A friend's father died last week. She just returned home tonight and is sitting shiva. The Jewish custom is to have prayer services in the shiva home as the person in mourning shouldn't leave their home. The word spread that a minyan was needed and our community responded. Almost 25 people packed her small appartment to pray, enable her to say Kaddish, and lend comfort to her. She was overwhelmed by the response.

I suspect many people find it difficult to meet with someone who's just suffered such an incredible loss. We definitely don't want to see them immediately afterwards - they should get over the initial shock, right? We also never know what to say and are afraid that without the words, we offer nothing. Tonight's experience as well as previous shivas I have attended continue to prove that words are not needed and simply your presence is a great comfort to the mourners. It took me a while to learn this lesson... it's gems like this that make me glad I am finding my way back to Judaism. There's over 2000 years of human experience codified into law and custom and it rarely points the wrong way. After all of humanity's advances over the last couple of millennia, we are still only human.