Judaism

Biblical and rabbinic attitudes to healing

A reform-movement essay on Judaism and medicine describes a range of attitudes in Jewish sources. In its account Moses is portrayed as a healer, Exodus 15:26 has been read to mean that God alone is the source of healing, King Asa is censured for turning to physicians, and the Mishnah contains a harsh remark about physicians. The same essay presents Maimonides as a rabbi-physician who combined Judaism and science, and notes that another medieval rabbi-physician still felt tension between medical and spiritual healing.

Medieval Kabbalah

Historian Eli Barnavi dates the emergence of Kabbalah, a Hebrew word meaning handed down by tradition, to 12th-century Provence, with a mature phase in 13th-century Spain around the Zohar, which is generally attributed to Moses de Leon. After the 1492 expulsion from the Iberian peninsula, kabbalists founded new schools in North Africa, Italy, the Ottoman Empire and Palestine. In mid-16th-century Safed, Moses Cordovero synthesized earlier trends and Isaac Luria founded a school whose teachings were meant for a small circle of initiates.

Gershom Scholem, the founder of academic Kabbalah studies, concluded that Moses de Leon wrote the Zohar, and linked Lurianic ideas to the crisis after 1492. Moshe Idel later argued that Scholem's account was too narrow and largely ignored practical and magical streams of the tradition.

Hasidism

Hasidism emerged in the mid-18th century in eastern Europe. My Jewish Learning places Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, around 1700 and says historians have not firmly established his biography. He taught devekut, a state of attachment to God, and the movement stressed prayer, including ecstatic prayer, over study. Opponents known as Mitnagdim regarded Hasidic practice as heretical, and the Vilna Gaon issued excommunications that did not stop its growth.

Hasidic groups formed around regional centers, each led by a rebbe whose role usually passes within a family. Chabad and Karlin-Stolin are among the dynasties traced to disciples of Dov Ber of Mezritch. Hasidism drew on Kabbalah but is a distinct movement.

Modern movements

Reform Judaism began in 19th-century Germany as an effort to reconcile Judaism with modern life. The first permanent Reform temple was founded in Hamburg in 1818, Isaac Mayer Wise led its growth in the United States, and the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform declared only moral laws binding. The movement has since re-embraced some practices it once dismissed. Neo-Orthodoxy under Samson Raphael Hirsch demanded full loyalty to the Torah in its traditional form while engaging Western culture, and Conservative Judaism took a middle course that accepts halakhah, Jewish law, but is more open to change.

Reconstructionist Judaism arose in the early 20th century from Mordecai Kaplan, who saw Judaism as an evolving civilization and rituals as folkways with a vote but not a veto. It is the smallest and youngest of the four main American movements.

Judaism and its movements

Judaism is both a religion and the culture of a people, and the sources reviewed describe movements that differ chiefly in how they treat halakhah. The four named in much English-language writing are Orthodox, Conservative (called Masorti in Israel and England), Reform and Reconstructionist. A 2021 Pew report on US Jews uses these labels alongside the category of no particular branch, and a clinical article adds Renewal as a fifth affiliation and notes that many Jews describe themselves as just Jewish.

Hasidic and Yeshivish are subgroups within Orthodoxy rather than separate denominations, and Pew reported too few interviews to analyze them separately. Haredi, often rendered ultra-Orthodox, is a term used in the Pew report for the most traditional communities.

Mystical vocabulary

Kabbalah names the tradition of Jewish mysticism, and its terms include Ein Sof, the infinite God beyond comprehension, and the sefirot, ten divine attributes through which God is known. Tikkun refers to repair of a creation described in Lurianic teaching as shattered, and devekut to attachment to God, which My Jewish Learning calls Hasidism's central value. Practical Kabbalah is the name given to the use of divine names and related techniques. Christian and Hermetic uses of the word are separate traditions that are not covered by these sources.

Terms for healing and prayer

Refaeinu is the healing blessing within the daily Amidah, while Mi Shebeirach is the better-known prayer for the sick, recited in services with the patient's name. A Reform page publishes a version credited to Debbie Friedman. Vidui is a confession said near the end of life. Clinicians are told that the Mi Shebeirach asks for healing of body and soul.

Prayer and liturgy

Observant Jews pray daily, and the Amidah includes the Refaeinu blessing among its middle requests. Marianne Novak writes that the Talmud places it after requests of a spiritual kind and that human medical care can be read as an expression of divine compassion. Mi Shebeirach is the public prayer for the sick, recited with the patient's name, and a clinical article reports that many Jewish patients connect with it even when they are not otherwise observant. Machipedia has a Prayer page that covers prayer across traditions.

Law and authority across movements

The sources describe the movements as distinguished by authority. Orthodoxy holds practice as fixed and binding, Conservative Judaism treats halakhah as authoritative but adaptable, the Reform movement historically treated only moral law as binding, and Reconstructionism treats ritual as folkways. A clinical article adds that there is no central authority on health decisions and that two Orthodox rabbis may advise differently on the same case.

Mystical streams

Kabbalah is studied and taught in several forms, from the textual Zohar and Lurianic traditions to Hasidic teaching, where the rebbe is described as a link between followers and God. Adherents describe devekut and tikkun as aims of prayer and observance. The soul is a central concern in these streams, and Machipedia has a Soul page that treats the concept more broadly.

Spiritual care in health settings

Chaplaincy for Jewish patients is provided by rabbis, cantors and trained lay professionals. A case-based paper reports that some Jewish patients decline chaplain visits for fear of guilt, and that Jewish identity may be cultural rather than doctrinal, so a patient's beliefs cannot be inferred from the label.

Healing and prayer in the tradition's own terms

Texts and teachers cited in the sources hold that healing is ultimately sought from God. Novak concludes that spiritual healing is part of any physical recovery, while the Reform essay notes that Debbie Friedman's version revived petitionary prayer for healing without rejecting medical treatment. Clinicians are told that the Mi Shebeirach is a source of comfort for many patients, including when recovery seems unlikely.

Saving life and medical care

Jewish sources give priority to saving life. A clinical article states that pikuach nefesh generally overrides Sabbath restrictions, though there is debate over which activities count as life-sustaining. The Reform essay reports that most Jews embrace scientific medicine, often alongside spiritual elements, and that Jews were over 14 percent of American doctors while about 2 percent of the US population.

Mystical aims

The tradition teaches that people can affect the sefirot through observance and that history aims at repairing a shattered creation. Hasidic teaching holds that ordinary people, not only scholars, can connect with the divine. These are teachings of the tradition and not findings about health or outcomes.

Scholarship on the tradition

Academic study of Kabbalah is dominated by Scholem, whose history centered on texts, crisis and the Sabbatean movement, and by Idel's critique that practical and magical streams were neglected. Scholarship has also moved to speak of Hasidisms in the plural, though the sources reviewed here do not examine that debate directly.

Observational studies of religiousness and health

Levin analyzed 1,287 Jewish adults aged 50 or over in the SHARE-Israel survey. Recent synagogue attendance predicted better health on six of seven measures after adjustment, while prayer was inversely associated with health on five, which the author reads as prayer serving as coping among people who already have health problems. The abstract describes the evidence as modest.

A cross-sectional online survey of 419 American Orthodox Jews in spring 2020 found positive religious coping and trust in God associated with lower stress. The sample was self-selected, mostly women and concentrated in New York and New Jersey, and the design cannot show cause.

What was not found

Web searches run for this page for systematic reviews or trials of Jewish prayer, Mi Shebeirach or Kabbalah practice did not return one. The sources reviewed contain no controlled study of Judaism as a whole, of healing prayer, or of mystical practice. Clinical papers on Jewish patients are an expert-experience tips article and a one-patient composite case, which describe care considerations and do not test interventions.

Care boundaries

Sources inside the tradition do not set prayer against medicine. The Reform essay reports that most Jews embrace scientific medicine and that pikuach nefesh allows saving a life to override ritual requirements, and Novak frames medical care as an expression of divine compassion. Prayer for the sick is described as an addition to treatment and should not be used to delay or replace necessary care.

Cautions about mystical practice

Traditional sources warn about mystical practice. The Talmudic account of four rabbis who entered pardes ends with one dying and one going mad. A rabbi quoted by My Jewish Learning calls certain practices involving divine names potentially traumatic, and the convention of waiting until age 40 grew in part from concerns about instability and the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi. A scholar quoted there says the rule was often ignored. These are cautions of the tradition, and the sources reviewed report no incidence data.

Diversity and who speaks for the tradition

No single body speaks for all Jews. Pew reported that 32 percent of US Jewish adults identify with no particular branch, and a case paper notes that denominational identity does not necessarily predict belief. Rabbis within a movement can disagree, so sources describing Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Hasidic practice should be read as describing those movements rather than Judaism as a whole.

Reported harms

The sources reviewed do not report harms from Jewish prayer practices. They note fear of guilt about chaplaincy and cautions about unsupervised mystical practice, and they do not cover financial or coercive concerns in any community.