, “I can’t ease your pain, but I can promise you that you won’t have to bear it alone.”
Showing up for each other does not require heroic gestures. It means training ourselves to reach out, even when our instinct tells us to back away. It means picking up the phone and calling our friend or colleague who is suffering. It means going to the funeral and the house of mourning. It also means going to the wedding and birthday dinner. Extend your strength, step forward in your vulnerability. Err on the side of presence.
Small, tender gestures remind us that we are not helpless, even in the face of serious human suffering. We maintain the ability, even in the dark of night, to find our way to others. We need this, especially now.
Here is the second lesson from that ancient text. We humans naturally gravitate toward the known. Our tribes can lift us up, order our lives, give them meaning and purpose, direction and pride. But tribal instinct can also be dangerous. The more we identify with our tribe, the more likely we are to despise or even feel hostility toward those outside it.
One of the great victims of tribalism is curiosity. And when we are no longer curious, when we are no longer trying to imagine or understand what another person thinks or feels or where their pain comes from, our hearts begin to narrow. We become less compassionate and more rooted in our own worldview.
Trauma exacerbates this tendency. It reinforces the instinct to distance ourselves from each other, rather than making ourselves even more vulnerable.
There is another important lesson from that ancient text. On pilgrimage, those who enter the sacred circle and turn left when almost everyone else turns right are afflicted or sick. But the text offers that there is another who turns to the left: the one condemned to ostracism (in Hebrew, the menudeh).
Ostracism was a punishment used sparingly in ancient times. It only applied to people who were believed to have caused serious damage to the social fabric of the community. Those excluded were essentially temporarily excommunicated. They had to distance themselves from colleagues and loved ones, were not counted in a prayer quorum, and were prohibited from participating in most social interactions. And incredibly, they also entered the sacred space, where they were also asked: “Tell me, what happened to you? What is your story?” And they were blessed too.
This is impressive. The ancient rabbis ask us to imagine a society in which no person is disposable. Even those who have wronged us, even those with views opposite to ours, must be seen in their humanity and treated with curiosity and care.
We desperately need spiritual rewiring in our time. Let’s imagine a society in which we learn to see each other in our pain, to ask ourselves: “What happened to you?” Let’s imagine that we listen to each other’s stories, say amen to each other’s pain, and even pray for each other’s healing. I call this the amen effect: sincere, tender encounters that help us forge new spiritual and neural paths by reminding us that our lives and destinies are intertwined. Because, ultimately, only by finding the way to each other can we begin to heal.
Sharon Brous is the founding and chief rabbi of Ikara Jewish community based in Los Angeles and author of “The Amen Effect,” from which this essay was adapted.
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