Mi Shebeirach

A is a Jewish prayer used to request a blessing from God. Dating to the 10th or 11th century CE, prayers are used for a wide variety of purposes. In contemporary Judaism, a serves as the main prayer of healing, particularly among liberal Jews, to whose rituals it has become central. Liberal Jews often use Debbie Friedman's Hebrew–English version of the prayer, which she and her then-partner, Rabbi Drorah Setel, wrote in 1987 in response to the AIDS crisis; released in 1989 on the album ''And You Shall Be a Blessing'' and spread through performances at Jewish conferences, the song became Friedman's best-known work and reversed a longstanding tradition in the Reform movement against communal prayers for health. Friedman and Setel's version and others like it, born of a time when HIV was almost always fatal, emphasize spiritual renewal rather than just physical rehabilitation.

Traditional versions

For the congregation

In the context of Ashkenazi liturgy, the traditional has been described as either the third prayer or as an additional prayer recited after the two Yekum Purkan prayers. The three prayers date to Babylonia in the 10th or 11th century CE, with the —a Hebrew prayer—being a later addition to the other two, which are in Aramaic. It is mentioned in the , in the writings of David Abudarham, and in .

Both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews traditionally recite the prayer on Shabbat immediately after the during the Torah service; Sephardim also recite it on Yom Kippur. The is often recited in the vernacular language of a congregation rather than in Hebrew. In ''Jewish Worship'' (1971), Abraham Ezra Millgram says that this is because of the prayer's "direct appeal to the worshipers and the ethical responsibilities it spells out for the people".

Specialized versions

The also came to serve as a template for prayers for specific blessings, and for a time was sometimes prefixed with "" ('May it be your will'). Gregg Drinkwater in ''American Jewish History'' identifies a five-part structure to such prayers: 1) "" and an invocation of the patriarchs; 2) the name of the person to bless; 3) the reason they should be blessed; 4) what is requested for the person; and 5) the community's response. In many congregations, a is recited for each individual (person called for an aliyah), a practice originating among the Jews of medieval France; some congregations recite it for all collectively, a tradition dating at least to Rabbi Eliyahu Menachem in 13th century London. William Cutter writes in ''Sh'ma'':

There are prayers for every kind of illness, and almost every kind of relationship; there are prayers for people who refrain from gossip, for people who maintain responsible business ethics. There are blessings for everyone in the community, but slanderers, gossips, and schlemiels are excluded.

Such versions include those to be recited:

* Upon a child's birth
* For a bar or bat mitzvah
* For a brit milah (circumcision)
* For a 70th birthday
* In anticipation of a marriage and for newlyweds
* For a 25th or 50th wedding anniversary
* During the Ten Days of Penitence
* For someone who is ill
* For those fasting during the Fast of Behav
* For those who do not converse during prayer (dating to Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller during the Cossack riots)
* For one who converts to Judaism or returns after apostasy
* In a variety of more specialized settings, such as in Israel for members of the Israel Defense Forces

Macy Nulman's ''Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer'' ties the tradition of blessing the sick back to Such prayers traditionally refer to the sick person by matronym rather than patronym, which kabbalists teach evokes more compassion from God, citing Psalms 86:16, "Turn to me and have mercy on me; ... and deliver the son of Your maidservant".

As a prayer of healing

Early Reform Jews in the United States saw healing as a matter for private, rather than communal prayer. Prayer healing became less popular as medicine modernized, and many Reform Jews came to see healing as a purely scientific matter. Reform leaders, influenced by German ideals, continued to view healing as private through the 1970s, and to a lesser extent through the 1990s.

After the AIDS crisis began in the United States in 1981, and other communal healing prayers began to re-emerge in Reform and other liberal Jewish communities, particularly at gay and lesbian synagogues. A few years into the pandemic, Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, a Reform congregation in San Francisco that used its own gender-neutral, gay-inclusive siddur (prayerbook), began a communal written by Garry Koenigsburg and Rabbi Yoel Kahn, praying to heal "all the ill amongst us, and all who have been touched by AIDS and related illness". As there was at the time no effective treatment for HIV, and Jewish tradition says that prayers should not be in vain (), Sha'ar Zahav's version emphasized spiritual healing as well as physical. Around the same time, Rabbi Margaret Wenig, a gay rights activist, began including a in services with her elderly congregation in New York City, although not framed just as a prayer for healing. At the gay and lesbian synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, a 1985 siddur supervised by Rabbi Janet Marder included several prayers for healing, including a blessing the full congregation with health, success, and forgiveness.

Friedman and Setel's version

From 1984 to 1987, Debbie Friedman lived with Rabbi Drorah Setel, then her romantic partner, who worked with AIDS Project Los Angeles. Marcia "Marty" Cohn Spiegel, a Jewish feminist activist familiar with as a prayer of healing from her Conservative background, asked the couple to write a version of the prayer. Like the Sha'a Zahav , Friedman and Setel's version emphasized spiritual healing in the face of a disease which most at the time were unlikely to survive. ('full healing') was defined as the ''renewal'', rather than ''repair'', of body and spirit. The two chose to include the Jewish matriarchs as well as the patriarchs to "express the empowerment of those reciting and hearing the prayer", adding "" ('source of blessing for our mothers') after the initial "" ('May the one who blessed our fathers'), and then reversing "" and "" in the second Hebrew verse.

Friedman and Setel wrote the prayer in October 1987. Setel, openly lesbian rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, and feminist liturgist Marcia Falk led the service celebrating Cohn Spiegel's eldering in which Friedman and Setel's "Mi Shebeirach" was first used. Friedman included the song on her 1989 album ''And You Shall Be a Blessing'' and performed it at Jewish conferences including those of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, through which it spread to Jewish communities across the United States. "Mi Shebeirach" became Friedman's most popular song.

Use

The of healing was added to the Reform siddur ''Mishkan T'filah'' in 2007, comprising a three-sentence blessing in Hebrew and English praying for a "complete renewal of body and spirit" for those who are ill, and the lyrics to Friedman and Setel's version. By the time it was added, it had already become, according to Drinkwater, "ubiquitous in Reform settings ... and in many non-Reform settings throughout the world." Drinkwater casts it as "the emotional highlight of synagogue services for countless Jews." Rabbi Nancy Flam, who succeeded Yoel Kahn at Sha'ar Zahav and expanded the congregation's healing efforts, describes this as Judaism's "central prayer for healing". Gila Silverman in ''Contemporary Jewry'' and Cutter go farther, describing it as central to liberal Jewish ritual.

Many synagogues maintain " lists" of names to read on Shabbat. Some Jews include on preoperative checklists that they should be added to their congregations' lists. The lists also serve to make the community aware that someone is ill, which can be beneficial but can also present problems in cases of stigmatized illnesses. In some synagogues, congregants with ill loved ones line up and the rabbi says the prayer. In more liberal synagogues the rabbi will ask congregants to list names, and the congregant will then sing either the traditional for healing or Friedman and Setel's version.

The prayer is often used in Jewish chaplaincy and has been used by healthcare providers. A number of versions exist for specific roles and scenarios in healthcare. Silverman, who conducted an ethnographic study of liberal Jews in Tucson, recounts attending a cancer support group for Jewish women that closed with Friedman's version of the , even though a number of the group's members had described themselves as being irreligious or not praying. She found that while the of healing resonated widely, many participants were unaware how new the Friedman version was.

While "a small number of" participants in Silverman's study "attributed physical improvements to the prayers that were said for them", Liberal Jewish commentary on the of healing often emphasizes that it is not a form of faith healing, that it seeks a spiritual rather than physical healing, and that healing is not sought only for those who are named., citing , , , and . Friedman died of pneumonia in 2011 after two decades of chronic illness. Setel wrote in ''The Jewish Daily Forward'' that, while people's prayers for Friedman "did not prevent Debbie's death, ... neither were they offered in vain".

Notes

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External links

Susan Colin - Mi Shebeirach
2010 version

{{Jewish prayers

Jewish prayer and ritual texts
LGBT and Judaism
Reform Judaism
Religion and HIV/AIDS