There is a kindness that requires us to leave our own surroundings and enter someone else’s. It asks for our time, our attention and our willingness to sit beside a person whose day may otherwise pass in pain or silence.
The mitzvah of ביקור חולים, bikur cholim, visiting the sick, gives this kindness a definite place in Jewish life. A person’s illness places a responsibility upon those around them. We must notice, make time and respond.
A telephone call can bring comfort. A message can reassure someone that they have been remembered. But when a personal visit is possible and welcome, we should recognise how much remains unseen and undone when we communicate only from a distance.
Following the Ways of G‑D
The Gemara in בבא מציעא (Bava Metzia) 30b identifies visiting the sick within the instruction in שמות (Shemot) 18:20 concerning the way in which we must walk. Kindness belongs within the conduct of our lives; it cannot remain merely an admirable sentiment.
The Gemara in סוטה (Sotah) 14a develops this further. To walk after G‑D means to follow His attributes: clothing those who need clothing, visiting the sick and consoling mourners. It identifies G‑D’s appearance to Avraham in בראשית (Bereshit) 18:1, following his circumcision, as the example of visiting the sick.
Our treatment of another person therefore becomes an expression of our relationship with G‑D. We follow His ways through the care we give.
This also challenges the assumption that visiting belongs primarily to rabbis, community volunteers or close relatives. Each of us must consider whom we have left waiting because we assumed that somebody else would go.
What We Discover by Visiting
The Gemara in נדרים (Nedarim) 40a recounts that a student of Rabbi Akiva became ill and was not visited by the Sages. Rabbi Akiva entered, and the attention given to the student’s surroundings helped him recover. The student told his teacher that he had restored him to life. Rabbi Akiva then taught that neglecting to visit the sick is comparable to shedding blood.
The severity of that teaching should interrupt our complacency.
A person may answer the telephone politely while sitting in an untidy room, without a prepared meal or the strength to ask for help. They may say that everything is fine because they are embarrassed, exhausted or unwilling to feel dependent.
A visit allows us to notice. We can ask whether something needs collecting, whether a meal would help or whether there is a practical difficulty that has become overwhelming. We can offer a particular act of assistance rather than place the entire burden on the person with the familiar instruction: “Let me know if you need anything.”
Sometimes the most useful contribution is modest: washing a few dishes, bringing shopping, arranging transport or sitting quietly while a family carer takes a break.
These things require attention more than eloquence.
A Call Matters, but Presence Matters Too
We should make full use of the means available to maintain contact. Distance, illness, infection precautions or the person’s own wishes may make a telephone or video call the appropriate way to reach them.
Nevertheless, convenience should not become our automatic reason for avoiding a visit.
There is a difference between fitting someone into a spare moment and setting aside time to be with them. When we arrive, sit down and give our undivided attention, we communicate something that can be difficult to convey through a brief exchange: your circumstances matter enough for me to come.
The measure of the visit is the benefit received. We should arrange a suitable time, respect privacy and leave when the person needs rest. Someone who is recovering should not have to entertain us, prepare refreshments or conceal exhaustion to avoid offending us.
We must be willing to hear, “Today is not a good day,” without making the refusal about ourselves.
Remembering Those Whose Suffering Is Less Visible
Our responsibility also reaches those whose need for companionship cannot be recognised from a hospital bed or a medical appointment.
Loneliness must not be treated as proof of illness. Visiting a lonely person is an act of chesed even where no illness exists. The wider obligation to love our fellow, expressed in ויקרא (Vayikra) 19:18, gives ample reason to seek out those who have become isolated.
Consider the older person whose friends have died, the widow whose home becomes silent after the visitors leave, or the person whose reduced mobility has gradually removed them from communal life.
A synagogue may be full while one of its members spends the rest of the week alone.
We should be careful about assuming that someone with children, relatives or professional carers has sufficient companionship. Relationships differ, circumstances change, and practical care does not necessarily provide the conversation or friendship a person longs for.
A regular visit gives someone a place in another person’s week. Keeping that arrangement demonstrates that our concern survives beyond the moment in which we first expressed it.
Sitting Beside Those Who Have Survived
The same attentiveness must extend to survivors of the Shoah, survivors of the atrocities of 7 October 2023, and others carrying the consequences of violence, terror, bereavement or abuse.
We must approach each person as an individual. Nobody should be reduced to the atrocity they survived, nor should we assume that we know what they wish to discuss.
A survivor owes us no account of their suffering. Visiting does not entitle us to ask intrusive questions, seek harrowing details or offer explanations for what happened.
We can listen when they wish to speak and respect their silence when they do not. Ordinary conversation, a shared meal or quiet companionship may be what they welcome that day.
We should also remember them after public attention has moved elsewhere, whether or not they welcome or wish to participate in the public attention and spectacle surrounding commemorations. Their desire to take part does not lessen our responsibility to remain present in their everyday lives. A person’s place in our community must extend beyond commemorations, anniversary events and occasions when their testimony is requested.
Consistent friendship says that their present life matters: their interests, their decisions, their daily needs and their future.
The Reward Described by the Gemara
The Gemara in נדרים (Nedarim) 40a explicitly addresses what awaits the person who visits the sick.
Rabbi Abba bar Aivu, known in the Gemara as Rav, teaches that a person who visits the sick is spared the judgement of Gehinnom. Drawing upon מזמור (Mizmor) 41:2–3, the Gemara also describes reward in this world: protection from the evil inclination and suffering, honour through association with the visitor, and the companionship of people whose counsel helps rather than harms.
These are profound promises. The Gemara attaches extraordinary spiritual importance to an act that we may repeatedly postpone because we consider ourselves busy.
We should receive this teaching with reverence, without turning it into a means of judging those who suffer. Another person’s illness does not permit us to draw conclusions about their merits or their kindness.
For us, the teaching is an invitation to act. Time spent attending to another person’s vulnerability has a value before G‑D that reaches far beyond what we can see.
Make the Time
There is probably someone we have been meaning to visit.
We remember them while discussing communal responsibility, hear that they are unwell, or think of them when an anniversary approaches. Then the day fills, and the intention remains unfulfilled.
Choose a person. Contact them. Arrange a suitable time. Go with the willingness to listen, notice and help. Afterwards, remember to return.
The sick, the lonely and those carrying painful memories should have a dependable place in our lives.
We may be unable to remove their suffering. We can still make sure that they do not face it forgotten.