Prayer is a very personal and private thing. In fact, to be honest to a fault, let me say that public prayer, with other people raising voices and turning the pages in unison, has become very difficult for me the past few years. I prefer the more quite, contemplative pace I can do in my own backyard alone. Appreciate the professional hazard this truth creates for a rabbi who believes both in the power of prayer and in the power of community. However you pray, or if you pray at all, and the above admission not withstanding, by the end of this blog, I’ll be asking you for a PRAYvor.
What’s a PRAYvor? It’s a word I made up for when someone asks me to pray for them. I want to ask you to pray, for me – sure, but more so for some very special people in my life. Scattered across the globe, from the West Coast, where I live, across the continent, and all the way to Israel are some very special people in my life, all facing surgery within the next seven weeks.
נַחֲמ֥וּ נַחֲמ֖וּ עַמִּ֑י יֹאמַ֖ר אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם.
Be comforted, indeed be comforted, says your God. -Isaiah 40
These are the opening words of this week’s haftorah (the week’s reading from the Prophets). This is first of seven weeks which count from the the fast day of the 9th of Av. (commemorating the destruction of the Temple (to read more about that, click here) to the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It is during this time period that we start to prepare ourselves for the spiritual work of the High Holidays ( for more on how we prepare, see Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu’s blogpost from yesterday). One way to prepare is prayer, including prayers for health.
I believe that prayer works in healing the mind and the body.
- On a rational level, I pray like Maimonides, for the wisdom of the doctors and nurses who heal (click here for a download of the English Translation of his Prayer for the Physician).
- On a meditative level, prayer works to calm the mind and the body, so that we can go on to do the healing we need to move toward.
- On the metaphysical level, I believe that prayer can do wonders for the person who prays for another (as empathy grows, spiritual awareness deepens), and, prayer can help in the healing process itself (click here for the now classic double-blind National Institute of Health Study of 1998, or here for a much more recent blogpost on the Huffington Post by Candy Gunther Brown, author of Testing Prayer: Science and Healing, Harvard University Press ).
Some people are natural prayers, or have learned how to move themselves to that deeper place through practice. If that’s you, you know what I’m asking you for, but I know many people who find prayer very difficult. It’s okay, I get it; I’ve been there myself.
I said “pray for me”, and I wouldn’t mind that at all. There is no getting around it, while I have every reason to believe that the special people in my life that are getting ready for surgery will emerge ultimately healthier than before, I’m still anxious. Here’s what I pray when I’m focused on anxiety:
הָ֭רֹפֵא לִשְׁב֣וּרֵי לֵ֑ב וּ֝מְחַבֵּ֗שׁ לְעַצְּבֹותָֽם׃
“God heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” -Psalm 147:3.
Much more importantly than for myself, I’d like to ask you for a PRAYvor for the special people in my family and beyond, and for the people that you love and care for who could use our prayers of healing. Over the next several weeks, until Rosh Hashanah (this year it begins on the evening of Sunday, September 16), take a moment each day to pray for those in need of healing, whomever, and wherever they are.
Prayer doesn’t come naturally to everyone.
Need words to start off with? You could do worse than the meditative opening words of the verse quoted at the top of this post:
“Nachmu, Nachamu – be comforted, indeed be comforted.”
Need a melody? There are many. I love the melody from my buddy at Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, CA, Cantor Mike Stein. He wrote an evocative modern/classic “Refaenu, Heal Us” (click here to listen), or the late, great, Debbie Friedman classic, Mi Shebeirach (click here to listen and watch her on youtube).
However you do it, please do it. If you’ve never been much of a pray-er before, I know it can seem awkward, but despite that, I’m still asking you for this one small PRAYvor.
Rosh Hashanah
Pronounced: roshe hah-SHAH-nah, also roshe ha-shah-NAH, Origin: Hebrew, the Jewish new year.
