Compassion, Ellen Ehrenkranz
Compassion is defined as sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. However, the Hebrew word for compassion, rachamim, has a deeper meaning. It literally means "to suffer together." This suggests that compassion is not just about feeling sorry for someone who is suffering, but about actually entering into their experience and feeling their pain with them.
When do I show compassion and what do I do to help? Identitying with the other as the basis for compassion is precisely what the Torah invokes when it hands down the commandment to be loving to the stranger in your midst.
Alan Morinis, in his book, reflects on the relationship between compassion and judgment. He writes that true compassion, according to Jewish thought, is like a parent for a child. Parents need to be both strict in teaching right and wrong, as well as compassionate. They need to be able to see their child's pain, but they also need to be able to set limits and expectations.
The first step to being compassionate is to lower the barriers that separate us from others: the soul trait of compassion may be more accurately defined as the inner experience of touching another being so closely, that I no longer feel the other one as separate from myself. I will leap to care for the other as I care for myself because the other is no longer the other.
I need to feel the person’s pain. I need to be able to join with the other and share their feelings. To do this means giving up my sense of separateness and lowering the barriers that ordinarily wall me off and isolate my sense of self.
It is so easy to judge based upon my own standards and based upon my framing of the situation. To understand the other is to listen to them and see the issue through their lens.
Judgment comes from a habitual ego-bound perspective that gives rise to the well-ingrained tendency to look at others with eyes of judgment. However, when I truly enter into their experience and feel their pain, it becomes much harder to judge them.
Through close identification, I open up to that person and get close enough to understand their pain. It will teach me to act kindly, softly, and gently. It will also allow me with respect to “offer compassion in the form of judgment.” I will be able to feel within myself the truth of that other person’s experience and see with the eyes of compassion. I will also see more deeply to perceive the untainted soul that is the kernel of their being.
