Rabbi Rick Provides Healing, Comfort, and Spiritual Needs

The JFS Baskin Jewish Community Chaplaincy program, led by Rabbi Rick Brody, focuses on providing direct spiritual care, comfort, and counseling to unaffiliated Jews in the greater Denver area and beyond who are ill, in crisis or near the end of their lives. For Tsivya, Rabbi Brody’s outreach comforted her and her husband, and she shared their story below. 

After spending the day in the hospital with my sick husband, Barry, I received a call from the night nurse, who told me that my husband was agitated and that he was convinced that this was the night he would go. Barry asked for the rabbi, so they called him, and he was on his way over. The nurse asked if she should call me, and Barry agreed. 

When I got there, I found out that they had not called our Orthodox rabbi but a complete stranger from Jewish Family Service. Because I was expecting Rabbi Meyer, I was surprised, suspicious, and cynical. I thought he was probably a Conservative rabbi, or possibly, chas v’shalom, Reform, and what could he have to offer my husband? Did he even know how to daven properly? 

I spoke with my husband while we waited for the rabbi to show up. My husband was convinced he was dying; I was convinced he would survive this crisis and live many more good years. “How do you know you’re dying?” I asked him, “you’ve never done it before.” He agreed with my logic but remained upset. I was upset with myself. I was being logical and clever, but I didn’t know the words to say that would reassure and calm him.   

Exhausted after the long day, I slumped in an armchair when Rabbi Brody came in. By then, it was 10:30 at night. Rabbi Brody chatted with us for a few minutes. He was going to do the Vidui, but I told him that we were playing for a complete recovery, so he said he would also daven refuah sheleimah. (By “playing,” I mean that the paradigm is along the lines of playing a game, but not in the sense that a game is frivolous or entertaining; rather, a game is a series of ongoing moves. My stand was that he would survive and thrive.) Rabbi Brody began to daven, and he davened so sweetly that it felt like Shamayim had descended to the lonely hospital room. My husband was able to release his fears and reclaim his faith in HaShem. I, too, was soothed and calmed.   

I don’t know if Rabbi Brody davened properly, if the words were in the right place, if the tunes were correct. I do know that he was able to do what I wanted to do and failed at, which was to bring peace to a troubled spirit—two troubled spirits, actually. He wasn’t clever and logical; he spoke to the depths in us that are more connected to G*d than our mere intellects. 

I found out that the nurse had called Rabbi Brody probably around the time he was preparing to go to bed or perhaps was already in bed. Rabbi Brody, without a moment of hesitation or thought of complaint, went into the dark night and drove cross-town, a drive of 30 minutes in each direction, to help out a stranger, a fellow Jew, he had never met before. 

On that night, I learned what my rabbis had been teaching, and which I never really believed, that all of us Jews, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, etc., are part of one body, the body of klal Yisrael.   

Learn more about the Baskin Jewish Community Chaplaincy Program and schedule an appointment with Rabbi Rick.