Rabbi Cries With People: The Power of REAL Empathy #shorts

the other night, there was someone who came to talk to me about a very preliminary um crisis that they felt they were having, which really wasn't such a major crisis. For them, obviously, it was cuz it's overwhelming to them, but they're just starting the process of infertility, and they're, you know, trying to figure out what the next step should be, and where they should go, and who they should speak to. And it was it was a lot for them, and I just burst out crying like sitting with them, even though we've seen cases that are obviously much more severe, and this is a couple that just got married, and it's not It's nothing overwhelming just yet. But they asked me, "Why are you so overwhelmed?" And I I wasn't trying to hide. I I never try to hide that I'm shaking. I think being vulnerable and being real is totally uh acceptable and appreciated. And I told them, I said, "I'll be honest, I just heard so many difficult things today and dealt with so many different um possibilities of hardships that people are going through. You happen to be the last person who was here today. It was 11:00 at night. It It just, you know, at some point it gets to you, and I think showing people that we're real, and showing people that we really take to heart the situations that they share with us, to me, I think is more powerful than anything else. I can say just I'm talking about my father, but I've been to so many shiva homes with my father. He's not a big talker, not a big schmoozer, and I find very often that he'll go into a shiva house, not say a word to anybody, and I feel very awkward. Feel very awkward being the one going with him, and just sitting there, and obviously I'm not going to speak if he's not speaking. And we leave. And so many people have told me subsequently that "Your father just sat there and cried with us, and that was worth more to us than any other visitors that we had." And I think that's an important role to play. Just to be that person who really feels and empathizes with other people's situations, to understand that we really connect to it, that we really relate to it, that we appreciate the severity or the overwhelming nature of what it is for them. That's uh that's a very important piece of it.