SICK? WHO’S SICK?

I guess this is a sort of national survey directed at synagogue members:

How many of your synagogues limit your rabbi’s pastoral ministry (particularly visiting the sick and/or officiating at funerals) only to affiliates of your own congregation?

That is the way things are in my arcane corner of the world, and I just do not get it. So, if that is some kind of national norm for synagogues, please let me know. Perhaps I will modify my view, and perhaps I will not.

Here in the South Carolina Upstate the policy has led to an incredible irony. Despite my departure from the rabbinate last August, I am the only rabbi along the I-85 corridor (from Georgia on the south to North Carolina on the north) who ministers to hospitalized and hospice-bound Jewish folks who are not affiliated with a local synagogue. I am not paid to do so, nor do I ask no accolades for myself. It is simply what my momma taught me to do.

A couple of congregations in the Upstate do not have rabbis. One synagogue has had a long-standing policy of not allowing its rabbi to serve non-affiliates. During my last months with the congregation, I too met with increasing criticism for extending services to non-members – and I hope you understand that I never solicited a fee and that unsolicited honoraria I received were given over to charitable purposes.

Please, let us get two things straight:

FIRST, I believe that all Jews should belong to synagogues. About 75 percent of us do not. I further believe that membership should confer privileges that are not available to non-members. What might some of those be? Perhaps reduced fees for religious school tuition, activities, classes, events and/or use of the facilities for special occasions, special synagogue honors, like maftir and distinguished aliyot, services of the rabbi for discretionary lifecycle events, like weddings and briss’n. You get the idea.

Be that as it may, family and personal crises, illness and death are not discretionary. They cut us to the quick. They traumatize us. They shred our emotions and often our dignity. They beg our empathy and compassion. Castigate folks for not belonging to a synagogue in calmer times, as you wish. Appeal to them to join the synagogue after the crisis has abated, as you wish. But, illness and death are rotten times to draw a line in the sand and penalize them for their non-affiliation.

OK, they were wrong not to join. You have made your point. However, now they are in pain, in crisis, in extremis, and how can anyone who claims that we are rachamanim b’nai rachamanim –merciful descendents of merciful forbearers – be so cold as to not reach out with compassion? “Sorry, you do not belong,” just will not, or at least should not, cut it.

SECOND, perhaps the problem is of our own making. We came to America and saw how Christian pastors ministered to their congregations, and we turned our rabbis from scholar-teachers to priests. Why has visiting the sick, eulogizing the deceased, comforting the mourners, become the exclusive province of the rabbi? Ask any vital congregation, and they will surely tell you that a key factor to their vitality is a laity that is fully engaged in reaching out to the ill and bereaved. Ask any truly vital congregation, and you may be sure that their compassionate outreach does not draw lines between members and non-affiliates.

Yet, our mindset has compounded the difficulty. We have made the pastoral presence of the rabbi qualitatively “different.” Deny it and teach against it though we may, the aura of having a rabbi at a critical, emotion-wrought hour, does confer a sanctity to the moment that is undeniably therapeutic and beyond the province of even the most devoted layperson.

When I gently hold the hand of someone who is critically ill and offer a brief Mi She-Berach or kapitel Tehillim, I see tears streaming down the faces of some of the most emotionally hardened people. When I encourage a hospice patient to feel the difference between “being cured” and “being healed,” sometimes that pinpoint intervention can itself bring healing.

An immigrant from the godless Soviet Union swears to this day that her husband regained consciousness because of the prayer that I offered at his ICU bedside. And, who am I to disagree, so long as we gratefully acknowledge that healing is from God, and that we are mere instruments of His will?

All this is to say that, despite Judaism’s investment in the power of the laity and despite the basic need for Jews to belong to their community, the presence of a rabbi in times of crisis does serve as an irreplaceable source of compassion, validation, and even I daresay, healing.

It seems to me that even the busiest rabbi should “pencil in” to his/her comings-and-goings time to offer prayer, comfort and encouragement to people in crisis, regardless of their affiliation. Likewise, a congregation should proudly encourage and provide latitude for their rabbi to make his/her way through the community bringing light to dark places, wherever they may be.

So, let congregations engage in aggressive marketing campaigns, put out a stellar Kiddush, have a youth, or singles, or seniors, group that is brimming with energy. Add as many members to your roles as you can. Just do not draw a line when a soul cries out for caring and compassion. That should not be seen as a burden, but as a sacred duty and privilege.

. . . unless, of course, I am totally out of touch. Please let me know how it is in your corner of the world.