When the daughter of a patient next door saw the rabbi, she asked if he could come into her father’s room to blow shofar there as well. Instead of blowing it twice, Chana, who didn’t even know that her next-door neighbor was Jewish, wheeled herself into the man’s room. The rabbi said the bracha and “a mighty blast filled the room.”
“Tekiyah,” whispered the elderly man in bed. His daughter gasped. Outside in the hallway, she told Chana and the rabbi that “tekiyah” was the first word in her father spoke in the five months since his stroke. There’s more to this story and the others connected to Atlanta’s Bikur Cholim.
In the second part of the book, Rachel opens a window on what it’s like to intern as a Jewish chaplain in a children’s hospital, sharing the good times and the challenges. The stories are touching, uplifting and sometimes amusing. Unmasking her emotions, Rachel relates experiences of praying and comforting others. She asks Hashem to help her answer those who question her Judaism, to help her get through the night shifts and care for her family.
At the end of her two-year training, she and Shifra, who had already graduated her training program and was working as a chaplain in a Jewish hospice, sat sipping coffee together. In this passage, Rachel describes how Shifra pulled out her phone and shared an exquisite experience she had of singing “The Impossible Dream” with an elderly woman who was in a hospice.
“That’s why I want to be a chaplain, I realized,” writes Rachel. “I want to make a difference in people’s lives.” In an afterward, she adds, “I feel humbled to have the opportunity to walk alongside these extraordinary individuals and to continue watching their suns rise ever higher, even as they pant to the finish line.”
At the end of the book, there is a Bikur Cholim Halachic Appendix written by Rachel’s husband, Rabbi Reuven Stein of the Atlanta Kashrus Commission. It lists sources for the mitzvah of visiting the sick and explains how one can fulfill it.
