Rabbi's Blog

Brokenness, Healing and Repair

I imagine many of us have memories of the last words spoken to us by a loved one, or an honored teacher before they died and the impact they had on us.  Recently I was remembering the last words my teacher Reb Zalman said to me a couple of weeks before he died 8 years ago when I visited him in hospital, not knowing it was going to be the last time I saw him..  “Reb Marc leben,” as he always called me, “when you get to my age, I cannot tell you how good it feels to have a good bowel movement.”  He didn’t say “bowel movement” but I am not sure I can say the word he did use in a Yom Kippur sermon, but then maybe I can’t really say bowel movement in a Yom Kippur sermon. But I just did. Twice.  Reb Zalman was one of the great and influential rabbis of our generation, known and loved throughout the world and certainly one of my most important and significant teachers, so as I reflect on it years later as I get older, I contemplate what he was trying to teach me in these words. I think he was sharing about the complexity, intricacy and vulnerability of the human body and something of the relationship between the body and the soul, about wellness and wholeness.  As I age, I am certainly aware of the way in which my own body is changing, but you don’t need to know my health challenges!

My doctor friend Pierre told me the other day that he often reminds his patients how many miracles have to happen for each system in our body to be working and keeping us alive and breathing every day.

The ancient rabbis of the Talmud knew of this tension too and in Tractate Brachot that examines all of the different blessings and prayers for various occasions, actions and experiences, there is a discussion on what words to say before and after using the loo, or restroom as some might say. Upon entering there is a plea to the angels who accompany us at all times, but cannot enter this place to protect us and wait for us while we are in this vulnerable situation. Protect me. Guard me. Wait for me.

Upon exiting, says the Talmud, one says:
“Baruch atah...asher yatzar et ha’adam b’chochmah, Blessed are You…Who formed the human in wisdom, u’vara vo nekavim nekavim, chalulim chalulim, and created in them many orifices and cavities. Galui v’yadua lifnei ciseh c’vodecha It is revealed and known before the throne of Your glory, sh’im y’pateach echad mehem or y’satem echad mehem, ee efshar la’amod lifanecha,  that if one of them was to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to stand before You.”

This blessing, in almost every prayer book and familiar to many of us, is an acknowledgement of the wisdom of the delicate intricacy of the digestive system, knowing that life can be very, very disrupted if something that should be open is closed and if something that should be closed is open.  The rabbis who composed this ancient blessing knew how crucial our inner plumbing is for survival. It would not be possible to exist, to stand. Every long bracha, or blessing, has a chatimah, an ending that encapsulates the essence, and the ending of this blessing has a fascinating story.  The Talmud continues:

With what should one conclude this blessing? Rav said: One should conclude: Baruch atah...rofeh hacholim, Blessed are You…Healer of the sick. Shmuel said: Abba has declared everyone sick. Rather, one should say: rofeh col bassar, Healer of all flesh. Rav Sheshet said: One should conclude: maflih la’asot, Who performs wondrous acts! Rav Pappa said: Therefore, let us say them both: rofeh col bassar u’maflih la’asot, Healer of all flesh, Who performs wondrous acts.

And this is, indeed, how we end this blessing with a nod to two different rabbinic opinions and a powerful way to acknowledge God as healer and worker of miracles, knowing, as was said, that when our fragile human bodies are in working order, there are indeed many miracles that are happening every moment. Even though this powerful blessing, known as asher yatzar, is specifically designated in the Talmud as an after bathroom prayer, it has become for some a daily blessing for the body and for healing. 

Healing plays a very large and important role in Jewish life; bikkur cholim, visiting the sick is considered one of the highest of mitzvot, an act of kindness that bridges this word and the world to come.  Almost every service has some kind of prayer or blessing for healing, refuah. The eighth blessing of the weekday amidah says refa’einu hashem v’nerafeh - heal us and we will be healed.  Prayers of healing for loved ones are among the deepest and most fervent of our prayers. 

Covid has changed our world so much.  Over 6.5 million people globally have died from Covid, over one million in the US.  Many remain very sick with long Covid symptoms, and those who are vulnerable and immune compromised live in constant fear of being exposed and infected. The toll that this pandemic has taken on our mental health is alarming, with sharp rises in anxiety, depression, self harm and substance abuse, especially among kids and  teens, with documented mental health claims almost doubling among this population in the last two years. Many are also impacted by all the other traumas too - shootings, floods, fires, hurricanes, wars.  We all need healing and we all need to be in communities that feel safe. We need to be aware and responsive as much as we can to what is happening to our young people and, really, to all of us.

The body, the mind, the heart and the spirit can all be out of balance, broken and in need of restoration and healing.  When we say a mi sh’berach for cholim, the blessing for the sick, we pray for refuat hanefesh u’refuat haguf, healing of the body and healing of the soul. As a rabbi, I find it powerful gently to lay my hands on a person and offer them this healing blessing, reciting ancient words and calling on our ancestors.  In my life before being a rabbi, I studied and practiced energy healing and other modalities that are about opening to and channeling healing. Sometimes one human offering another a blessing can be in itself a form of healing.

The advances in medical science in so many areas during my lifetime have been extraordinary with highly effective treatments for conditions that were incurable. And yet the body and healing are full of mystery, and we know more and more about the strong link between mind and body.  There is also a connection between teshuva, returning and refuah, healing.  In Avinu Malkeynu that we sing and chant so many times this holiday season, Avinu Malkeynu hachaziraeynu b’teshuva shlemah l’fanecha “Our Father, our King, return us in complete teshuvah before You!” immediately precedes Avinu Malkeyni sh’lach refuah shlemah l’cholei amecha, Avinu Malkeynu send complete healing to Your people. The Talmud in Yoma says “gedolah teshuvah sh’miviah refout l’olam - teshuvah is great because it brings healing to the world!” Teshuvah shlemah and refuah shlemah, complete return and complete healing are deeply connected.  Shlemah can mean full, complete or whole and it is aspirational in the sense that none of us are completely whole, yet the intense power of the ritual of this day and the gift of this cycle of teshuva, the practice of returning to our essence, can help us reintegrate, reimagine, restore some of the ways in which we are broken. When we look at that list of al chayts, 44 confessions of the ways in which we have missed the mark, so many of them are connected to our body - eyes, legs, heart, mouth, hands, sexual organs, tongue.  So as we tap our hearts and say these words in the hope that we can change, it is both teshuvah and refuah, return and healing. 

A few years ago my mother broke an antique Chinese pot into several pieces and was, understandably, quite upset.  My sister told her that she had just been reading about Kinsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold, silver or platinum along the lines of the cracks.  They bought a kit online and put the pot back together with protruding, proud gold lines over the cracks. It is back on display in the river cottage for all to see. The philosophy is that the object does not lose its value and even becomes more valuable when it proclaims and accentuates its brokenness. Kintsugi teaches you that your broken places make you stronger and better than ever before. When you think you are broken, you can pick up the pieces, put them back together, and learn to embrace the cracks. Even highlight them.  We are all broken in some way - our hearts for sure, our minds, our bodies.  As the Hassidic rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotz says, “ayn dvar shalem c’lev nishbar - there is nothing as whole as a broken heart.”  Kintsugi also brings to mind that brilliant and possibly over quoted line from Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem, “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” There is so much stigma about illness, physical and mental, and our culture often urges us to hide away our imperfections out of shame. I am sure most of us have aspects of our body that we don’t like and want to hide; the weird things it does or the things that it can no longer do.  Part of this process of teshuva and refuah, return and healing is to acknowledge our cracks and our vulnerability and even adorn ourselves with them if we dare!

Even though Jewish spirituality focuses a great deal on prayer and ritual, it is also practical and not about magical thinking, so that even though we bless the source for the miraculous working of the body and we pray for healing, we accept when physical healing is no longer possible and our blessings for healing may actually be for a peaceful transition, although we have all known people who have been given and a very short time to live and defied all the doctors, living for months or even years longer. It’s a mystery. At the end of life a vidui, a confession is said, by the dying person if they are able, or often by a rabbi, that their death be a kaparah, like Yom Kippur, an atonement for their life in this world.  Rabbi Alan Lew describes Yom Kippur as a “death rehearsal” where purity, confession and atonement are at the heart of this day, as well as at the end of life.  Yom Kippur can be too focused on affliction and self-flagellation, and do we need more of that after what we have gone through these last years?  

As we continue this day with the fasting, mussaf, minchah and neilah still to go with all the confessions,vidui, I have been thinking about the beautiful ritual of taharah, preparing a body  for burial, performed by the Hevre Kedisha, the burial society, with special washing along with a deep honoring of all of the parts of that body and how they held us in life. So as we transition into mussaf, in the spirit and teshuva and refuah, return and healing, I want to invite us to appreciate, thank and honor our bodies, in spite of or even because of their limitations.

Blessed is this head that houses my thoughts, words, dreams and visions
Blessed is this neck that holds my head as a bridge between head and body
Blessed is this spine that holds and carries my vital energy

Thank you eyes for helping me to see clearly and to look for the best in myself and others
Thank you ears for letting me hear beautiful music, the sounds in nature and the sweet stories of others
Thank you nose for allowing me the gift of all the pleasing odors and the deep inhalations 
Thank you mouth for helping me consume food and drink that nourishes and sustains me, and for helping me choose kind and healing words.
Thank you heart for beating with passion and helping me feel all that I feel, even when I am sad
Thank you hands for the ability to receive and to give, to hold and to connect
Thank you legs and feet for helping me walk in this world and to stand on solid ground

Our tradition prescribes starting every day with dawn blessings, birkot hashachar, that express gratitude for a body and a soul and all that they can do together. Asher yatzar, the bathroom  blessing, is for the guf, the body in all its miraculous messiness, is accompanied by a blessing for the neshama, the soul that begins elohai neshama sh’natata bi t’horah hee, my God the soul that you have placed inside of me is t’harah, completely pure. Healing is about an integration between body and soul and appreciation for their partnership. That is what Reb Zalman was teaching me that day the last time I saw him.  May we be open to receive healing in all the ways it comes to us for ourselves and for the world and may we be blessed with teshuva shlemah and refuah shlemah.