The Dangling Brachah

This column is about a dangling brachah.

I recently davened Shacharis for several days in a retirement residence here in Jerusalem. Many of the elderly men in this minyan had some form of disability, were confined to wheelchairs, and were unable to perform common daily tasks that we take for granted: bathing, getting dressed, walking, climbing stairs. Most of them had full-time aides and helpers who assisted them in maneuvering through the day. Some helpers — many of them Filipinos — stayed faithfully by their side during the entire davening.

While visiting the shul, I witnessed two intriguing phenomena. In one case, as soon as Shacharis ended, the Filipino young woman who was the helper of one of the more disabled residents respectfully removed his tallis from his shoulders, folded it carefully, and tucked it into his tallis bag, while he, unable to stand on his feet, wound up his tefillin and put them away.

Such scenes are apparently not unusual here, but the incongruous image of this young non-Jewish woman reverently and respectfully folding the tallis was very striking.

But even more remarkable was a scene the next morning.One of the daveners was partially paralyzed and unable to move his arms. His helper, a Filipino man, slowly and patiently wound the tefillin shel yad around this man’s arm, affixed the shel rosh carefully on his head, wound the other straps around the man’s limp fingers, placed the siddur on the table before him, opened it to the right place, turned the pages at the proper intervals, remained with him until the end of Aleinu, and then wheeled him out to his room.