The shortest Hebrew prayer is found in this week’s Torah portion; it consists of five words, El na, r’fah na la. Yes, it sounds like Sha-na-na of decades ago, but it is the prayer offered by Moses to heal his sister Miriam when she is struck with some kind of skin disease. “God, please, heal her, please,” also five words in English. By itself, that’s interesting inasmuch as Hebrew phrases are usually much shorter than their English translation.
But, yes, I digress.
Miriam and Aaron had spoken negatively about their brother Moses marriage to a Cushite (read “black”) woman. God was obviously no racist, furious at the siblings’ negativity towards this woman.
Now I could go in two directions here, maybe more, but I’ve been thinking about our healing prayers.
As I previously mentioned we have prayers of petition in our weekday services but not on Shabbat. We cannot ask God to work if God commands that we don’t work (what rabbis do obviously doesn’t count…and who says we work!). We can, however, ask God to heal. Thus the mi sheberach is sung and we add the names of loved ones who are ill of body, mind or spirit. It seems that the prayer has become as much a part of our liturgy as have, for example only, the Sh’ma, the Torah reading, Aleinu and Kaddish.
While there are a number of beautiful melodies composed by cantors, music directors and song leaders especially of the Reform movement, many believe that Debbie Friedman’s version was the impetus for the popularity of healing prayers. Hers has become virtually a mantra, the melody being almost more important than the prayer itself. I was told that when Ms. Friedman attended the last URJ Biennial before her untimely death, all 4,000-plus attendees sang her version to her.
It should be noted that healing prayers in our tradition were not born with Debbie Friedman. In fact, there remains today the shell of a movement called “Jewish Science,” our equivalent of Christian Science that was extremely popular in the early part of the twentieth century. Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein, a Reform rabbi ordained in 1916 – and, having been born in Lithuania, the first Eastern European to be ordained by Hebrew Union College – formed the Society for Jewish Science in 1921, and following his death in the 1938, his wife Tehillah took over. While not ordained herself, she took over his rabbinic role in the Society.
His seminal book, The Healing of the Soul, “shows the effect of the Jewish faith in daily life, as well as how to pray when one is sick and how to conduct oneself when one is well.” Interestingly both Morris and Tehillah had nothing on which to hang their hat in a Jewish context until they began their Jewish Science movement, so along with many other Jews at the time, they were attracted to Christian Science. The theology itself didn’t sit well with them though the philosophy did. In one tract written by Tehillah, she wrote “Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind (sic!) to share it.” She also wrote – and here you’ll see the problem – “The purpose of Christian Science is to turn the thought of all mankind from sin and distress to a better knowledge of that law of God which heals sin and distress. The spirit of Truth seeks out good where it may be found…” When there was an uproar that a Jewish couple, a rabbi at that, should advocate a Christian position, the Lichtenstein’s founded the Jewish equivalent. It was a small but powerful movement in its heyday; it’s still around but as a shell of its former self.
I’ll have more to write about this topic, but not for a while. The history and controversy of Jewish Science is most interesting.
(Speaking of Jews and health, three guys are in bad shape. When their doctor makes the rounds she goes over to the first patient, a Catholic, and explains his dire situation, offering to grant his final wish. “Get me a priest so I can make confession,” the patient says. The next patient, a Protestant, responds to the doctor, “I’d like to see my family and say goodbye.” The doctor goes to the third patient, an elderly Jewish man. “And what’s your last wish?” “My last wish,” the old man whispers, “is to see another doctor.”)