Thursday, June 23, 2011

Jewish Healing

By now you might be wondering what Jewish healing is all about. It grew from the concern of contemporary Jews who dedicated themselves to the benefits that accrue from living a spiritual life. Among the values derive from contact with spirit are healing, love, compassion, wisdom, abundance, creativity and intuition.

From the Kabbalah, we learn that the blessings that flows down from God is pure energy which gets transformed step by step through the spiritual worlds until it reaches our material world. Here it takes the form of the body and any interruptions or blockages in that flow manifests itself into what we call illness. Illness can take place on all levels of body, mind and spirit depending on where it gets stuck. So the first requirement of authentic Jewish healing has to be on an energetic level. The second requirement is that it be Torah based, meaning that it needs to involve specific Mitzvot such as prayer and misheberah, bikim holim (visiting the sick), doing t'shuvah (turning inward towards God), tsedakah (giving to others), the study and visualizations of selected biblical text, and the recitation of specific tehillim (psalms).

The third element to qualify healing as authentically Jewish is that it eliminates an affinity towards anything that smacks of avodah zarah -forbidden worship which means idol worship in the broadest sense, or engaging in religions outside of Judaism. Not only objects or people, but thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions, convictions, etc. that binds one to pay homage to the object of devotion. So many medical and psychological theories that many of us cherish must be seen as the idolatry it is owing to strong convictions of worshiping mental constructs.