Shabbos Nachamu | Turning the Wheel with Zvi Gluck

We just came through tishabove, the heaviest day of the Jewish calendar. And now on the other side of it, Hashem gives us two words that change everything. Comfort. Comfort. Not once but twice. As it says in the Yahoo. The question is why? Because real comfort after real pain doesn't come from one word. It doesn't come from one visit. [music] It doesn't come from one phone call or one well-meaning conversation at the right time. Real comfort is built slowly over time by people who [music] keep showing up even when there is nothing left to say. Nakamu means I will be here tomorrow and the day after and the day after that until you can finally begin to feel it. Rabio Levenzatal would go to hospitals every Friday in without fail. The very first thing he would do when he arrived would go to ask [music] the nurses which patients have no visitors. And then he would go to those patients first, the forgotten ones, [music] the ones nobody came for. And he would sit beside them for hours. [music] He would hold their hands. He would speak with them, encourage them, and make them feel that someone in the world saw them and cared. Every Friday, not once, every [music] week for decades. When he found out there was a leper hospital nearby, where patients had not received a single visitor in years, he went there as well. The moment he [music] walked in, the entire ward burst into tears. They had not seen a visitor in so long they forgot what it feels like to have somebody [music] come. That is namu namu. Not [clears throat] one visit, a commitment, a sustained, unbreakable [music] act of showing up again and again. Whether or not it's convenient, whether or not there's anything left to say, because the person in front of you needs to know they are not invisible. This is turning the wheel because the road to healing isn't straight. But no one should have to travel it alone. Wishing you a wonderful Shabas Nakim.