“Rabbi, I don’t know what to say…
To my best friend when she finds out that she’s dying of cancer.
To our neighbors when they lose a child, when they’re divorcing, when one of them loses a job.
To someone who is sick, who is grieving, who has been traumatized by life.
Rabbi, how should I act? What should I say?”
How about – at least initially - saying nothing?
In the awful, uncomfortable silence that lies between us and the sufferer, we feel the urge to fill that wordless void, to say something, anything that will restore a sense of order, calm, joy to that person and to ourselves. We have all thought or asked the above questions when confronting someone in deep crisis or pain. Most of us genuinely don’t know how to act, what to say, which tools in our relational toolboxes might heal the hurt, end the pain. We want to be helpful to them, even and especially as we shudder when we contemplate being in their shoes.
Yet nothing we might initially say to a person suffering can come anywhere close to genuine consolation. A mourner, a sick person, a loved one tasting life’s bitterness might shriek, “God, why me?” but that is never our cue to respond with theological bromides or even to “casually” change the subject. In fact, the words we speak risk becoming platitudes meant more to allay our own supreme discomforts than to support the ones in need of comfort.
The person suffering in our presence doesn’t need us to say something.
They need us to say nothing, so we can be fully present with them.
Jewish tradition recognizes that being fully present, -silent, supportive witnesses to our loved one in an hour of need – is agonizing and exhausting. We have no means to escape the flood of pain and sadness flowing in torrents from his contorted face, from her shrunken body, from their weeping and grief. We must sit, or stand, or tread water with them to prevent them from going under the waves of anguished bewilderment washing over them. There is a time for words, but times of crisis and vulnerability are not necessarily that time. Being fully, silently there, creating space to truly listen to the sufferer with love, is our way of saying beyond actual words to that person: “I cannot rid you of the loneliness that comes with so much loss, but my being here can reassure you that you will not be lost, because you are not alone.”
The Jewish biblical book of Job is one of the world’s greatest stories about the imperative of compassionate silence when we confront someone suffering. Job, a supremely righteous man, becomes the pawn in a heavenly bet between God and God’s celestial prosecutor, to test the sincerity of Job’s piety by taking everything from him. As Job sits in the dust, grieving the loss of his property, his children, and his health, his three closest friends visit him, “To console and comfort him.” (Job 2:11)
The Bible then tells us that when they saw Job from a distance and couldn’t recognize him, given how haggard he was, they wept loudly, tore their clothes, and “Then sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights. None of Job’s friends spoke a word to him because they saw how very great his suffering was.” (Job 2:12)
Maimonides, the great scholar of Jewish philosophy and law, used Job’s friends’ initial silent support for him as the model for how one visits a mourner during shivah, the seven-day mourning period in Judaism. He taught that we are not permitted to say anything until the mourner opens his mouth first, for the book of Job states, “None of Job’s friends spoke a word to him."
However, no sooner does Job complain bitterly about having been abused by God than his friends become his pugnacious, defensive opponents and God’s self-appointed defenders. Over the course of the book, using a torrent of words, they accuse Job of deserving his suffering as punishment for his purported evildoing. They are transformed from silent supporters into loud and angry harassers. They add insult to injury by blindly defending God and castigating Job unjustly. Commenting on the book centuries later, the ancient Jewish sages referred to the friends’ behavior as a type of verbal abuse.
We are, thankfully, not Job’s friends. We aren’t trying to defend God’s honor by attacking or accusing our loved ones who cry out in their suffering. We just want to make them feel better. Yet these ancient teachings apply to us as much as to Job’s friends. They express the deep insight that our role with a person suffering is to sit with them in the uncomfortable silence, to simply be there with our compassionate silence. The words will come later, when and if the sufferer is ready to speak. There will be time in the future for them to process with speech their unspeakable pain. Yet in that present moment, we must just be present, saying nothing.
To our friends, neighbors, colleagues, and loved ones who suffer, that can say and mean everything.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi at Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany, NY. He is the author of Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama. (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
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