Jewish Healing: Something Old and Something New

What do you do when you receive a medical diagnosis you weren't expecting? What do you do when you are facing a loss that arose without warning? What's your next step? Judaism can provide a great deal of help in these kinds of trauma although this aspect is not that widely publicized yet. It's called Jewish healing; it's a response to a cry from the Jewish community for more compassionate, more Torah-based counseling for those alarming situations that arise in everyone's life.

Healing is soul work.  Jewish literature, the prayer book and the Torah, speaks to the soul. Listen to these words of the Psalmist, "like a hind crying for springs of water, so my soul cries out for You" (Ps. 42) or "My enemies lie in ambush for my soul" (Ps. 59). We have a rich and elaborate understanding of the soul. Our tradition teaches that the soul is the animating force of life, that part which remains after our physical body ceases to exist; and that the soul is a spark of the Divine which is intrinsically connected to every other soul in the universe. In Hebrew we have various words for levels of soul, among which are ruach and neshama that likewise means breath. Kabbalists have devised a number of healing meditations based on contemplating the experience of the breath. Meditating on the breath has long been taught as a healing technique by Jewish mystics for many centuries.

Yichud is the word in Hebrew that means unification which best exemplifies Jewish healing. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, we learned that everything we know emerges as pairs of opposites. We can only know good from knowing evil; we can only know hot from knowing cold. We also know that symptoms like the pain of a difficult relationship or the pain from an arthritic joint are the extreme ends of a pair of opposites. Healing takes place when the two opposing limits are joined in wholeness or unification or as the prayer book says,"on that day the Lord shall be One and His name One". The healers task is to help us understand the opposite of the symptom and to help us integrate it in our lives.

Healing with Divine energy is a very natural process. Modern medicine is beginning to realize the healing properties of energy and there is even a rudimentary movement to include its effects into the medical scene. Some researchers say that energy medicine will be the medicine of the next century. Just note what happens when you cut your finger or sprain a ligament. It heals itself; it needs no intervention. All it needs is a healing environment like keeping the wound clean or resting the sprain. Judaism, with its concern for drawing nearer to G-d, is a healing environment. Judaism is also intimately linked with nature with its strong emphasis on the laws pertaining to agriculture and the agricultural significance of each festival.

Healing is a spiritual endeavor by which the energy of the soul is balanced so that it may flow towards the physical and emotional realms to heal those parts that are in need.  Energy has the remarkable quality of finding the right place and the right time to do its work. It is also said that all healing is self-healing by which a therapist or a healer acts merely as a conduit for Divine healing energy. This leaves the responsibility upon each of us to play an active role in the healing process.

As a final note, Jewish healing recognizes the all important connection between the mind and body. Dr. Gerald Epstein, a psychiatrist at New York's Mt Sinai Hospital wrote several books on healing the body through the use of mental imagery, a technique that uses the mind to heal the body. Dr. Epstein began employing imagery in his practice after a year's study with a noted Kabbalah teacher in Jerusalem. Future articles will elaborate on the use of the imagination in traditional Jewish  practice.