Refuah Shelaymah: Healing the Jewish Way
13 Kislev 5771 / 20 November 2010
Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
The physician and author, Rachel Naomi Remen (Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 178), tells the following story. She once had a patient who struggled with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This patient spent several years going from doctor to doctor, keeping meticulous notes about the vagaries of her condition. “Life is for the well,” she thought. So while she spent her time in doctors’ offices or reading articles, she did not go to the theater or date or do any number of things that brought her joy. Remen relates that this patient eventually came to realize that though she had some real limitations, it was her perspective, not her chronic disease that was stopping her from participating in life, that the meaning she had assigned to her condition was more limiting than the disease itself. For this patient, the healing process was not ultimately about discovering a cure, some elixir that would leave her pain-free – alas such a cure does not exist. Instead, her healing was about being honest with herself, both about her interests and her limitations, and then choosing to live.
The term “healing,” of course, involves not just achieving physical wellness, but also restoring spiritual wholeness. And this is the kind of healing I would like to discuss with you this morning. I will leave it to researchers and doctors to continue the sacred work of treating and curing illness – and we are proud at Beth Am to have several of you in our midst. The Torah is, of course, not Gray’s Anatomy or the New England Journal of Medicine, but it is a pretty impressive resource for studying and treating the human condition.
Now, though I am not a doctor I have been told that I have a doctor’s handwriting. So permit me to offer us a prescription this Shabbat, what I would call our sedra’s prescription for spiritual healing – for enduring and moving through life’s myriad afflictions. And like the character in Dr. Remen’s story, it is a physical ailment that illustrates the Torah’s broader message about healing. Vayishlah includes the story of one of the most inspiring convalescents in our tradition. We might not often think of Jacob our father as disabled. He is, after all, a man who cleverly hoodwinked his family-members, found love in the arms of not one but four women, and acquired, eventually and through a combination of gri t and hard work, both wealth and progeny in spades. And t his week, at the narrative climax of his story, we meet our hero as we might not expect, not striding purposefully, but limping, into history. Just before the morning of his encounter with his brother Esau, Jacob suffers an injury, and he will never be quite the same. By the next chapter, as we move toward the conclusion of his story, Jacob is described as shalem, whole, but he is not there yet. How does he move from injury to healing, from brokenness to shelaymut – to wholeness?
Let’s set the scene – Jacob is on his way to see his brother after 20 years. He thinks, for good reason, that Esau wants to kill him. On the night before their encounter, Jacob is left alone, lost in the dark, and the Torah tells us that he wrestles with an ish, a “man.” Now during the course of the struggle, the man wrenches Jacob’s thigh. And the pain of that injury is just another in a series of difficulties he has endured: a broken home, parents who could not see eye to eye, an estranged brother, a vindictive uncle; Jacob, despite his successes, has not had an easy life. So here we are witnessing this wrestling match and the ish, the man or angel, cries out “let me go for dawn is breaking.” And my friends, I have to tell you – It would not have been all that surprising if Jacob had let go. He does have a history of avoiding conflict and running away. He runs from his brother. He flees his uncle Lavan. But here, in fact, he does not run. Instead, he pins the stranger down and says a remarkably chutzpadik thing: “Lo ashalechacha, ki im berachtani!” I will not let you go unless you bless me.
I will not let you go. How easy it would have been for Jacob to simply walk away. Why does he need this? He has dedicated his life to serving God as best he can and this is his reward, to roll around in the dark with a strange being, to suffer pain and injury all so that he can get up the next morning and confront a brother who may very well wish him dead? Why didn’t he let go?
The answer, I think, is the first part of our prescription – spiritual healing begins with, of all things, God-wrestling; hence, the name change from Ya’akov to Yisrael. But remember Jacob is one who has not just wrestled with divine beings but one who has done so and prevailed.” To wrestle with God, to ask the question, “why is this happening to me?” is normal, healthy even. To prevail though, to win this divine wrestling match, is not to defeat God (as if that could be done). Rather, I would suggest to you, it is to defeat a certain voice within ourselves. It is to move beyond our desire to blame God for what ails us. I remember when my father died, I was feeling sad, lonely, even angry. I called a mentor of mine to express my concern, my shame about how I was feeling. “I’ve dedicated my life to serving God,” I said, “can a rabbi feel such things?” His answer was simple and has stayed with me over the years. “God’s a big boy,” he said. “God can handle your anger.” What I realize in retrospect is that this was his way of telling me that God is always with us, bearing witness to our pain, and if part of that healing process involves anger, so be it – God is big, God is patient, God can handle it. And when we are ready to move beyond the wrestling match to an embrace, from God’s mere presence to God’s love, The Kadosh Baruch Hu will be ready for that too.
But the Torah’s prescription for healing involves not just our relationship with God but also our relationships with one another. In Jacob’s case, the quest for spiritual convalescence is bound up in the rocky history and ensuing encounter with Esau. In the end, the family must restore honesty and trust. We can debate whether Jacob did the right thing in deceiving his brother. We can claim that the ends justify the means; that the precious inheritance of our nascent religion would have languished or dissolved entirely if left to the abrasive care of a boorish man like Esau. But sometimes, even when the outcome is correct, there is a price to be paid and wounds to be mended. Jacob seems to know this intuitively because after his injury he does not say “Lo ashalechacha, ki im refa’eini!” – I will not let you go unless you “heal” me. Jacob, unlike his brother, does not live only in the moment. He understands what we understand: that true healing is not simply about repairing a broken part – that fixing a person is not the same as fixing a car. Jacob, his hip-socket aching, says instead, “…ki im berachtani!” – unless you “bless” me. Why demand a blessing at this moment, a moment when many of us would have simply reached for the Advil?
For our Sages, this is a moment not for tactical ploys but for vision, for Jacob to move his family beyond the dishonesty and trickery of the past and to find common ground. Think back to the last time Jacob received a blessing. You may recall that in the parasha from two weeks ago, Jacob dresses up in goat skins and deceives his father. When a blind Isaac asks, “mi ata b’ni?” Who are you my son? Jacob responds, “I am Esau….” But this time, in our parasha, when the man or angel asks “ma shemecha? What is your name?” Jacob responds truthfully: “Ya’kov.” Rashi, the great 11th Century commentator, explains that the time for deception has ended, that it is time for Jacob to be honest about who he is. In a way, this blessing redeems the last one attained through subterfuge. And this, I would suggest, is what enables Jacob to face Esau the next day. After twenty years of estrangement, two brothers find the courage to embrace, and to put the past behind them. Not all relationships can be salvaged. Sometimes the wounds are simply too deep. But the Torah teaches us a valuable lesson about healing: that restoring communication and trust are how families can come together in difficult times.
Holding onto God. Holding onto one another. These are two hallmarks of a Jewish prescription for healing. The third and final component, I believe, has to do with our acceptance of what healing is and what it is not. In our tradition, there are two magical words that we utter in response to illness – refuah shelaymah. Translated, these words mean “a complete healing,” but just what is “a complete healing?” We say these words for those who have endured an acute trauma and sometimes for those who are living with chronic illness, but we also say them for the terminally ill. Do we really expect those people to fully recover, or do we understand as Jacob did, as Rachel Remen’s patient did, that part of healing is about our perspective on life?
All of us are, in some way, in need of healing. As the depressed-economy plods along, as employment problems, housing woes and sometimes food anxiety persist , it is increasingly apparent that (unfortunately) none of us has a monopoly on brokenness. The Kotzker Rebbe said, “There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.” I would add that there is no person who is whole enough to be wholly without pain, who is immune to the stress-fractures of life. And yet, as our sages tell us, though our eyes have a dark part and a light part, we only see through the dark part of the eye. What the Kotzker understood is that ultimately, only we can be the light at the end of our own tunnels.
After Jacob reconciles with his brother, we are told: “Jacob arrived safe in the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan…” (Gen 33:18). The Hebrew word translated “safe” is shalem – as in refuah shelayma. After the pain, the betrayal, the injury and perhaps still limping, Jacob emerges flawed, but yet “whole.” To be shalem is not to be scar-less or limp-less. It is rather to recognize our vulnerability and our mortality – and to enjoy life nonetheless.
Hevre, every Shabbat during our Torah service we offer a Mi Sheberach for Holim, a prayer for healing. What are the words that we say? “Mi Sheberach Avoteinu: Avraham, Yizhak v’Ya’akov, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel v’Leah, hu Yevareich Vi’rapeh et haHolim.”“May the One who blessed our ancestors… bless and heal the ailing [of our congregation].” Like Jacob, we ask not simply for healing, but for blessing as well, for we know that when we grasp hold of God, we demonstrate a willingness to struggle with, engage and ultimately embrace the Source of All Life. But our Mi Sheberach prayer teaches another lesson about healing when we stop to consider the particular ancestors, our patriarchs and matriarchs, whose names we invoke with these words. Isaac was blind, Jacob was lame, and the midrash teaches that Abraham was the first to endure the challenge of old age (Gen 25:8). Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel were all barren and Leah was beset with weak eyes. These are not, I would suggest, models of wellness in the medical sense, but they are our mishpacha, our family. And through their imperfect but deeply human character and constitution, we are offered glimpses of shelaymut, of wholeness, and so of healing. After all he endures, Jacob emerges shalem. If we can see him, limping, as blessed then we should be able to see ourselves in that same light.
The Torah’s prescription for healing may not be as simple as “take three of these and call me in the morning.” But, as Jacob discovers, if we are willing to hold onto God’s love, if we are able to find common ground with one another, and if we remember that healing is not just about our cells but also our souls, we will be well on our way to a life of shelaymut – of true wholeness. May we all be blessed to follow Jacob’s example and may each of us experience a refuah shelayma and a Shabbat Shalom.