B'nai Emet -> Messages -> Conservative Jewish Commitment -> 2006

Things Without Measure - Of Visiting the Sick

Here in America, we associate kindness primarily with money, with checks, with the handing over of a gift; while Jewish law praises other manifestations of hesed. Among the "things without measure" is included visiting the sick. It is without measure, says the Talmud, because it is obligatory in all classes. The poor and the rich – the poor in spirit and the rich in spirit – all are much in need of it and entitled to our brotherly sympathy. If a hundred visits are necessary, they are required by the Torah. "He who visits the sick reduces the sickness by one sixtieth." When one of Rabbi Akiba's disciples was stricken with illness, the great Rabbi visited him and didn't consider himself too important to sweep his room and to clean his floor.

Very often, life hangs in the balance and the psychic vitamins derived from a friendly spirit may save the patient. There are countless people in the hospitals, in the infirmaries, in the homes for incurables, yearning for a friendly word, for the visit of a person who would show them friendship or even only human interest. They are counting the days from one visit to another.

There are also men and women in the great city with free time, with emotional energies deprived of outlet and responsible for their restlessness and their lack of balance. They might become a blessing to the afflicted and to themselves if they but adopted the Jewish virtue of visiting the sick. Those plagued by malades imaginaires might regain cheer and happiness from the consciousness of having helped a soul in real distress. Indeed, from the hospital they might bring back to their homes a spirit of gratitude – and contentment.

Reprinted from the 1937/5697 collection of bulletin articles by Rabbi Leo Jung of the Jewish Center, 131 West 86th Street, New York, NY

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