I NEVER heard of Faigy Mosezon, and she never heard of me. Likewise, Rabbi Yehudah Kaszirer. As for the Lichtenstein family, I dont even know their first names.
Yet, these people put up my wife and me and 32 other Jews in beautiful Manhattan apartments last Friday and Shabbos (and some of us, into the week). The bill: $00.00.
Oh, did I mention? Someone else supplied the six-course meals portions larger than we could possibly eat for the entirety of our stay in the apartments. The bill: $00.00.
What gives?
This was not a joy ride to the Big Apple. Just the opposite. This was the mitzvah, the good deed, of visiting the sick (bikkur cholim).
The Manhattan Friendship House, where we stayed, is two blocks from the Weill Cornell hospital and a short distance from other New York City hospitals. Every one of the 34 Jews in these beautiful apartments was there to visit, care for, cheer up or make critical decisions for a beloved, hospitalized relative.
The Lichtenstein family grabbed the mitzvah of bikkur cholim, investing who knows how much in prime Manhattan real estate to bring the mitzvah to fruition. Satmar Bikkur Cholim and other, similar organizations cook hundreds (thousands?) of meals weekly for the sick and their caregiver relatives and deliver the meals straight to the hospital room of the patient.
If youre facing a relative with advanced leukemia, or with a rare, crippling genetic disease, or with brain cancer, you really dont have the time, the wits or, probably, the money to find your own accommodations and meals near the hospital. So, the bikkur cholim organizations do it for you for total strangers. They know that the choice of hospital should not be compromised by the inability of the family to be near the patient.
INSTANTANEOUSLY, UPON meeting other, temporary residents of the Manhattan Friendship House, you know its likely that a terrible story lies behind that hello, whats your name? In fact, the least serious medical condition we encountered last Shabbos was the first of a double hip replacement in an elderly woman.
There is something else behind that hello: an instant camaraderie, the unity of the burdened. It unfolds in unexpected and even positive ways.
Some of the ill require such intensive attention by their relatives that, even on Shabbos, there is neither time to pray in shul nor to eat a Shabbos meal at leisure. Others, however, find themselves exploring a new synagogue (I had the privilege of hearing the legendary Rabbi J. David Bleich speak on non-Jews who observe Jewish rituals), or find themselves eating a Shabbos meal in the Manhattan Friendship House with people one would otheerwise likely never meet.
My good fortune last Friday night was to share a Shabbos meal with two New Jerseyites, P. G. Waxman and Rick Kline. Waxman was overflowing with ideas on the Gate of Tears, prompted by the tears of two matriarchs, Leah and Rachel, as set down in last weeks Torah portion. Kline was overflowing with stories about his community.
They knew each other; I was a stranger to both. All three of us enjoyed focusing on Shabbos and Torah rather than on illness and pain.
AS IT turns out, P. G. Waxman writes a weekly Torah column for Yated Neeman, and he shared these thoughts:
The Talmud states that after the destruction of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem, all the gates of prayer are closed with the exception of the Gate of Tears.
It would seem that the Hebrew word for crying (bechi) comes from the root meaning in you. Crying emanates from the inner soul and reflects the true essence of the person. This sincerity, communicated in genuine prayer and tears, is always accepted by G-d as its pathway never closes.
Moreover, the word for crying, bechi, has the numerical count (gematria) of 32, which spells the Hebrew word lev, heart, and reflects the crying that emanates from the depths of the heart.
One might think that strangers who come together around illness exchanging thoughts on tears would be typecasts further depressed in the circumstances. Just the opposite. P. G. Waxmans beautiful comment on the Talmuds take on tears and the way he used it to understand Leah and her successful, tearful plea not to be linked to the wicked Esau tapped into the holiness of Shabbos, and uplifted us all.
Late Saturday night, there was a knock on the door of this same dining apartment and who should enter but a man who was my rabbi 51 years ago in Berkeley, Calif., Saul Berman. His grandson has an illness so rare that he is believed to be the only person in the world with it quite possibly because the tremendous care he has received has enabled him to survive.
And so it goes. People trade names. Please, pray for my relative. Please, let me pray for yours.
Think about it: Instead of please, find me a place to stay or please, find me Shabbos meals or please, find the funds to cover all this instead of all that, which the Manhattan Friendship House and other bikkur cholim organizations provide merely for the asking we have the luxury to concentrate on the Gate of Tears.
Whose pathway never closes.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
