As we move to consider the next blessing in the string of blessings that comprise the weekday Amidah prayer, we come to the blessing that prays for healing. We say:
Heal us, Eternal, our Almighty God, and we shall be healed.
Save us and we shall be saved.
For You are our Glory.
And bring about complete healing (r’fu’ah sh’lemah) for all our wounds.
For You are the Powerful Sovereign, Faithful and Compassionate Healer.
The language of the blessing has a poetic flavor in the original Hebrew. The first three lines derive from Jeremiah 17:14. The prophet’s personal prayer has been rewritten in the collective voice. But the personal need to cry out for healing is not to be ignored. Over the generations this beautiful blessing has been the vehicle for millions of pained hearts to pour forth their anguish and their hope on behalf of themselves and their loved ones. While every blessing is open to expansion to make it more meaningful and poignant for each personal situation, the prayer book does not usually explicitly prompt such personal additions. It is up to the individual to take the initiative and fill in the white spaces on the page. Except here. This is the only blessing in which the printed prayer books regularly indicate that anyone who wishes may add extra prayers for the healing of someone they know of.
What happens to the prayer when it is transposed from the individual to the community? One hopes that the individual will find added strength and support by offering it in a communal formulation. But what does this prayer mean as a community prayer? Of course it conveys our collective plea for each person’s healing. But it also takes on a communal aspect regarding what our wounds are and what healing we, as a community, may need.
The poetic phrases of this community prayer merit close attention.
The first phrase seems simple enough. We ask God to bring healing to us – “Heal us, Eternal, our Almighty God!” But what is the meaning of the second part of this opening sentence – “and we shall be healed” -? Isn’t that redundant or superfluous? One sage (R. Hayyim Zundel ben Yosef, in Etz Yosef) offered the following interpretation:
This is similar to the prayer “Return us, Eternal One, our Almighty God, and we shall return.” This means that God will start the process, but then we will complete it.
So we say, “Heal us,” meaning that the beginning of the healing will be from You. “And we shall be healed” means that we will complete it and overcome our illness.
This refers to emotional and spiritual healing. And the rest of the blessing refers to physical healing, which entirely depends on God’s Will, for we cannot accomplish anything on our own in this realm without You.
This interpretation alerts us to the truth that our wounds can be emotional and spiritual as well as physical. In that form, they can be experienced not only by unique individuals, but also by an entire society or an entire people. It also teaches that it is precisely these types of wounds that cannot be healed solely by an outside agent, no matter how powerful or skillful. Even God cannot erase our psychic wounds and the traumas to our souls. God can provide some of the healing. But we must take on the job of seeing the healing process through to its completion.
And this means that we must know what ails us. If our healing depended solely on God’s miraculous power and compassion, then we could simply trust God to heal what needs healing. But if we must actively engage in the process, then we must become aware of our problems.
Such self-knowledge is an important part of the process of repentance and re-thinking – teshuvah – that we prayed for in a previous blessing. The opposite of repentance is self-denial. When it comes to the problems of others we know so well that being in a state of denial too often makes those problems worse. But we are too afraid to apply that lesson to ourselves. One particularly pernicious form of denial manifests in resentment toward those who try to point out that all is not well with us, and that we must take measures toward healing. Instead of increasing our self-knowledge we lash out in rage.
Especially when the health problem is of societal and national dimensions, and even more so when that people or group feels that it is under siege from the outside, it is tempting to attack friends and family who are clear-sighted and solicitous enough to try to point out that we suffer from internal problems and challenges. Instead of grappling with unpleasant truths that truly represent threats to our collective wellbeing, we subject friendly diagnosticians to irrationally intense condemnation.
Any healing process is challenging and perhaps even painful. But we are not healed by refusing to take a necessary medicine simply because it is bitter-tasting. And we cannot solve our pain by foisting it on others.
The second phrase of this blessing refers to being saved or rescued. The image of rescue is apt. Anyone who has been in the grips of illness knows the feeling of imprisonment and oppression that such an affliction can impose. The yearning for health is the yearning for wholeness – and for renewed freedom. So we pray for rescue and liberation. But this plea raises another question. Why is it necessary to ask God to save us when we have just previously, in the blessing right before this one, asked God to redeem us? Is there any real difference between these two requests?
Let’s notice that the second phrase – about being saved or rescued – is structured in the same manner as the first phrase of the blessing – about healing. Thus, it carries the same message – God can help save us, but we need to complete the work in order to stay saved. We may need immediate help and redemption from a danger or crisis, but after that act of redemption (requested in the prior blessing), is our health henceforth assured? In the troubled world of addiction, for instance, we are saddened when we hear of someone who has been redeemed from their habit and their demons, only to relapse later. This prayer builds upon the previous one and asks that we be able to sustain ourselves beyond the first moment of reprieve and redemption – to stay healed.
But the order of these two blessings suggests another concern, as well. We have recently become more aware that simply extricating a person from danger or crisis does not end the story of their need for assistance and healing. One term that we use to signal this fact is PTSD – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It seeks to acknowledge that a person may be saved from a terrible situation and yet continue to need ongoing healing in order to recover from the awful pressures that have been exerted upon one’s body and spirit.
When a people or a society undergoes great trauma, it, too, must address its post-traumatic stress. To deny the presence or potential presence of such a condition is to engage in unhealthy self-denial. Such self-denial is also self-delusional. It makes us think that our hope lies in denial. But the opposite is the case. To recognize that we may have problems, that we have the need for healing is not a step toward negativity and hopelessness. On the contrary, it is the first tiny step toward hope. It is only a tiny step, but it is that very step that makes healing at all possible.
May this prayer help us get past our own resistance to seeking help and healing, as individuals, as a society or as a people.
Image(s): Anguish © muffinn used with permission via Creative Commons License
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