A Forecast of Jewish Healing

When people get sick, it’s usually not catastrophic. Life threatening illnesses play a minor role in the pantheon of diseases that are treated today. Most people stricken with illness don’t necessarily feel isolated or detached from the community, as might be the case with the more seriously ill. Many can go to work and attend to their daily chores, in spite of their pain. Jewish healing, as it is known today, reaches out to those in crisis situations: visiting the sick and elderly, supporting families whose loved ones face terminal illness and counseling the bereaved. All necessary communal services, but how can Jewish healing serve the vast majority who suffer silently?

I received a call recently from a woman in New Jersey whose mother is terminally ill. She was recommended to me by the National Jewish Healing Center. She asked if I could find someone who could counsel her mother, who lives in Hartford, during her last remaining days. I told her I’m nearly two hours from Hartford, but I know people in the area and promptly found her the help she requested.  It felt good to be of heartfelt service, but such calls are almost a rarity.  More often I receive messages asking how Jewish healing can help my chronic pain, my depression, my allergies, my irritable bowel syndrome, my migraines, my PMS, my addictions, my compulsions and on and on.  After all, shouldn’t healing, Jewish or not, address all sickness?

Studies show that more money is spent out-of-pocket annually on alternative medicine than for standard medical care. The word is out that people heal better with a combination of alternative and conventional medicine.  Even though much disillusionment exists for what many revere as the medical profession, it is imperative to get proper medical help when necessary.  In our pursuit for bona fide Jewish healing, we must distinguish between alternative and holistic healing.

Alternative methods operate much the same as standard medicine, with the exception that alternative—usually natural—remedies are employed. Holistic, on the other hand, treats mind, body and spirit simultaneously while searching for the root cause of the illness. Jewish healing would necessarily fall into the holistic category, as defined through the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.  Much of today’s holistic healing practices are based upon the tradition of other countries and other religions: Japan, China, and India, to name a few.  Jews are asking why we can’t find healing from our own tradition, which would be more considerate of our way of thinking. I believe such a system exists but it must be flushed out much like distill meanings from Torah verses.

As a Polarity therapist, an energy healer, I set out to discover the Jewish path to healing. First I sifted through Tanach, the Jewish bible, to find passages that might lead me in the right direction. The pivotal verse I encountered was the one from Deuteronomy 24:9 which states, “In cases of a skin affection, be most careful to do exactly as the levitical priests instruct you. Take care to do as I commanded them. Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the journey after you left Egypt”. But there was more, much more.
         There seemed to be implications that sickness and health originated from Divine sources.  For example, “He said, If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in his sight, giving ear to His commandments and keeping all His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord am your healer ” (Exodus 15:26). Also, “The Lord will strike you with the Egyptian inflammation, with hemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never recover (Deuteronomy 28:27); and, “The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness and dismay. You shall grope at noon as a blind man gropes in the dark; you shall not prosper in your ventures, but shall be constantly abused and robbed, with none to give you help” (Deuteronomy 28:28)

There was evidence of healing connected to the levitical priests. There seems to be implications of healing through herbal remedies, amulets and sympathetic magic somewhat elaborated in the Talmud. I found more references throughout the Psalms and the Prophets. Healing references were abundant in the writings of Ben Sira, the pre-Talmudic sage and even more appeared in the Responsa literature from the medieval period.

I became increasingly convinced that such a system exists, especially since every cultural society that ever existed provided a system of health care for its people. But it was not until I plunged into the depths of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystic tradition, that I began to discover the healing techniques of the Hassidic Rebbes (the enlightened masters). These gifted souls adapted the theories of the 16th Century mystics and the writings of the earlier sages of the Mishnah.  It was based on energy healing, diagnosing and redirecting the flow of the human energy system, through visualization and therapeutic touch.

For years now, I have attempted to coordinate my own energy healing practice with Jewish tradition. I launched JewishLink, a web site dedicated to Jewish healing and spirituality nearly a year ago to establish a Jewish healing presence on the internet. My hope is that everyone in the Jewish community will avail themselves to the information provided there and that Jewish therapists, doctors, healers and health care professionals will seriously consider adding a measure of Jewish spirituality to their practices. JewishLink receives email inquiries into health concerns everyday. The American Jewish community pleads for a Jewish alternative alongside standard medical intervention.  We must not let them down.

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