The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World

by Sharon Brous

what appears in my mind’s eye in slow motion are the moments of human connection between and in the midst of the wind, the earthquakes, and the fires, when we, lost in our heartache, yearning, confusion, take one another’s hand and make our way through the forest together.

You show up for the celebration, and you show up for the funeral. Err on the side of presence.

It is then, when the mourners turn from the graveside, that they must imagine returning home and navigating life without their loved ones. (I remember after one funeral, when a bereaved woman collapsed to the ground beside her husband’s burial site. “It’s so cold out here! I can’t just leave him in this field!”) But the community, predicting this agonizing sense of displacement, forms two parallel lines, facing one another, a path leading away from the burial site. The mourners process between the two lines, while each member of the community, one by one, whispers words of comfort. Some share the traditional formula of consolation: May the Holy One comfort you, along with all the brokenhearted among our people and all people. Those two lines of family, friends, and community, we learn, are like support railings that will catch us when we fear we might fall off the edge of the world. Amen, the community says. We’ve got you.

After a week of shiva, the mourners rise from their home, and the community walks, together, around the block in a kind of symbolic reentry to the world, empty as it now is of their loved one. This is an exercise in spiritual mobility—can you move, still? Can you see that the sun still rises, the dogs still bark, your neighbor’s kid still sneaks out for a cigarette, and there’s still too much traffic? There is still vitality in this now forever broken world. There is still surprise and wonder, life and love. Your loved one has died, and you, you are still alive. We will hold this grief with love, and we will return to life together.

Kol Nidre is the holiest night of the year, when even the cynics and schmoozers let down their defenses. This service marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, a time of deep introspection, an annual accounting of the soul. Although it’s perceived to be a difficult, solemn day, Yom Kippur is by far my favorite day of the year, the most sacred and most joyous, because in our honest and earnest self-reflection, we encounter truths that open us up to endless possibility. This day helps us see who we are and imagine who we could become.

That’s really at the very heart of the amen effect. It cannot be mere coincidence that the words one would ask another on the sacred pilgrimage circle in the Temple Courtyard are, in Hebrew: ma lakh—tell me: What happened to you? What’s your story? And this is precisely the formula the angel asked Hagar, the day she was found weeping and wailing in the desert sun. Ma lakh Hagar—tell me about your pain, Hagar.