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Sept. 30, 2005
New Age meets old practice
Jewish healing movement finds its roots in traditional teachings.
RAHEL MUSLEAH
Ten years ago, on the morning of Aug. 1, Emily Benedek woke up
unable to see. For a month, she struggled with double vision, until
she recovered from what turned out to be Lyme disease. Two weeks
later, she opened the telephone book to the letter J and began her
journey back to Judaism.
"In time, I understood my lack of sight as a metaphor for my
exile," said Benedek, who has chronicled her spiritual journey
in a new book, Through the Unknown, Remembered Gate. "I
was so far from what was real and meaningful that I lost sight of
myself and everything else. I believe the cause of my illness was
a deep psychic confusion, a rupture from myself. What better anchor
than to reach for a tradition that has existed for 3,000 years."
The author of two books on the Native Americans of the southwest,
Benedek had been more familiar with Navajo ritual than Shabbat observance.
Raised in a family of "converts to America," she said
that, "Religious practice, if not our Jewish identity, trickled
out of the family generation by generation."
But, as Benedek immersed herself in Judaism, she discovered a sense
of peace. In addition to the course of antibiotic treatment and
the psychological work she chose to undertake, she found the power
of spirituality, especially from Jewish texts, central to her healing.
Today, she studies with the Orthodox, davens in a Conservative synagogue,
lives more like Reform and continues to strive towards more Jewish
observance. Benedek symbolizes a new generation seeking wholeness
through the nexus of mind, body and spirit.
Once considered on the fringe and relegated to the ohm-breathing,
crunchy granola crowd, the 10-year-old Jewish healing movement is
turning mainstream, cutting across denominational, age and gender
lines. Instead of looking outside the community to 12-step movements,
Buddhist meditation or Hindu ashrams, Jews are finding a path back
to Judaism in times of need, learning how to call upon God, tradition
and community in order to access their own inner strength.
Spiritual support groups run by rabbis and social workers are springing
up alongside study groups and conventional therapies in sacred spaces
and secular venues, and synagogues are working to transform themselves
into places of holiness where people can tell their stories and
find support. Jewish healing centres are setting up shop across
North America and healing services – held anywhere from once
a week to once a year – draw people confronting death and illness,
as well as those plagued by the spiritual emptiness of contemporary
life.
"Spirituality helps us heal by allowing us to reclaim our full
selves," said Carol Ochs, author of Our Lives as Torah:
Finding God in Our Own Stories and co-ordinator of graduate
studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in
New York (HUC-JIR). "Everyone in our society tries to tell
us who we are, in a trivializing way. We aren't simply our jobs,
we aren't simply our relationships. If we remember that we are created
in the image of God, our lives are about more than simply what we
do. Just our being is already an affirmation. That's what Shabbat
is all about: We can't work or create, yet we are still valuable."
Some healing specialists prefer words like "compassion"
and "renewal" to the often misunderstood term "healing."
Rabbi Nancy Flam, director of the Spirituality Institute at Metivta,
distinguishes between healing and curing.
"To cure the body means to wipe out the tumor, clear up the
infection or regain mobility," she said. "To heal the
spirit involves creating a pathway to sensing wholeness, depth,
mystery, purpose and peace. Cure may occur without healing and healing
may occur without cure, but serious illness often motivates people
to seek healing of the spirit."
Recent research suggests that mind and body may work together in
healing. Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University found that breast
cancer patients who participated in a one-year support group lived
significantly longer than women who did not. But in Judaism, the
concept of a "whole person" goes back centuries.
"Long before it was a 'New Age' thing to look at people holistically,
Judaism understood one is not just body or spirit. One is both,
and the whole package exists in relation to God," agreed Susie
Kessler, co-ordinator of the National Jewish Healing Centre, a Jewish
Connections program of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's
Services of New York.
"When we wish someone well in the Mi Shebeirach prayer, we
don't say we hope you get better. We wish them refuah shlemah,
refuat hanefesh and refuat haguf – defined as the
healing of soul and the healing of body. We hope their healing is
one of shlemut – wholeness and peacefulness. We hope
they will find a way to accept what's happened, instead of feeling
it has diminished them."
The most obvious example of incorporating healing into Jewish life
is the expansion of the Mi Shebeirach during Shabbat morning services.
Many synagogues stop for a moment for congregants to recite individual
names. That naming of names acknowledges a need for connection and
creates a sense of community, one of the main tenets of healing.
Debbie Perlman, who was diagnosed with cancer 20 years ago, remembers
when her rabbi asked if she wanted to be included in the Mi Shebeirach
list. "It was like coming out. Letting people know you're in
need is hard to do."
Perlman looked for solace in Judaism, but without a strong Jewish
background, she said, "[I] didn't have the words and didn't
know where to look." After completing chemotherapy, Perlman
began studying Judaism. When her teacher, too, faced surgery, Perlman
wrote "something comforting" that she later realized took
the form of a contemporary psalm. Today, she has written more than
200 psalms, many of which are gathered in Flames to Heaven: New
Psalms for Healing and Praise. She said her psalms define her
personal theology, helping her reconcile her illness and resulting
disabilities with her faith in God. Her journey has led her to reclaim
other traditions – from lighting Shabbat candles to praying
every morning.
"Today I have a list of people I pray for," Perlman said.
"Whether or not God listens to these prayers, it energizes
the community to care about people in need. It reminds us to reach
out to those we're praying about, to call them or bring them a pot
of soup."
Perlman unlocked the psalmist inside her, but for people who may
not be as gifted, the 150 poems in the Book of Psalms express the
entire depth and breadth of human emotion. "When one hears
the psalmist cry out in anger, praise, gratitude and song, it opens
a doorway," Kessler said.
Traditional Jewish resources, Torah, prayer, visiting the sick and
tzedakah, are healing tools, said Kessler. "Healing is not
a new concept in Judaism, but even people who are connected to the
Jewish community are unaware of what Judaism can give them."
She cited the Modeh Ani prayer, recited upon awakening in the morning,
that thanks God for returning the soul. That can change the whole
concept of night and day, she said.
"The search for spirituality and healing comes either from
a place of suffering – people need to find meaning in the midst
of pain – or a place of affluence – people have everything
and have been everywhere, yet the meaning of their lives is still
elusive," added Kessler, who notes that women rabbis have sparked
the growth of the movement.
Every spiritual support group run by the Washington Jewish Healing
Network begins with a Jewish text to help access a connection to
God and religious tradition, explained Carol Hausman, a psychologist
who founded the network six years ago. Participants create their
own midrashim that voice their experiences. The story of Lot's wife,
for instance, might generate discussion about the "stuckness
of looking back and not being able to move ahead." One woman
in a group for bereaved parents said Lot's wife looked back because
she wanted to die with her children.
Jewish ritual, said Hausman, can add the enriching dimension of
"mindfulness." She gives a personal example. After her
husband survived a serious bicycle accident, he recited Birkat Gomel
on Shabbat, thanking God for saving him from danger. "I fell
apart," Hausman recalled. "It was the ritual that allowed
me to express, acknowledge and realize the depth of my feelings.
It made me consciously articulate my gratitude."
Telling one's story advances spiritual development, noted Rabbi
William Cutter, director of the newly formed Kalsman Institute on
Judaism and Health in Los Angeles. "Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav
said that storytelling is the only way we have of encompassing all
the complexities of life. A story unfolds from where a person is.
Spirituality unfolds from where a person is, tempered by practice
and religious belief."
But it often takes a crisis for people to wake up to spiritual need.
It took a heart attack at the age of 41 for Cutter, an aggressive
academic administrator and smoker, to change his life.
"The spirit-body connection is the most pressing issue of the
moment," Cutter said. "We've realized the excesses of
our society. Now we're looking for the antidote. Spirituality has
become part of the antidote. My 87-year-old father-in-law has survived
a stroke, brain bleed and misdone hernia surgery, but his life is
empty. Multiply his example by millions. We're trying to create
the practical resources to respond to this spiritual emptiness."
The institute, which hopes to serve as an intellectual centre of
the Jewish healing movement, symbolizes the institutionalization
of this very personal concept. Traditionally bastions of scholarship
and academia, rabbinical seminaries are developing healing tools
for popular Jewish audiences, offering degrees in pastoral counselling
and, simultaneously, realizing they must also offer spiritual care
to their caregivers in training.
At HUC-JIR in New York, Ochs provides rabbinical and cantorial students
with spiritual guidance, a practice that helps them become aware
of their relationship to God.
"Any question can be an entry point," she said. "Should
I get married? Should I be in rabbinical school? They soon see how
it connects with larger questions. Often something critical happens
that forces them to think about their relationship to God. Maybe
a friend dies and they reach for their God image, but that image
is embarrassing because it hasn't grown with them."
Sometimes a milestone, rather than a physical crisis, promotes inner
search. To face her anxieties over turning 60, Jean Abarbanel decided
to mark the occasion by immersing in the mikvah. She invited a group
of women, including her sister, with whom she is not close, to share
the ritual she created, complete with liturgy, poetry and meditation.
"It was an amazing moment of healing, having the support of
women to mark the process of aging," said Abarbanel. "It
was also an opportunity to create a healing connection with my sister.
We came to an acknowledgment of how different we are, but there's
still a bond between us that allows us to be there for each other
at profound and ordinary moments. What opened us up to that was
stripping oneself to nakedness. It was almost a rebirthing, being
held in the waters of the uterus and in the waters of God at the
same time. I can go back in a second to that feeling of connection
to God, to past, to history, to who I am and to a new way of moving
into the future."
Abarbanel, chair of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations'
Jewish family concerns committee, stressed the key role of community
in healing by drawing a comparison to the cherubim that adorned
the Tabernacle in the desert.
"They were to face one another so they could see the other's
eyes," she said. "My image of community is one in which
we can see one another eye to eye and sense our needs being voiced
in and out of the worship context. The power of healing is not just
what you can get from someone but what you can give back."
To reach for healing through spirituality, you have to be open to
being touched, said Benedek. "Your eyes have to be open; you
have to feel hunger, need and desire. When I rode horses, the teacher
used to say, 'The horses will go where you're looking,'" Benedek
recalled. "If your mind is occupied with matters of the most
profound and absolute kind, you can't help but go in that direction.
You can be absorbed in your own unhappiness or you can look higher,
towards what's more primary and hopeful, and your body will follow."
Rahel Musleah is an award-winning journalist and author
of Apples and Pomegranates: A Rosh Hashanah Seder. Her website
is www.rahelsjewishindia.com.
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