REVIEW: Wisdom from the House of Healing
Hanan Balk, Wisdom from the House of Healing: Transformative Encounters of a Hospital Chaplain (Ktav Publishing), 320 pp.
How can it be that an Orthodox rabbi works in Christ Hospital? How can a chaplain instill hope and meaning even on a cancer ward? How does one learn how to really listen? Is it really possible to help suffering people make sense of and even find meaning in their suffering? These and other weighty questions are addressed by Rabbi Hanan Balk in his new book, Wisdom from the House of Healing: Transformative Encounters of a Hospital Chaplain.
On the very first page, Balk writes about Anton Boisen (1876-1965) and Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), the pedagogy for educating chaplains. Chaplains provide spiritual, emotional, and psychological support during times of need, primarily in hospitals but also in the military, old age homes, and prisons. Chaplains cater to the diverse needs of people from all faiths and those with none. They offer guidance and counsel and perform rituals. But the most critical service of a chaplain is simply to be there – to offer a compassionate presence mainly in times of crisis. CPE suggests that the patient is to be designated as “The Living Human Document,” the “vital message that a human being, as much as any book or article, should be considered a major source from which the chaplain can learn” (30). Boisen, considered to be the father of CPE, believed that learning from real-life experiences was critical for training not just chaplains but all clergy. He believed that clergy should engage directly with people facing all kinds of challenges, treating these encounters as providing valuable insights to develop empathy and a deeper understanding of people’s suffering and resilience.
Balk is bravely candid about the experiences with his former congregation that led him to search for a new job outside the pulpit rabbinate, the difficulty of his job search, and his eventual decision that led him to the chaplaincy of Cincinnati’s Christ Hospital. Through his candid personal revelations, Balk allows his readers to treat him as a Living Human Document and learn from his many experiences, teachings, and poignant—and often humorous—anecdotes. We meet someone who bears his soul (refreshingly different from most rabbinic memoirs) allowing us to not only learn about what it means to be a chaplain using our intellectual faculties but to get a glimpse into the world of chaplaincy itself.
As an Orthodox colleague of Rabbi Balk in both the pulpit rabbinate and as a trained chaplain, I found the beginning of the book to be the most interesting. It is here where Balk describes how he needed to change as a rabbi, and as a person, to become an effective chaplain. Rabbis know how different life in the field is from what they imagined it to be during their days in yeshiva and rabbinical training. The ability to successfully make that transition (from the world of theory to practice) may be the best indicator of success. Balk reports that his first need as he moved from the pulpit to the chaplaincy was developing a greater ability to engage in self-reflection. Balk brilliantly explains why this crucial trait makes one a better chaplain. Self-reflection enables one to become involved in listening to others’ experiences, mostly their pain, so much that it is necessary to learn how to prevent one’s own emotions and experiences from coloring the encounter between patient and rabbi. Often, Orthodox rabbis are not sufficiently self-reflective. There is something within us that remains the perpetual Yeshiva boy, trained in intellectual pursuits and spending most of our time giving shiurim, delivering sermons, and “performing” on the rabbinic stage. This leaves us precious little time to engage in self-reflection.
The reflective learning in chaplaincy comes about mostly through the “verbatim,” where a chaplaincy student “documents a visit ‘word for word’ in dialogue form with an analysis of, among other elements, the chaplain’s emotional state during the visit – [Later] one’s peers offer meaningful suggestions to aid him in becoming more self-aware and self-reflective.” Balk rhetorically asks the questions that are at the very basis of chaplaincy: “After all, if one does not know himself well, how is it possible to know others? If one is not in touch with his own feelings, how can he possibly get a complete understanding of the feelings of those who is he charged to serve?” (34).
Other skills a chaplain must develop that Balk describes are “staying in the moment” and not coming with an agenda. While subsets these are in essence one in the same. If I had to define the primary goal of chaplaincy it would be the necessity to “just” be with the patient in the sense of meeting him where he is (ba-asher hu sham, in the sense of Genesis 21:17). I say “just” (in quotes) because most people think this sounds like an easy task. It is, in fact, quite difficult. True listening – as opposed to simply hearing – is a challenging skill that must be learned and constantly cultivated. Research demonstrates that most people don’t really listen in any deep sense. Most often, they think about what their retort will be. Listening has always presented a challenge but certainly in the age of smartphones and diminished attention spans the challenge has become even greater. Rabbis (especially Orthodox ones) often come to conversations with agendas. Most often they aim to help someone become more religious, to educate and to help the person become a better Jew – all noble goals. But this doesn’t work in the chaplaincy, where the goal is that the person is able to bear his soul and feel the chaplain’s presence. An encounter that happens with the chaplain not uttering even a single word is often considered to be a successful visit.
I found Balk’s relating the tale of his professional transformation to be moving. That someone at age 52 can go through such a meaningful career switch resulting in the ability to successfully console so many is edifying. Had the book only been a memoir of that transformation, Dayyenu. But it is so much more. Balk also succeeds in conveying the core principles of his sacred calling; that he does so through stories and vignettes only makes those principles more compelling.
Two of his stories particularly resonated with me. In one, “Getting Schooled” (209), Balk visits a pre-op patient who has no family members at her side, an unusual occurrence. In her response to Balk’s “Why are you alone?” she responds in disbelief: “Alone? I am alone? I am not alone! God is here in the room with me!” Trying to learn from this “living human document” as a true chaplain Balk self-reflectively observes: “What a simple but profound effect that brief encounter had upon me! It was nothing less than a religious experience ‘that awakened me from my spiritual slumber’ (cf. Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:4).” Balk relates many of his successes but also demonstrates that he doesn’t take himself too seriously – an important message for anyone in the helping professions. In the chapter titled “Come Back!” he relates a “fruitful conversation and a thunderous thank you” for a prayer he offered a family (174). As he leaves and reaches the door he is called back. Thinking that he has succeeded in greatly impacting the family and that they would like to talk more, he returns to be told that he had forgotten to turn the volume of the TV up again after he had lowered it for the prayer!
R. Hanan Balk
The book also takes complex issues and makes them accessible through stories and experiences, careful to never oversimplifying them. After discussing the oft-quoted statement of Rabbi Nahman of Breslov, “A person needs to cross a very, very, narrow bridge and the fundamental principle is not to make oneself fear at all,” Balk turns to Kafka’s “Before the Law,” a parable about a man’s lifelong quest to access the Law, symbolizing his ultimate mission in life. Despite facing numerous obstacles and frustrations, he persists in his pursuit, embodying the themes of perseverance and the relentless struggle to fulfill one’s purpose. The story inspires readers by illustrating that the journey toward understanding and justice, though fraught with challenges, is a noble and enduring endeavor. Balk compares Kafka’s tale to a similar Talmudic story (Berakhot 28a) which describes a time when to enter the study hall a guard stood watch and only allowed entry to those whose inner identities were consistent with their external actions. He asks how the guards could possibly determine if someone met this requirement, and writes: “the so called ‘guard’ at the door was, in fact, nothing more than a lock that would allow entry to no one except those who were willing to do everything possible to find a way in. Those who knew they had the requisite abilities to join the realm of the scholars refused to relinquish their goals” (268). Balk shares stories and teachings from various sources, demonstrating how one can achieve life’s goals even in challenging situations, such as dying in a hospital bed.
Balk writes quite a bit about the use of joy in creating relationships and helping people feel more at ease and comfortable with the chaplain. But, for him, joy goes well beyond just being a tool; rather, he says, “joy is a gesture of faith.” “A person who has faith understands that God is with him in every situation, that even in his most difficult hour, God has not abandoned him” (177). He quotes heavily from Rabbi Soloveitchik who writes that “joy is the knowledge that everything that one does in his life is always done before God, in His presence, and with His involvement. In other words, there is no circumstance where God has abandoned one who puts his faith in Him, and this should generate the greatest joy one can ever know” (178). It is one thing to write or even read these words. It is much more difficult to live them, and certainly to get others to live them. This may be one of the biggest challenges faced by chaplains.
He also explores the experience of working as an Orthodox rabbi in a Catholic hospital, highlighting the principle that chaplains serve all patients, not just those of their own faith. Balk discusses the challenges and opportunities of extending Jewish wisdom to a broader audience in such settings, emphasizing how one can widen their influence in chaplaincy.
This book is almost everything one could want from a rabbinic memoir, which provides a window into the chaplaincy and the soul of a skilled and caring chaplain, combined with a discussion of some of the philosophic challenges that face the work and its practitioners I would have liked to read even more of the author’s own struggles with some of the philosophical and theological questions he wrestles with, as well as more stories of how he helped patients deal with these issues. In the spirit of CPE, I also would have appreciated a self-analysis of where the author could go from here in terms of becoming an even better chaplain. Ultimately this is an excellent work. Anyone who wants to learn from a master rabbi and chaplain about helping those who are suffering should read this book.
Rabbi Yosef Binyamin Williger relates that the Klausenberger Rebbe had asked him to seek an audience with the Lubavitcher Rebbe soon after the founding of Laniado Hospital in Netanya. Balk relates how Williger was sent to seek the counsel of the Lubavitcher regarding several complex issues relating to Jewish law and the daily operation of the hospital. At the end of this meeting, the Rebbe asked why the hospital was called a Beit Holim – house of the sick. Better it should be called the “House of Healing.” The Rebbe continued “I would ask you to either call it a ‘House of Healing’ or a ‘Center for Healing’ for one goes to a hospital not to get better, but rather to heal” (cf. 52-53). A House of Healing, in Balk’s mind, expands the responsibility of a chaplain. He suggests that this name “accurately describes the responsibilities of the chaplain, who serves not only the sick, but the families of the sick, the medical staff, and even fellow chaplains.” In a very powerful and revealing line Balk adds: “Moreover, the greatest healing that transpired in my efforts to bring spiritual healing to others may have been spiritual healing that affected me.” Chaplains are not robots that can simply disassociate from the environment in which they find themselves.
A hospital may indeed be a place where many die, but chaplains like Rabbi Balk and others do their utmost every day to transform it into a house of healing of the soul. In a chapter titled “Sacred Space” he describes his feelings upon entering the hospital each day and writes about it being “just as authentically a place of holiness, inspiration, hope and renewal as it is of dread and resignation” (54). In Wisdom from the House of Healing, Hanan Balk successfully helps his readers understand the unique challenges and rewards in making this so.
Rabbi David Fine is the Founder and Dean of the Barkai Center for Practical Rabbinics and Community Development.