Unexpected "ligion" in The Pitt

  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 

Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 

 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead,  and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NRSVue

Not long ago I wrote about a medical series called The Pitt which is about to conclude its first season. It is one of the few medical dramas physicians say gets it right in terms of what is unfolding in the ER to the point that some of them admit to being unsettled by what they see because it's so close to home.

Noah Wylie was in the popular ER series years ago as a green intern but now he's Dr Rabinovitch (Robby) the seemingly unflappable head of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital emergency room. Then, during a mass casualty event a death triggers memories that cause him to melt down away from the chaos, in what appears to be a room for children. 

He's found there by Dr. Whitaker, one of a group of newcomers, who is shocked to encounter Dr. Robby seemingly babbling a prayer. This turns out to be the Shema, a core prayer of Judaism for millennia. Although Robby is an agnostic he recited the prayer with his observant Jewish grandmother as a child and grasps on like a drowning man in the midst of a personal crisis. 

Farm boy Whitaker, labelled "Huckleberry" by another cynical newby, is supportive, eventually revealing that before medical school he studied theology to satisfy his devout Christian parents. He matter-of factly quotes from the book of Isaiah. Soon both of them have collected themselves and returned to the fray. 

It was powerful to have these zephyrs of religion waft into the gritty world of blood and gore and life-and-death decision-making. These scenes also served as reminders that in our secular milieu it is often the vestiges of religion that receive consideration in the arts and elsewhere. This brings to mind the beginning of Julian Barnes' non-fiction book on death entitled Nothing to Be Frightened Of where he observes  “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.” 

It would be great if there were more characters in novels and films who were devout without being nerdy or nutty but I'll settle for haunted and honest. Of course I was nerdy enough to speculate on the references and search them out!

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint
    and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted,
31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40: 28-31 NRSVue