Jewish Life Program Essay

Healing the Soul, Healing the World

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By Rachel Cowan
Director, Jewish Life Program

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In January 1996, Harvard Medical School sponsored a conference on Spirituality and Healing in Medicine. For two-and-a-half days, over 900 doctors, nurses, social workers, and therapists paid rapt attention to speakers from the major faith traditions and to doctors discussing the role of religious faith in medical care. The conference was so successful that two more are planned for 1997. The popularity of the conference was attributed to growing awareness in the United States that doctors and medicine, though absolutely necessary, are not in themselves sufficient for the healing of those who are ill and their families. Advances in mind/body medicine, popularized by Bill Moyers in his television series "Healing and the Mind," have shown that mental attitudes affect recovery. And increasingly, Americans are finding that attention to the spirit also bolsters healing.

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Jewish renewal holds out the possibility of spiritual revitalization, a strengthened commitment to social justice, and a warm invitation to Jews who have been alienated from the Jewish community.

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Because of the Foundation's support for Jewish healing as well as the health program's work in mind/body medicine, I was invited to speak on Judaism and healing. When the Foundation began its work in this area, back in 1991, most people in the Jewish community thought the concept a foreign one. Jews believe in medicine, they said, not in healing. Healing seemed a dangerous word, an intrusion of fundamentalist Christian revivalism or New Age crystals into our culture and world view. Gradually, however, through the work of the National Center for Jewish Healing and Ruach Ami, the UJA-Federation-supported Bay Area Center for Jewish Healing, there are now Jewish healing centers developing in at least eight cities and healing services in hundreds of synagogues. Debby Friedman's powerful misheberakh prayer for healing is part of the Shabbat liturgy in countless synagogues, and is sung at UJA-Federation meetings and Jewish Family Services spiritual support groups for those who are ill and their caregivers.

This essay attempts to describe what Jewish healing means in 1996, and to connect the threads of personal healing, the healing of the soul, with a commitment to spirituality and to social justice, the healing of the world.

Healing the Soul

When we are sick, we rely on doctors for the best medical care available, but we also understand that healing takes place in the mind and soul, in the context of a caring community. Our Jewish tradition supplies the patient, the family, and the community with resources for lifting spirits and for bringing the sacred into the ordinary. In the ritual of prayer, many realize an opening of the heart, an expression of aspirations, a communication with God, a role in the ongoing drama of the Jewish people, an echo of an ancient text, a vocalization of a holy language. A Jewish theology, ever-evolving and understood differently by different groups of Jews, can provide a spiritual framework in which we can locate our own journey.

To understand modern Jewish spiritual care, we must understand the traditional ideas and practices that have evolved over 3,000 years of Jewish life. The rabbis of our classic texts, in trying to understand why good people suffer, taught that illness was a "punishment of love" from God, a condition imposed on us to teach us to change our ways. Few Jews hold those beliefs today. And yet, many discover that the experience of illness can teach us important values about life. Jewish healing is an approach to help patients find meaning in their lives, even when ill, even when facing death. Judaism teaches that we today, just as the Israelites to whom Moses spoke, are commanded to choose life. When we are sick, we sometimes feel too discouraged to believe we can do that. Jewish healing rituals and practices help us find the inner strength to go on, to become active partners in improving the physical and mental condition of our lives. They help the ill person emerge from the feeling of isolation and helplessness that illness imposes on so many. And for some, they ease the transition to death. Jews are discovering that they can turn to Judaism for rituals and practices, developed over the centuries, which help them find strength and maintain hope. The Jewish healing movement involves rabbis, chaplains, and medical caregivers who connect Jews with these practices. They work also to revise and renew these rituals, liturgies, and texts to give them a voice the modern Jew can hear. Here are some of these healing tools:

• The niggun, the wordless melody, which can be sung or chanted over and over, individually, with a partner, a family or a community, freeing the mind from fear and tension, activating the relaxation response, energizing the inner spirit.
  
• The berakha, the blessing, the special form of Jewish prayer. We are taught that we should say 100 blessings a day, to heighten our sense of God's presence in the world, and our appreciation for the gift of life we have received. We recite blessings when we rise, and when we go to sleep, when we see a beautiful tree, a wise person, a rainbow, or when we eat bread, or light candles to usher in Shabbat. With these few words we connect our daily life with the divine, allowing the sacred to infuse the ordinary. In the morning, we say two blessings that are especially relevant to those who are ill. One is for the gift of our soul. The other is for the gift of our body--we recite it after going to the bathroom in the morning, praising God that our veins, arteries, glands are functioning. This blessing when said consciously by people who are ill enables them to feel their body as holy, and to be grateful for those parts that are still functioning. We also say a berakha when we receive bad news, acknowledging God's presence even in death. In Jewish tradition, most of the important healing work is done in community. Friends and family are essential to the healing of the individual. No patient can recover alone.
  
• The primary vehicle for Jewish healing is a communal practice called bikkur holim, visiting the sick. As God visited the sick, so should we. According to Jewish law, we are commanded to visit. This practice is given such importance in tradition that one who does not visit is seen as a shedder of blood. The visit assures adequate physical care for the patient; it is psychologically strengthening in and of itself; and it is spiritually healing.
  
• Another communal approach to healing is the reading of the misheberakh prayer in synagogue. It asks for refuat ha nefesh (healing of the soul) and refuat ha guf (healing of the body). The prayer seeks God's intervention in the patient's physical and spiritual care, and serves to alert the community to the patient's condition, mobilizing people to respond with food, with childcare, with visits, with prayers.
  
• Tzedakah, or the giving of charity, also links the individual to the community. Whether or not a patient believes that the giving of tzedakah invokes God's intervention, it certainly helps her look beyond her personal suffering. One person's illness tears the fabric of the world. By giving tzedakah, the patient helps to mend the holes in the fabric of the world, and in so doing heals the sense of powerlessness and isolation that so often comes with illness. A heart expands instead of contracting.

The Jewish healing movement stimulates Jews across the country and in Israel to think of ways to renew these practices, to publicize them, and to bring them back to the center of Jewish community life where they belong. Jewish healing, as practiced today, takes many forms. What they all have in common is a foundation in traditional texts or rituals, a connection with community, provision for material needs, and an encouragement of the expressions of the heart and the soul.

The Foundation's work in Jewish healing expresses our interest in helping to restore a spiritual richness to Jewish life. The National Center for Jewish Healing will run seminars in rabbinical schools. Synagogue 2000, a project on synagogue transformation, working with the Reform and Conservative movements, will work with eight congregations from both movements to transform their worship services and to become congregations with integrated healing programs. CLAL, the Center for Learning and Leadership, has developed a curriculum on Judaism and healing that provides the textual and intellectual basis for this work, which will educate American Jewish leadership about the spiritual depth of our tradition and its relevance to modern Jews. It is our hope that UJA-Federations, interested in promoting Jewish continuity and understanding that Judaism can become more relevant to thousands of Jews who are ill and their families and medical caregivers, will realize the value of funding local healing centers, chaplaincy programs, and hospice work.

Healing the World

The Foundation's interest in healing the soul is balanced with a commitment to helping the Jewish community carry out its central task, healing the world. We see part of this work as repairing rifts in the Jewish world, and part as mending injustice in society.

We have supported the rebuilding of Jewish communities in Russia and Ukraine. Last fall, visiting the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia, I witnessed the repairing of a devastating rift in the life of the Jews of that town. For decades, no one had been allowed to practice religion. Three years ago, seven Jewish women, all professionals, doctors and engineers, got together to form a group. They had no higher motive than socializing, but slowly their purpose changed. With support from the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency, and the Jewish Community Development Fund, a project supported by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, they organized a Sunday school, held two Friday night services, and started a small Yiddish newspaper. They started providing home care and friendly visits to more than 25 home-bound elderly. They enriched themselves by rebuilding community, by helping others. In Russia, the return of Jewish life, which had been virtually erased, is nothing short of a miracle.

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The Foundation supports rabbis, synagogues, and doctors who are exploring the world of Jewish healing--reviving traditional texts and practices, exploring the spiritual dimensions of life-threatening illnesses, and offering comfort to people in pain and to their caregivers.

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The renewal of Jewish life in America represents another form of healing. To counter the pessimism that has deepened in the wake of the National Jewish Population Study of 1990, one can point to hopeful trends. Many Jews whose connection to Judaism and to the Jewish community had been torn are now observing Jewish traditions and rituals. New doors are opening to those whose participation had been minimized--women, gay men and women, single parents, young adults, intermarried couples. Now we must offer them opportunities for genuine participation and leadership. Organizations such as the Jewish Outreach Institute are rising to the challenge of finding ways to encourage the intermarried to be actively involved in Judaism. Their spiritual enthusiasm enriches the community.

Tikkun olam, repair of the world, is the important Jewish value placed on healing the rifts in the fabric of our society. Organizations such as Hillel: The Foundation for Campus Jewish Life and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston are creating programs to involve young adults in social justice activities, often working in alliance with African-American and Latino community organizations. Through these programs, students can express their Jewish identities while taking an active role in a democratic, multicultural society. The Jewish Metropolitan Organizing Project in Minneapolis, Minnesota, strengthens Jewish participation in public policy debates and community organizing activities. The New Israel Fund takes the quest for social justice to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and parts of Israel where its projects have created a grassroots movement for citizen empowerment and participation in building a more just and democratic society.

Healing the Soul, Healing the World

In the Foundation's view, tikkun ha nefesh, repair of the soul, cannot develop fully without tikkun olam, repair of the world. In our private lives we can dedicate ourselves to strengthening our spiritual lives--we can take on more Jewish practices in our daily lives--both those of personal observance and those of social obligation--attention to justice and loving-kindness. We can make time to strengthen our communities. We can simultaneously go deeper inside, and extend our influence more widely in the world around us. For us both tikkun olam and tikkun ha nefesh are central to Jewish identity.