No One Should Ever Have to Live This Way

In my years as a rabbi, I’ve stepped into many homes to offer pastoral care. Some visits stay with me for a season. But this one has stayed with me for a lifetime.

I remember climbing the three flights of stairs to her apartment — there was no elevator — and arriving at the top out of breath. And there she was, waiting just inside her doorway, a temple member I had known for years. She apologized for not coming down to greet me. She had taken a terrible fall, she explained, and had just been released from the hospital.

“I’m fine now,” she insisted. “I just can’t go up and down the stairs anymore.”

But of course, in a building without an elevator, that meant she could no longer leave her apartment. Not even once. She was effectively trapped — physically, emotionally, and practically — in a place that was no longer safe for her.

When I stepped inside, my heart sank. The apartment was — and there is no gentler word — unlivable. It was the kind of environment no one should ever have to endure. The air was heavy, the space cluttered, the signs of struggle everywhere. My mind kept quietly repeating: This is not how anyone should have to live.

And then it got worse.

She told me about her two cats — her companions, her lifeline — but even they looked thin, skittish, and unfed. Her voice was full of love for them, but everything around us revealed how overwhelmed she had become.

I could feel my concern rising. Something here was unraveling far beyond what I could see. Only then did I ask a question I almost never ask on pastoral visits.

“Can you tell me how you’re managing financially?”

The truth came slowly.

She had no family.A reverse mortgage that had consumed nearly all her equity.Almost no income and barely enough money to make it through each month.She was isolated, unable to leave, and out of resources — completely, heartbreakingly alone.

Standing in that apartment, all I could think was:

No one should ever have to live this way.I have failed.We have all failed.

When I finally left her home, I sat in my car and wept. And then I did what I always do when I don’t know the next right step — I called someone wise. A longtime temple member I trusted deeply. I told her everything.

She didn’t hesitate:

“Call JF&CS.”

So I did.

And within days, everything began to shift.

Karen Wasserman and her extraordinary team at Your Elder Experts stepped in immediately. Through patience, compassion, and extraordinary persistence, they convinced my congregant to let them enter the apartment. They arranged for a massive clean-up. They put supports in place so she wouldn’t be alone and unsafe. They became the steady ground she no longer had.

But what happened next still astonishes me.

Within a few months, this woman — trapped, frightened, and nearly out of resources — was offered a home at Golda Meir House, a warm and dignified senior community. Her beloved cats came with her. She had stable housing, support, community, and — for the first time in years — enough. Enough safety to breathe. Enough financial stability to live. Enough dignity to carry her into the rest of her life.

There is a teaching in the Talmud that I love:

“One who visits the sick takes away one-sixtieth of their pain.”

Over the years, and especially through this experience, I’ve come to understand something deeper:

JF&CS lifts far more than one-sixtieth.They meet people where their suffering has accumulated.They carry burdens too heavy to carry alone.They restore humanity where it has been eroded by circumstance.

This is one of the reasons I am so deeply honored to lead the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Jewish Healing at JF&CS. Here, healing is not theoretical. It is lived. It is practiced. It is built — one relationship, one intervention, one act of care at a time.

So much good has already been done.And so much more is possible.