Cancer Diaries: Rachmanas And The Price Of Losing Compassion

Egon Schiele

My four grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century. They settled in New York City and, like so many immigrants of their generation, brought with them not just traditions, but a sense of what mattered most in life. My family wasn’t particularly religious— my father seemed almost devoted to atheism— but there were still echoes of Jewish values in our home, especially the ones that didn’t require a synagogue to live by.

When I think of Judaism in my childhood, it wasn’t prayers or Torah that defined it. It was food: bagels and lox on Sunday mornings, kasha varnishkes, stuffed cabbage, and chicken noodle soup that could cure anything—or at least, that’s what we believed. By the mid-’60s I’d gone vegetarian, and with that, even those connections to Jewish life began to fade.

But some things never left me. Things my grandfather taught me— not just in words, but in the way he lived and taught be by example. One of those things was rachmanus—  compassion. The ability to see another person’s suffering and respond not with judgment, but with care. That was Judaism to him. Not ritual, not dogma— just that simple and difficult thing: kindness when someone needs it most.

Fast forward to now. As you may know, I’m recovering from Whipple surgery for pancreatic cancer. It’s brutal. The pain, the weakness, the endless logistics of post-surgical life— it inexorably wears you down in ways you don’t expect. I’ve been dealing with a parade of home health care providers, and I wish I could say most of them have been great. The truth? A lot of them are impatient, frustrated, sometimes even cruel. You call for help and instead get someone barking at you, like you’re the problem for needing care in the first place.

And then— there’s Jasmine. When Jasmine calls, I actually smile. Because I know it’s going to be different. I know she’ll take the time to make sure I understand what she’s saying. I know that if I’m confused, she’ll explain it again, patiently, in plain language. I know she’s going to try to solve the problem— not create a new one. She makes me feel like I matter, like I’m still human. And in the middle of pain and exhaustion, that means everything.

That’s rachmanus. That’s the word that’s been in my head all week. The thing my grandfather believed in. The thing I want to believe still exists in this world— even when so many forces seem determined to crush it.

Just before I went into the hospital, I had a conversation with an old friend of mine, a member of Congress, a very good and decent man. He told me his office was working on a statement that might help extricate him from the Israeli/AIPAC nightmare in Gaza. When I got back from the hospital, he called again— this time to tell me he had a serious chronic illness. He didn’t have a statement though. It wasn’t done. He was in pain. He almost seemed to be asking for rachmanus himself. That conversation is part of what made me want to write this post today.

This week Scott Prosterman reflected on why Democratic leadership has “shown such reluctance to take effective legislative action to halt the flow of arms and military supplies to Israel, given the Netanyahu government’s orchestrated genocide and starvation in Gaza? Despite the overwhelming consensus among grassroots Democrats, the Democratic National Committee just last week shot down a resolution to impose an arms embargo on Israel, halt military aid to the country and support a Palestinian state. The party leadership is in denial over how much of an albatross the Gaza War is around the party’s neck. Silence over Gaza likely contributed to Kamala Harris’ defeat in the 2024 Presidential Election, costing her enthusiasm especially among young voters… “ It could get worse— including for my friend.

And that’s what keeps coming back to me: rachmanus. That sense of responsibility to see suffering and not look away, to act— not out of fear, not out of calculation, but out of basic human decency.

What I see in Gaza right now— the relentless bombing, the starvation, the ethnic cleansing, displacement, the genocide— is the absolute negation of rachmanus. It’s the erasure of compassion as a guiding principle. And what I see from too many political leaders here at home, including people I admire, is silence or equivocation in the face of that suffering. Too many people in positions of power seem to have forgotten it. And when a people who once taught the world about compassion turn their backs on it, the loss isn’t just political; it’s moral. Kafka imagined a world where human beings were trapped in vast, impersonal systems that neither saw nor cared about their suffering. Thinking about his work  now, from a bed lined with pill bottles and home health instructions, I understand that terror in a way I never did before. It’s not just the hospital corridors and the insurance forms— it’s the feeling that you’ve become a case instead of a person. That your pain is just another item on someone’s checklist.

That’s why rachmanus matters. I can’t solve Gaza. I can barely manage my own recovery. But I know this: if we can’t find a way back to rachmanus— if we let ourselves become the world Kafka warned about— then all the surgeries and the policies and the resolutions won’t matter. Because the soul will have gone out of it. And without that, what’s the point of surviving at all?

And then, there’s the opposite of rachmanus— a memory of dread that still makes me clench inside. It happened just a couple of days after surgery. I was tethered to tubes and wires, too weak and attached to the wall to get out of bed, when I felt the urgent need to use the bathroom. I rang the buzzer. The attendant said the nurse would come. I waited. The urgency grew. No one came. I waited longer— sweating, panicking—still no one. 

And then it was too late. 

By the time the nurse finally appeared, I was lying in my own bodily fluids, feeling more humiliated than I had in my entire life. She looked at me with disgust and said, “This is my assistant’s fault— she was out to lunch.” I was stunned. Then she added, “Don’t urinate. I need to take a measurement first.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It wasn’t just neglect— it was the absence of the most basic human decency. 

That’s the world without rachmanus.