Heal Us!

Today's source sheet, in addition to drawing from My People's Prayerbook also draws from Rabbi Dr. Ellie Kaunfer's teaching. Much appreciation to him for his deep wellspring of Torah.

Questions (feel free to talk about whichever are interesting to you and ignore the others):

1. What are we asking for here, exactly?
2. Why would someone write a prayer like this?
3. If you've ever said this prayer for someone (or for yourself) what was that experience like? If not, maybe you have said a person's name at shul on Shabbat during the communal prayer for healing, what was that like?
4. What do you believe happens when you say this prayer, especially if you add someone's name?
5. Why do you think this this prayer in the plural?
6. The words 'heal' and 'save' are both used here in parallel. What makes these words distinct from each other? Does this change what you think the prayer is about?
7. What do you think it means to call G-d our 'prayer' or our 'praise' in this context?
8. What theological challenge or opportunity does a doctor present?

This is as far as I hope you'll get to!

Feel free to read on, but make sure you've had your fill of the above.

Elliot Dorff

We are likely to be impressed with God’s role in healing only in cases where human efforts to heal usually fail. We call such recoveries “miraculous,” meaning that they were unexpected, not normally attainable by human means. Our prayer holds, however, that even when doctors effect cure fairly easily, God has a hand in the healing process. Doctors are God’s agents, partners with God in healing. They are successful only because God created the world such that healing can occur in the first place.
This prayer does not assert that every one stricken with illness is cured, but only that when cure does occur, we must acknowledge God's role in it. The prayer book thus bespeaks a viewpoint very different from what most of us believe. Nowadays we are likely to start with the assumption of health, so that when sickness occurs, we blame God and question why God does not heal. In times past, people began with the assumption that a person might become sick at any time, so that God was to be praised for moments of healing.
This disparity exists largely because prior to modern medicine, disease was common and often irreversible. Healing, then, was appreciated as a gift of God. Nowadays, by contrast, we become almost indignant when doctors with advanced medical techniques cannot cure us.
But the difference in viewpoint exemplifies a more general phenomenon, namely people in times past appreciated the gap between God and humans more than we do. Our increased expertise in all technologies, not just medicine, leads us to feel that “my Strength and the power of my hands accomplished these things” (Deut. 8:17) — an attitude that the Torah defines as the essence of hubris. It is this false pride that makes us diminish God's role in healing — if we even acknowledge it at all.
Finally, in the ancient world, people assumed that sickness was the result of sin. The Torah (e.g., Deut. 7:15; 28:22, 59-60) links health to abiding by God’s commandments, and a variety of punishments, including illness, to disobeying them. When people like the biblical Job were convinced that they had not sinned, but suffered anyway, they complained bitterly to God about the injustice of it all. Most people, though, less self-confident of their goodness, saw healing not as deserved but as a gift of God's mercy. In our day, when we question the linkage between sickness and sin, we begin with the default assumption of health and question God's justice, power, and very existence when we encounter suffering.
We may have good reasons to deny the Rabbis’ tie between sickness and sin, but we need nonetheless to recapture their respect for God's role in healing. One medical professor tells his first-year medical school class, “You are embarking on a program to teach you how to treat disease. Let me tell you now that 90 percent of all diseases will cure themselves. Your job is not to botch that up!” According to the Jewish tradition, we definitely do have the duty to imitate God in trying to prevent, cure, or at least ameliorate disease, but we also have the duty to recognize God's important role in these efforts.

There are moments when a person is unable in the beginning of their prayer to speak in second person (nochakh), only in third person (hester). Also in that case, when one prays, moments of revelation and closeness come to them in prayer, the aspect of presence (nochakh)…and then [God] is hidden from him, and one speaks again in third person (nistar)…and again in second person (nochakh). But in the end, he comes to closeness and revelation, the aspect of “you” – second person.

- Esh Kodesh (the Rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto), Parshat Vayigash, 1942