Over the last few years, whether because of the proliferation, R”l, of illness, or simply the swelling membership of shuls, something has quietly changed about the mi shebeirach for cholim.

I am not criticizing it. I am just commenting.

In the traditional version, the gabbai begins the mi shebeirach and a small line forms. People shuffle toward him, leaning in close as he lowers his head to catch the name being whispered. Something important is being transferred from one person’s worry to another person’s tefillah. The person would say the name and the gabbai would repeat it, inserting it into the proper place. In many shuls today, that line no longer forms. Instead, the gabbai reads the words aloud, and when he reaches “es hacholeh,” he simply stops. At that moment, everyone with a name on their list mumbles it quietly, privately, into the pause. It’s like a “fill in the blank” on a puzzle. A few seconds later, the gabbai continues, “Ba’avur she…,” and in unison, the room answers amein.

Where I daven, at the Yeshiva Gedolah of the Five Towns, they still do it the old-fashioned way. It takes longer. People approach the gabbaim with lists, sometimes five or more names deep, and there are four or more mi shebeirach zuggers working in parallel to move through what can be scores of names without finishing the davening at the same time as the local shteibel that started an hour later.

It also lends itself to lessons. One of the most striking comes when a fellow approaches the gabbai with no paper in hand. No list. No folded note. He simply begins, from memory, rattling off six or seven names in rapid succession. And these are not the Dinah bas Leah variety of names, the placeholders people use when they can’t remember. These are full names. Chaya Devorah Malka bas Aliza Shaindel Sarah. Chaim Alter Yehoshua ben Miriam Fraidel Devorah. He goes on for a good forty-five seconds, name after name, none of them seemingly related to him or to each other, delivered without hesitation, without notes, as if these people’s tzaros are embedded in his memory as permanently as the names of his own children.

The last time I encountered that kind of memory born entirely from caring was at my uncle Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky’s table, where the l’chaim before a meal was never just a l’chaim. He and his rebbetzin, zichronah livrocha, would precede it with a litany, “L’chaim, refuah sheleimah to…,” and then the names would come, one after another, refuos, shidduchim, the whole spectrum of what Yidden carry and bring to the gedolim who carry it with them. Always. Without being asked. Without a list.

Recently, I was standing near the bimah, waiting to submit my own names, when I overheard someone submitting theirs. The name was familiar, though it was a different person entirely, someone who shared the name of a relative of mine. I began to think about it. About the hundreds of names out there that are not really names, but people. People like my own relative, who are seeking a refuah, a yeshuah, or whatever form of salvation fits their particular need.

It got me thinking about a few things. Three, to be precise.

The first was a story with the Bluzhever Rebbe. A fellow in the Bluzhever Shteibel had yahrtzeit, walked up to the amud, set the large siddur aside, and reached for his own smaller one. The Bluzhever Rebbe stopped him.

“You see that siddur on the shtender. Open it. Inside there is a name. Someone dedicated that siddur in the zechus of the person whose name is inside it. Everyone who davens from that siddur is giving that person’s neshomah an aliyah. Use that siddur.”

That story has resonated with me for a very long time. So much so that I make a point of looking at the dedication page of every sefer I use. I always wonder, for instance, who Yitzchok Yair, whose name appears on the standard Nusach Ashkenaz ArtScroll siddur used in botei knesses the world over, was. What zechus did he have to be associated with tefillah so ubiquitously in this modern era? What zechus does he continue to accumulate from the countless tefillos emanating from a siddur that bears his name?

We forget, far too easily, that behind every name, there is a neshomah. A real person.

In many day schools, and even in some public schools, there is a program called Names, Not Numbers. For the broader world, it aims to combat antisemitism by connecting students with Holocaust survivors and veterans. For Jewish children, it tries to make the point that behind the number tattooed on an arm, there was a person, a story, a life. But truth be told, it goes deeper than names. There was a neshomah behind the name. A person who endured nisyonos, mesirus nefesh, loss, and pain. It is not even about names. It is about neshamos.

I once spoke for mechanchim after Shacharis in a hotel that had its own shul. The aron kodesh had a paroches with an inscription in English. It was quite explicit: The aron had been dedicated in memory of a young man—I will call him Jack Bergerman—who had been killed in a car accident.

Everyone in that room had walked past that aron kodesh. Everyone had seen the inscription. When I began my remarks, I asked: “Has anyone here ever heard of Jack Bergerman? Does anyone know how he died?”

They looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

Of course, I went on to explain. But the silence in that room said everything. We had all been davening in front of an aron kodesh given in this young man’s memory, and not one of us had paused long enough to wonder who he was.

There are millions of names out there. On plaques and dedications, on the inside covers of siddurim, on parochos in hotel shuls, mumbled into the pause of a mi shebeirach on Shabbos morning. Each one has a neshomah and a story behind it. We cannot adopt them all. But maybe the next time you hear or see a name, a random name, the name of a stranger, you can pause for a moment. Hold it. Wonder about it. Carry it a little further than the parking lot.

You may not get a public acknowledgment for caring about a neshomah you never knew. But somewhere, a siddur is sitting on a shtender, quietly waiting for someone to open the cover.  Open it and think about the one whose name is the reason that the siddur is in the shul.

Just Saying.