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No postoperative praise of illness and suffering is intended. I do not mean that illness and pain are somehow good, that because they can sensitize us, fear and suf- fering are somehow justified. Sickness, pain, anguish, torment, and death are neither rewards nor punishments from God. In our tradition, it is not piety, but blasphemy to pursue martyrdom for its own sake. But how and what we learn from adversity, how we raise private trauma into public morale is the way we add dig- nity to God's name. Not the suffering, but the refusal to let it subdue our will to live; not the pain, but the courage and hope that enables us to overcome despondency are the signs of God's goodness and reality. No one struck me down from above to punish me for my transgressions — God is no sadist. No one struck me down from above to reward me with new insight — God is no clumsy instructor. But God gave me mind and heart to learn divine matters from natural events. I have learned that God's language is in human behavior; that we are God's alphabet from aleph to tau We are God's vocabulary. Consider the story based on the ambig- uous biblical verse: "Charity averts death." Whose death? His mother is ill. The son quickly calls for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. In the midst of the turmoil his father whispers to him that it is Fri- day and that he should not forget to bring home a stranger for the Sabbath meal. The young man is disturbed that his father would think of poor strangers when his mother is in such dire straits. But days later he says to his father: "Now I understand, father, about the stranger. You wanted to save mother's life. `Charity averts death.' " "No," says the father, "What I asked you to do I did not because I thought it would avert mother's death, but because 'charity averts God's death: " Without charity, without love, God dies in this world. We are God's witnesses. If we are alive to each other, God is alive. If we live and love and help and heal, God is confirmed; God's name is exalted. We prove God's goodness not by philo- sophic argument but through the demon- stration of our relationship with His world. In our behavior we argue God into existence on earth as He is in Heaven. I have learned from this experience that friendship in family and in community is sacred, and that it is a foolish canard to declare that "words are cheap." A letter, a card, a prayer are life transfusions of the human spirit. A call or a visit is as therapeutic as the cleverest of medicines; our ancient sages did not exaggerate when they wrote "He who visits the sick causes him to live." (Nedarim 40a). Do not diminish the mitzvah of bikkur cholim, of visiting the sick. There is an ethics, an aesthetics, an art in visiting the sick. In the abridged Shulchan Aruch the visitor is counselled to "speak with discre- tion and tact, so as neither to revive him (with false hopes) nor depress him (with words of despair); not to visit a patient whose condition is an embarrassment to him or for whom conversation is difficult." Why are friendship and family so vital? Because the fear we experience is not sim- ply of physical death and dying. There are deaths in abandonment, -deaths in friend- lessness, deaths in living without love, without passion, without purpose. Death and dying wear many disguises; life and recovery must call upon many allies. There is a profound correlation between illness and isolation, and between health and community. In a Jewish tale the angels band together to conspire against God's intent to form Adam and Eve in His own image. They are jealous that ordinary men and women should inherit such spiritual treasure. The angels plot to hide goodness and truth from the human being. One angel proposes to hide God's mystery in the highest mountains, another suggests concealing it beneath the deepest seas. But the shrewdest angel counsels, "Men will search for godliness in the remotest of places. Hide it within them. It is the last place they will search for the miracles of godliness." I received gifts of books in the hospital and during my recuperation. But I have come to learn what Buber concluded when he grew older. When in his youth he was asked which he preferred, Buber thought he preferred books to people. Books are easy to handle, easy to open and to close, to remove or place back on the shelves. Books are manna from heaven, while humans are like hard, brown bread on whose crust he breaks his teeth. But as he grew older, Buber changed his mind "I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books; I shall die with another human hand in my own." What I fear, now that the energy returns, and the scars fade, is that I will forget the dark caverns of fear and those bright il- luminations of love. There is, of course, a natural comfort in the mind's capacity to forget the fearful past; but the consolation would be questionable if loss of memory led to loss of gratitude. I now understand better the biblical imperatives to remember; to remember not only the Sab- bath and the triumphs of the past, but the violations and defeats of our history; to remember the bondage in Egypt and villainy of the Amalakites so as to rejoice in our freedom and our strength. "Out of my depths, I have called unto God:' ❑ Rabbi Schulweis is spiritual leader of Valley Beth Shalom in Encing California. This article first appeared in Moment magazine.