“It’s a miracle what a little soap, water, and human decency can do sometimes.” Dana Evans, the head charge nurse on HBO’s The Pitt, offers these words while caring for a patient named John Digby—or just Digby, as he tells the staff to call him.
Digby is an unhoused man who arrives at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center with an infection beneath his cast. Throughout the show’s second season, Dana and her student nurse, Emma, attend not only to his medical needs, but to his basic human ones.
They give him a shower—really, a makeshift hose-down in the back alley—and a set of clean clothes. Dana cuts his hair, and Emma shaves his face. Digby could do it himself once his cast is removed, but Emma does it for him anyway, giving him the rare luxury of being cared for. By the time they finish, Digby looks like a new man.
We know, in our own smaller ways, what a difference those basic acts can make: the shower after a long day in the sun, the restorative nap, the snack that makes us realize we are not terrible people who snapped at our spouse for no reason. We were just hungry.
“Ah, I feel human again.” We have all felt that return to ourselves.
And lately, many of us have been longing for it. We have been trapped in one long, exhausting day. But there is no nap, no hug, dare I say, not even a satisfying enough snack that will fully restore us.
We carry the weight of relentless news and violence, political cruelty and polarization, the ongoing trauma surrounding Israel and Gaza, rising antisemitism, the pressure to have an unwavering position about every issue, and the numbing effects of screens and social media.
We are holding all that alongside personal grief, the challenges of parenthood and work, and the ordinary exhaustion of being alive in the year 2026.
So, what would it take to feel human again?
In our Rosh Hashanah liturgy, we proclaim, Hayom harat olam—today is the birth of the world. Rabbinic tradition associates Rosh Hashanah specifically with the creation of adam, the first human being. Rosh Hashanah is therefore not only the birthday of the world; it is an annual reconsideration of what it means to be human.
Jewish tradition notices that Hebrew has four different words for a human being: adam, ish, gever, and enosh, and understands them as expressing different qualities or levels of human life. Drawing on that tradition, I want us to hear in them four truths about what it means to be human.
Adam: We are sacred.
In Genesis, adam, the first human being, is created from adamah, earth, and yet also b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. We are dirt and divinity at once: flawed, finite, and sacred. Our imperfections are not evidence that we are unworthy. We are deserving of love, respect, and dignity—not only as our best selves, but as our whole selves.
Ish: We are singular.
At the beginning of Exodus, the Torah names Jacob’s children as they enter Egypt, “each person—ish—together with their household” (Exodus 1:1). Sforno explains that each was worthy of being named because each possessed a distinct character. They entered Egypt together, but none was interchangeable. Ish reminds us that every person has a name, an identity, and a contribution uniquely their own.
Gever: We are resilient.
Gever shares a root with gevurah, strength. The prophet Jeremiah describes the gever who trusts in God as a tree planted beside water, which continues to bear fruit even in a year of drought (Jeremiah 17:7–8). Resilience does not mean emerging unchanged. It means remaining rooted enough to grow again, honoring the shape our struggles have given us and recognizing that we are still here.
Enosh: We are vulnerable.
Enosh names the fragility that no amount of strength can erase. Psalm 8 asks, “Mah enosh ki tizkerenu?”— “What is a human being that You are mindful of them?” Beneath the vastness of the heavens, we are small and vulnerable, yet God has made us “little less than divine” and crowned us with glory and honor. Our vulnerability does not diminish our dignity. Our lives are precious not despite our fragility, but because of it.
So, what does it take to feel human again?
The truth is, these four aspects of our humanity have not disappeared. What is happening is that we are losing the ability to recognize and tend to them. Exhaustion, shame, fear, prejudice, and judgment can obscure the wholeness of every person—both in someone else and in ourselves.
These are Hillel’s ancient questions in another form: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?”
If I am not for myself….
What part of my own humanity has gone untended? Do I need to remember my sacred worth, reclaim some neglected part of myself, find the strength to begin again, or admit that I am vulnerable and need help?
If I am only for myself…
Whose humanity have I failed to see? Who is the person whose sacredness becomes hardest for me to remember—the person whose politics enrage me, whose choices I cannot understand, whose suffering I have learned to scroll past, or whose needs feel like one demand too many?
It is easy to affirm that every person is created in God’s image when “every person” remains an abstraction. It is harder when the divine image belongs to someone who has hurt, frightened, or infuriated us. Recognizing their humanity does not mean excusing harm, abandoning judgment, or placing ourselves in danger. It means refusing to let what we condemn in another person become all that we are willing to see of them.
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter taught that another person’s physical needs are our spiritual needs. Our spiritual work is measured not only by how carefully we tend our own souls, but by whether we can see the person standing before us clearly—and allow that recognition to be reflected in how we treat them.
In The Pitt, Dana, Emma, and the other hospital staff do not do this perfectly. At times, they see only Digby’s infected cast, his homelessness, his smell, or the additional work required to care for him. They make assumptions and snide remarks. Their exhaustion and fallibility help explain these failures, but they do not excuse them.
And perhaps that is what makes their care so instructive. Human decency does not require us to become flawless people who never judge, lose patience, or get it wrong. It requires us to notice when we have stopped seeing the whole person before us—and to look again.
Slowly, through ordinary acts of care, Digby is treated not as a problem to be managed, but as a person worthy of time, attention, and tenderness.
After his haircut and shave, Emma holds a mirror up to Digby, and his eyes well with tears. “I haven’t looked like this in a long time,” he says. Not since his daughter’s wedding.
When he looks in the mirror, perhaps he sees beyond the labels thrust upon him: unhoused, unwanted, unclean, useless. Earlier, when Dana calls him “Mr. Digby,” he corrects her: “Just Digby.” But now, perhaps he sees Mr. John Digby looking back—not a label, but a whole person: a father who loves his daughter and remembers dancing with her at her wedding, proud and joyful. He sees more than his circumstances. He sees a whole person. He sees himself.
The soap and water did not make Mr. Digby human again. He was human all along. The miracle was that, however imperfectly, someone chose to see him as a whole person, and in turn help him to see himself the same way.
We will not always see one another, or ourselves, clearly. Exhaustion, fear, anger, and assumption will cloud our vision. We will get it wrong, then get it right, and then get it wrong again. Growth is not linear. The task is not to see perfectly, but to keep waking up: to stop, open our eyes, and look again.
That is what this season asks of us. To look again at the person you have dismissed. To look again at the suffering you have learned not to notice. To look again at the part of yourself you have decided is unworthy of love. Beneath every label and every failure is an adam, an ish, a gever, and an enosh: a human being who is sacred, singular, resilient, and vulnerable.
May 5787 be a year in which we slow down enough to see that humanity clearly. And whenever we lose sight of it, to find the courage to look again.
