By Nancy L.
I first learned about the amen effect when I heard Rabbi Sharon Brous on The Ezra Klein Show podcast. She came on the show as part of Ezra’s series on the Israel/Gaza crisis. The episode ran in early November: a time close enough to October 7 and the launch of the war on Gaza that the pain was acute and fresh, not the dull background ache at ongoing catastrophe that it has become since then.
On the podcast she told the story of a pilgrimage ritual to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, from the time of the Second Temple (586 BCE – 70 AD). Here’s how she told the story again in a New York Times guest essay that appeared a few months later:
Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.
Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.
And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”
“My father died,” a person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.” Or: “My child is sick. We’re awaiting the test results.”
Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.
These kindhearted connections with a stranger in pain happened in the ritual space of this temple pilgrimage thousands of years ago. In 2023, sitting alone and cold in my car at dusk in an Oakland CVS parking lot, unable to turn off the episode, I imagined walking as part of a crowd under a bright sun, witnessing the grace of ordinary people blessing the brokenhearted. What a gift to those who turned right as they entered the plaza: the ritual gave them a way to reach out to those who are suffering, when crossing such a distance can often feel impossible. Thinking of so many living right now in the grip of overwhelming anguish, I longed for such a gift: for a way to show up for my fellow humans in this profound way.
Rabbi Sharon calls this “the amen effect: sincere, tender encounters that help us forge new spiritual and neural pathways by reminding us that our lives and our destinies are entwined.”
You may be wondering what the amen effect has to do with phonebanking. A lot, it turns out.
Like pretty much everyone who has ever been asked to phonebank, I resisted at first, and certainly wasn’t a fan. I got thrown into the deep end with a predictive auto-dialer in 2016 making calls for Hillary, my heart racing as I waited for the dialer to cycle through numbers on the back end, knowing that a person answering the phone would be sprung on me at any moment without warning. But in 2018 – still not a fan – I was back on the phones because, as Jon (resignedly) answered Akilah in this phonebank tutorial video when she asked him if he wanted to call some strangers: “I don’t think we have a choice.”
I clearly remember the moment I started warming to the idea of calling strangers. I was calling California Democrats in a battleground House district to make sure they returned their mail-in ballots. I reached a woman who at first seemed irritable and uninterested in voting. She had no idea where her ballot was and didn’t have time to look for it. I don’t remember how we turned the corner together, but she ended up telling me about her daughter as she rummaged through a pile of mail. She was sure her ballot was gone but shouted “found it!” in triumph after a few minutes. In the meantime, while all I did (pretty much) was listen and make encouraging noises, she talked herself into needing to vote for her daughter’s future. As we said goodbye she thanked me, telling me she wouldn’t have mailed in her ballot if I hadn’t called.
I was hooked.
In 2020 I took my phonebanking skills to a new level by attending trainings on “deep canvassing,” which the Deep Canvass Institute defines as “talking with strangers – in person or over the phone – about hopes, fears and aspirations. We reach across differences to build connections and trust through conversation.” On every call to voters (whether I’m on an official deep canvass phonebank or not), I try to use these skills to build connection. Or, as I heard it phrased beautifully once on a deep canvass phonebank, I try to embody the spirit of radical hospitality.
Every call made during a phonebank is what relationship researcher John Gottman calls a “bid for connection.” These bids are “the fundamental unit of emotional communication,” and those receiving the bids can either turn toward, turn away, or turn against. That mom in Southern California started to turn away from my bid, but then shifted course and turned toward. Plenty of people turn away from phonebankers: hanging up right away or asking to be taken off the call list. In rare cases, people turn against phonebankers, responding to our bids with hostility.
When I phonebank, I put myself in a “radical hospitality frame of mind,” which means that I’m ready for any response to my bids for connection. This frame of mind helps me to feel empathy with the people who turn away – who knows what they have going on? – and their hangups roll off my back. And I get a tiny burst of joy each time someone turns toward me.
My favorite calls, though, are the ones that start out with a turn against and end with a turn toward.
I was calling into Pennsylvania in 2020, asking people to vote for Susan Wild, the Democrat running for a battleground House seat. A woman picked up the phone and as soon as I greeted her, she snapped: “I’m sick of getting these calls! I’m not hanging up on you – but only because I want to talk to someone and tell them to go take a hike!” Something about bringing a hike into the conversation made me chuckle. I responded warmly: “Well I guess that someone is me today!” That seemed to disarm her enough to make her stay on the phone to complain more about all the phone calls she was getting, and to tell me how much she wanted to throw her phone against the wall. I sympathized with her, letting her know she was not alone in being tired of getting these calls – but we’re calling folks anyway because it’s just such an important race.
“Actually,” she said, “I don’t hate Susan Wild.” Now we were getting somewhere.
“Really?” I asked, “what do you like best about her?” And then she proceeded to talk herself into getting out and voting for Susan. I didn’t need to say another word.
As the call wound down and we moved toward saying goodbye, she thanked me for talking with her. “It felt good to get that off my chest,” she told me. And then right before she hung up, she said with what I imagine was a twinkle: “enjoy your hike!” That really made me laugh.
I have so many wonderful phonebanking memories where that one came from, but this conversation remains one of my favorites. And now that I have learned from Rabbi Sharon about the amen effect, I have added another layer of meaning to the memory. This Pennsylvania voter might have been someone who – if climbing the steps to the Temple Mount – would have turned left as she entered the plaza. She was clearly not happy. If I had turned right, I would have met her, looked into her eyes, and asked her what had happened to her. This is not how the conversation actually went, but perhaps – without knowing it – I did say “amen.” Using the radical hospitality skills I learned from deep canvassing, I was conveying to her: “bring me your anger and frustration – I see it and I see you.” In fact she made a clumsy bid for connection when she told me she wanted to talk to someone to tell them to go take a hike. And instead of turning away by moving on to the next call (which I almost did), I turned toward.
It was a small thing, this one conversation with this one voter. But according to Rabbi Sharon, the amen effect doesn’t need to be big in order to matter. As she says: “Showing up for one another doesn’t require heroic gestures. It means training ourselves to approach, even when our instinct tells us to withdraw. … Err on the side of presence.” She says that with “small, tender gestures,” “we maintain the ability, even in the dark of night, to find our way to one another. We need this, especially now.”
And so, after reading her New York Times essay and after crying my way through her book The Amen Effect in a single night, I think of phonebanking now as a sacred ritual of reaching out to strangers to connect authentically, and as a way of acknowledging that my destiny and theirs are entwined. (Perhaps it’s no accident that the predictive dialer term for when someone picks up the phone is “a connect.”) I am entering the plaza and turning right, because today I feel strong enough to hop on a phonebank. Many of the people I call will answer my bid by turning toward me. They will walk to the right with me, cheerfully telling me they will vote – and promising to ask their friends and family to vote too. Others will walk in the opposite direction. They may turn away, but I can bless them anyway. Those who turn against? They are in real pain. Even if we don’t part as friends (as I did with the Pennsylvania voter), I will make sure they know that I see them, that they are not alone.
Back in that cold CVS parking lot listening to Rabbi Sharon, I’d wished that I could be part of the ancient ritual in Jerusalem, turning right and circling counterclockwise in the sunny plaza. But that ritual is as close as any small, tender gesture toward another human – and as close as the next phonebank.
Want to come to a phonebank and amplify the amen effect? Join Nancy on the IEB Call Crew! You can add your name to our interest form here. And the Call Crew is going to the CADEM phonebanks for Adam Gray: sign up here!
