Showing Up: Turning and Returning to Love, Care and Presence – Kol Nidre 5787/2026

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, Kol Nidre 2026

Gmar Hatima Tova.

A friend of mine was once at the bedside of a

close friend who was gravely ill, in and out of the

hospital for some time.

He began to say: “I may not have long left to live. I want to tell you something…”

She interrupted: “Don’t think like that! You have many more years left.” 

He tried again: “I need you to hear me…” 

My friend tried distraction instead: 

“Let’s think about the fun things we’ll do when

you get better.”

He held firm: “I don’t know if I will ever get out of 

the hospital.”

They went back and forth like that a bit longer. 

She then realized her friend needed something else from her. 

She took a breath, and said: “I don’t know how long you have left, but I want you to know that our friendship has been such a special part of my life, and I am so grateful for it.” 

He cried, listened, and then shared back his love and gratitude. 

And in this fleeting moment between friends, at the right time it was needed, 

isolation was replaced by connection; loneliness by a moment of healing.

I was so moved when my friend shared this story with me, and I’ve thought about it often since.

It speaks to something so deeply human — our instinct to fix, to reassure, to make a person “feel better.” 

Even if it’s not what the other necessarily needs. 

Even if we might, knowingly or unknowingly, be uncomfortable or afraid — or simply not know what to do.

But this story also demonstrates the transformative power of presence. 

When my friend was able to make the shift in her mind — everything changed. 

When we can tune in and be with another in their pain and vulnerability — truly bringing our whole selves to that interaction — 

we become agents of 

connection, comfort, and healing.

On Kol Nidre, we reflect on how we have missed the mark and the ways we want to do “teshuvah” — 

to turn and grow towards the best version of ourselves. 

To be more loving and caring parents, partners, friends, co-workers, children, grandchildren, siblings, (and more) in the coming year. 

I believe that one of the most impactful ways we can do this is by showing up more fully 

for those we care about 

in times of pain and struggle, 

or even just the messy challenges of day-to-day life.

Showing up for people in difficult situations is not just a good or noble thing to do — it is the Jewish way.

In the Torah, there is a verse: 

אַחֲרֵי ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם תֵּלֵכוּ — 

“You shall walk after,” or “walk in the ways of,” God.

The rabbis scratch their heads at the verse and ask: what does that actually mean? 

No one can literally walk in God’s ways — God has no feet, no body. What does it mean, in other words, to imitate the Divine?

The rabbis could have said “rest on Shabbat,” “keep the kosher laws,” or any other ritualistic practice. 

Instead, they teach a radical idea of what it means to walk in God’s ways: 

“Just as God visited Abraham after his circumcision, so too you shall visit the sick. 

Just as the Holy One consoles mourners, so too you should console mourners.” 

The text offers a few more examples like it — clothing the naked, burying the dead — each one pointing to the same idea: to walk in God’s ways is to get close to those in a vulnerable place.

This is what it means to imitate the Divine — to live out our values in the world.

It’s not an easy ask. 

As Rabbi Shai Held points out, all of these are situations that can make us afraid. But that’s the point: 

Judaism doesn’t ask us just to do what’s right, it asks us to run towards the very places we’re tempted to run away from.

In that spirit, tonight, I want to offer us a path to

turn towards what can be hard, 

what can be scary. 

I will share three steps that build on each other,

to help us show up more fully 

for the people in our lives.

STEP 1: Make Space

The first step is to make space — or, more plainly put, to get out of your own way.

The sixteenth-century Kabbalist (Jewish mystic) Isaac Luria offered a mystical explanation for how God — whose glory filled the entire universe, so much so that there was no room for anything else — could create the world. 

He explained that in order to create, God had to take a step back and limit Godself to make space for Creation. This act of contraction is called “Tzimtzum.”

Tzimtzum might sound like a pretty out-there mystical concept — 

but it has real power when applied to our relationships. 

If God could contract Godself to make room for all of creation to exist, 

surely we can learn to contract ourselves — our fears, our judgments and our anxieties — 

to make room for another.

We bring all of our human “stuff” into our interactions, often without realizing how it shapes our presence. 

We may feel discomfort and fear in facing another’s illness or struggles with aging. 

It reminds us, consciously or unconsciously, of our own fragility and mortality — things we tend to deny or avoid thinking about.

Or you may feel overtaken by judgment. 

For example: 

if you have a friend who you judge as irresponsible with money and they come to you, distraught over the status of their bank account, 

you may find yourself doing everything possible to hold back saying “I told you so” instead of sitting and listening with an open heart.

We may feel consumed with jealousy, or feel our own anxiety rise when someone is sharing something that hits close to home. 

And often, we are just too distracted to notice when someone near us needs us.

All of these responses are deeply human — yet they leave the people we love — and often ourselves too — feeling unseen and alone.

But hope is not lost: Tzimtzum offers us a way through.

[For] Tzimtzum isn’t just an idea, it’s an active practice — 

a practice of noticing what’s arising in us,

 and getting in the way of listening or truly supporting another person. 

And, just as God modeled, it’s taking a step back to make space for the person in front of us.

Sometimes we notice what’s happening in the moment and make a change, 

just like my friend in the story I shared at the beginning. 

Other times, it takes a reset, a second chance, before we can truly step closer. 

Either way, practicing Tzimtzum makes real intimacy and connection possible.

An example: A friend of mine, Rachel, told her closest friend, Sophie, that she was getting a divorce. Sophie had been there for Rachel through really tough times — when her mother was ill and dying, when she struggled at work — 

so Rachel was surprised when Sophie failed to offer empathy or support at a time she truly needed it. 

When Rachel tried to talk about her impending divorce, Sophie would change the subject, or minimize the situation.

Because of this absence, Rachel felt alone during one of the hardest times of her life. 

Finally, Rachel summoned the courage to ask Sophie directly about her distance.

 After the conversation, Sophie looked inward, and realized she had not shown up for her friend because she was consumed by fear and anxiety. 

Sophie came back to her and said: “I realized that when you talked about divorce, it made me think about how much my husband and I fight — and how sometimes I think about divorce from time to time too, even though our marriage is strong. 

I got scared, and I couldn’t be there for you.” Then she added:  “Now that I see this, I can do better. You are not alone.”

The first step: Tzimtzum — get out of your own way so that you can be there for others.

STEP 2: Consider Your Words

The second step in showing up for the people in our lives is this: consider your words.

We will soon recite the Ashamnu and Al Cheit — confessing collective sins, many of them sins of speech, some careless, some far more deliberate.

Our tradition recognizes the power of our words, and tonight I want to focus on the damage the wrong ones can cause — and the healing the right ones can bring.

The Book of Job offers a good illustration of the damage the wrong words can cause.

In this book about human suffering, Job, a righteous man, loses everything: his fortune, his health, even his children. Three friends come to comfort him, and for seven days, they sit beside him in silence.

 But once Job finally speaks, the friends respond, and it’s asi if what has been gnawing at them during this silent week comes rushing out.

The friends try to explain away his pain and suffering to square away their theological concerns, 

concluding that Job must have been at fault for his sufferings . 

They debate and discuss, rather than being there for their friend. 

(Clearly they are not practicing Tzimtzum!)

Their words are deeply wounding to Job. ‘How long will you torment me and crush me with words?’ he cries out. 

And he scolds them: ‘You are miserable comforters, all of you!'”

What happens to Job is extreme — few of us, God willing, will ever lose everything all at once. 

But how his friends respond? 

That, I think, is painfully relatable.

When we are in a vulnerable place, facing loss or struggle or a hard transition, so often people speak the wrong words. 

Words that unintentionally make us feel worse. 

Who has not had a time in their life when they wanted to say to someone — a close friend, a co-worker, an acquaintance — 

“You are miserable, terrible comforters”?

The Book of Proverbs teaches: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” 

Most take this as an overstatement — dramatic language to make a point.

But I see it differently: 

the wrong words may not cause our physical death, but they can cause spiritual and psychic pain that lasts months, years, sometimes our entire lives. 

These words alienate us — from ourselves, and from others — and leave us in pain, alone. 

On the other hand, words that affirm, that reflect back, that assure us we are listened to and cared for, have the opposite effect. 

They give us back our life by helping us feel seen and cared for. 

The right words enable us to feel whole even when we are broken, and help us begin to integrate the brokenness as part of who we are, not the entirety of who we are.

Let me share this personally. My father died suddenly when I was twenty-three years old. I was gutted. A lot of people said a lot of words to me in the wake of my loss. 

I can remember, even though it was twenty-six years ago, the words that stung and left me wounded — and the words that brought me profound healing.

Here they are:

I attended a grief group for people who had recently lost parents. When it was my turn to talk, I shared what was weighing on me — that I was not just grieving my father’s loss today, but for the future. 

My father would never dance with me at my wedding, or meet any future children.

The counselor in charge of the grief group interrupted me and said: “You cannot grieve for the future. You can only grieve for the past, for what was.”

I sat there in shock. My grief was wrong. The loneliness of being the only person my age I knew who had lost a parent felt even more palpable. 

To this day, I can hear these words as clearly as the moment they were spoken.

On the other hand:

Soon after shiva, I received a call from a college friend, someone I wasn’t especially close to. 

Truth be told, I am not sure I have spoken to him since this very phone call. 

He asked me about my dad’s passing. 

I explained some details — that his death was sudden and unexpected, and that we were all in shock.

And then this friend said to me three simple words: “What a tragedy.” 

What a tragedy. 

These three words broke my heart open. 

In putting words to what I had been feeling, I felt fully seen in a way I had not since my father died. I still think of this, all these years later, as three of the most healing words of my life.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. 

Let us choose our words carefully, so we can choose life.

STEP 3: Be With

Once we have cleared what gets in our way, and become mindful of our words, we can open to the ultimate gift we have to offer — our presence. 

This may sound like a modern, even new-age idea — but it’s deeply grounded in Jewish tradition.

The Talmud teaches: “One who visits someone who is ill takes away one-sixtieth of their pain.” 

What a powerful, hutzpadik claim for the rabbis to make! 

This was clearly not a medical analysis — 

rather a spiritual teaching. 

They were telling their community and all who

came after the simple truth: 

presence heals.

There is a beautiful midrash that shows us exactly what that looks like. It goes like this:

On the day that Adam, the first human being, was created, he became frightened and overwhelmed when the sun began to set. 

After all, God had not warned him in advance!!!!

He cried out: “Woe is me — it must be because I sinned that the world is growing dark around me, and the world will return to its original state of tohu v’vohu, chaos and disorder. 

This must be the death that was sentenced upon me from Heaven!”

Adam spent the whole night fasting and crying.

And Eve, hearing his cries, came and sat k’negdo. 

[K’negdo: The same word used to describe Eve in the Torah, most often translated as “helpmate” — but it really means the one who stands opposite you, facing you, as an equal.]

So Eve came near to Adam, who was crying inconsolably, and the midrash says: 

she cried alongside him, all night long. 

Then, once the dawn broke, Adam understood: the sun sets, and the night comes, and this cycle is the way of the world.

Wow. What a midrash.

We can feel how scared and alone Adam is — 

how the world seems to be collapsing around him, with no promise of another day.

And there is almost no better demonstration of presence than what Eve does: 

she does not fix anything, 

explain the darkness away, 

or even speak. 

She simply comes near, and cries with him.

And if you think about it, we must imagine that Eve got tired. That it felt uncomfortable at times.

But she stayed — even when it may have been uncomfortable for her. And her presence is what got him through the night.

It’s important to note: not every night ends when the dawn breaks on its own. Sometimes the darkness someone we love is in runs deeper than one long night — and our presence, as precious as it is, is not the only thing they need. 

Part of showing up is also knowing when someone needs more than our company — 

real support, professional care, a hand beyond our own. 

That, too, is a way of staying. 

That, too, is love.

[Now] I invite you to close your eyes or just imagine in your mind’s eye:

think of a time when someone simply stayed with you in a hard moment — 

no advice, no judgments, just their presence.

What did that feel like? 

What changed in you when that happened? (pause)

That’s the power of presence.

The third step:

 be with. Not to fix, not to explain, not to rush the dawn — but to stay, until morning comes.

Conclusion

On this Kol Nidre night, let us do teshuvah, turning towards the best, most loving versions of ourselves. 

For when we show up with a full, open heart, we can alleviate loneliness and isolation, foster connection and healing — and change another person’s world for the better.

Let us run towards the places that can be hard and towards the people in our lives who may be struggling. 

We won’t always get it right — but we can keep trying. 

And when we try, it matters more than we know.

Let us make space. 

Consider our words.

And offer our presence in service of others. 

And in doing so, may we usher in a more kind, connected, and loving world.

G’mar Hatima Tova.