Mortality, illness and suffering are an inescapable part of the human condition. When we are afflicted by disease, pain, injury or loss of bodily function, we seek healing and restoration to health. We enlist the skill of the physician to lessen our pain, to arrest or reverse the course of our disease, to repair injuries and to bolster our bodies’ capacity to heal themselves and to fight off harm. Those who are religiously committed take the opportunity, both in their private devotions and at their places of worship, to pray for their own healing and that of their loved ones.
During this past week, several events in my own life have focused my attention on these themes of illness and healing. I underwent outpatient surgery as the first step in a process that will hopefully restore some of my sense of hearing in my right ear. I conducted a ceremony for the dedication of a monument at the gravesite of my beloved stepdaughter-in-law, who died last year after a long and courageous struggle with cancer; and I was asked to officiate, along with two of my rabbinic colleagues, at the funeral of my longtime family physician, Dr. Stuart Yaffe, who practiced medicine in Springfield for more than a half century and was a model of compassion, caring and professional skill.
A prayer for healing that quotes the words of Jeremiah 17:14 (“heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed”) but changes the prophet’s singular to the plural (“heal us”) is part of our daily liturgy, and the worshipper may insert into that prayer the names of those for whose healing he/she is praying. In that text God is referred to as “a faithful and merciful God of healing.”
During Sabbath services many Jewish congregations now include a communal prayer for healing. Congregants mention aloud the names of friends and family members for whom they are praying, following which the worshippers rise to sing together. Most frequently they join in singing Mi sheberach (“The one who blessed”), a contemporary rewording of a traditional prayer for healing written and set to music by Debbie Friedman, a prolific composer of Jewish music for congregations, camps and youth groups, who struggled with chronic illness for the last decade of her life. The traditional text expresses the hope for “healing of body and healing of spirit,” while Friedman’s version substitutes the word “renewal” for “healing.” Healing is a renewal of the person that embraces not only the alleviation of our physical ailments but also involves the restoration of a spiritual and emotional sense of wholeness.
Prayer is not magic. Our most fervent prayers often do not bring about the outcome we seek. Prayer’s value is in connecting us in our thoughts with our dear ones, who often feel isolated by their illness, and in reminding us of God’s role in imparting wisdom and skill to the physician and medical personnel to treat illness and injury and in fashioning our bodies with the ability to recover and be healed from affliction. We can also help alleviate our dear one’s sense of isolation by fulfilling the mitzvah (religiously motivated good deed) of visiting the sick. Such a visit – if made with due consideration and common sense – is said by Jewish tradition to be therapeutic and to have the potential of removing some small portion of the patient’s illness.
All of our religious traditions, the Hebrew Scriptures included, contain tales of miraculous healing wrought by prophets and wonder workers. While not casting doubt on such stories, the rabbis of the Talmud taught that one is not to rely on miracles. God provides food and sustenance to all, but without the skill and knowledge of the farmer who grows the crops and the workers who harvest and process them we would go hungry. Similarly, we are not only permitted but obligated to make use of the best and most up-to-date knowledge science has amassed regarding health and wellness and of the expertise of those who can apply that knowledge for our benefit.
Pik’uach nefesh , the saving of life stands at the very apex of Jewish religious values and supersedes nearly every other religious obligation in our tradition. The work of the physician is honored as a partnership with God, the ultimate source of healing.
This article appears in Juneteenth 2025.
