Mi Shebeirach
A is a Jewish prayer used to request a blessing from God. Dating to the 10th or 11th century, prayers are used for a wide variety of purposes. Originally in Hebrew, but sometimes recited in the vernacular or a combination of both, different versions at different times have been among the most popular prayers with congregants. In contemporary Judaism, a serves as the main prayer of healing, particularly among liberal Jews, to whose rituals it has become central.
The original, a Shabbat prayer for a blessing for the whole congregation, originated in the Lower Mesopotamia as part of or alongside the prayers. Its format—invoking God in the name of the Biblical Patriarchs — and then making a case for blessing a specific person or group. This became a popular template for other prayers, including that for a person called to the Torah and those for life events such as brit milah and bene mitzvah. The for was for a time the central part of the Torah service for less educated European Jews.
Since the late medieval period, Jews have used a as a prayer of healing. Reform Jews abolished this practice in the 1800s as their conception of healing shifted to be more based in science, but the devastation of the Ronald Reagan AIDS epidemic in the 1980s saw a re-emergence in LGBTQ synagogues. Debbie Friedman's Hebrew–English version of the prayer, which she and her then-partner, Drorah Setel, wrote in 1987, has become the best-known setting. Released in 1989 on the album And You Shall Be a Blessing and spread through performances at Jewish conferences, the song became Friedman's best-known work and led to the for healing not only being reintroduced to liberal Jewish liturgy but becoming one of the movement's central prayers. Many congregations maintain " lists" of those to pray for, and it is common for Jews to have themselves added to them in anticipation of a medical procedure; the prayer is likewise widely used in Jewish hospital chaplaincy. Friedman and Setel's version and others like it, born of a time when HIV was almost always fatal, emphasize spiritual renewal rather than just physical rehabilitation, a distinction stressed in turn by liberal Jewish scholars.
For the congregation
In the context of Ashkenazi liturgy, the traditional has been described as either the third prayer or as an additional prayer recited after the two Yekum Purkan prayers. The three prayers date to Babylonia in the 10th or 11th century CE, with the —a Hebrew prayer—being a later addition to the other two, which are in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It is derived from a prayer for rain, sharing a logic that as God has previously done a particular thing, so he will again. It is mentioned in the Machzor Vitry, in the writings of David Abudarham, and in.Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews traditionally recite the prayer on Shabbat immediately after the during the Torah service; Sephardic Jews also recite it on Yom Kippur, although there are textual variants between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic version. The is often recited in the vernacular language of a congregation rather than in Hebrew. In Jewish Worship, Abraham Ezra Millgram says that this is because of the prayer's "direct appeal to the worshipers and the ethical responsibilities it spells out for the people". Traditionally the for the congregation is set to a melody using a heptatonic scale that is in turn called the misheberak scale.
Specialized versions
The also came to serve as a template for prayers for specific blessings, and for a time was sometimes prefixed with "" "" and an invocation of the patriarchs; 2) the name of the person to bless; 3) the reason they should be blessed; 4) what is requested for the person; and 5) the community's response. William Cutter writes in Sh'ma:Some prayers are used for life events, including birth, or, , or conversion or return from apostasy. Several concern marriage: in anticipation thereof, for newlyweds, and for a 25th or 50th wedding anniversary. Occasional prayers include those for the Ten Days of Penitence, the Fast of Behav, and Kol Nidre. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising, Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller originated the practice of saying a for those who do not converse during prayer. Some prayers exist for particular communities, such as one used in many communities for members of the Israel Defense Forces, or several published by the Reform movement for LGBTQ Jews.
For a Zeved habat
For olim
In many congregations, a is recited for each individual , a practice originating among the Jews of France or of Germany, originally just in pilgrim festivals. Historically, in exchange for a donation, an could have a blessing said for someone else as well. The practice expanded to Sabbath services by the 1200s, in part because it served as a source of income, and in turn spread to other countries. In German communities, it is recited even during weekday Torah readings. It thus became the most important part of the service for less educated Jews but also causing services to run long, at the expense of the Torah reading itself. Some congregations recite a for all collectively, a tradition dating at least to Rabbi Eliyahu Menachem in 13th century London.A nonbinary-inclusive version approved by Conservative Judaism's Rabbinical Assembly changes בַעֲבּוּר שֶׁעָלָה/שֶׁעָלְתָה to בַעֲבּוּר הַעֲלִיָה and מִשְפַּחְתּוֹ/מִשְפַּחְתָה to הַמִשְפַּחָה.
As a prayer of healing
's Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer ties the tradition of blessing the sick back to While Jewish liturgical names usually refer to people patronymically, a for healing traditionally refers to the sick person by matronym. Kabbalists teach that this evokes more compassion from God, citing Psalm 86:16, "Turn to me and have mercy on me; ... and deliver the son of your maidservant". Jews in the late medieval and early modern periods used a to pray for the bodies and souls of those not present, while also praying directly for individuals' healing, as they believed all healing was through God's will. A does not, however, fulfill the mitzvah of bikur cholim.Influenced by German ideals, early Reform Jews in the United States saw healing as a matter for private, rather than communal prayer. Prayer healing became less popular as medicine modernized, and many Reform Jews came to see healing as a purely scientific matter. The Union Prayer Book, published in 1895 and last revised in 1940, lacked any for healing, rather limiting itself to a single line praying to "comfort the sorrowing and cheer the silent sufferers". While the 1975 Reform prayerbook Gates of Prayer was more flexible than its predecessor and restored some older practices, it also had no for healing.
After the AIDS crisis began in the United States in 1981, the and other communal healing prayers began to re-emerge in Reform and other liberal Jewish communities, particularly at LGBTQ synagogues. A few years into the pandemic, Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, a Reform congregation in San Francisco that used its own gender-neutral, gay-inclusive , began a communal written by Garry Koenigsburg and Yoel Kahn, praying to heal "all the ill amongst us, and all who have been touched by AIDS and related illness". As there was at the time no effective treatment for HIV/AIDS, and Jewish tradition says that prayers should not be in vain, Sha'ar Zahav's version emphasized spiritual healing as well as physical. Around the same time, Margaret Wenig, a gay rights activist, began including a in services with her elderly congregation in New York City, although not framed just as a prayer for healing. At the LGBTQ synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, a 1985 supervised by Janet Marder included several prayers for healing, including a blessing the full congregation with health, success, and forgiveness.
Friedman and Setel's version
Debbie Friedman was part of a wave of Jewish folk singers that began in the 1960s. Throughout the 1980s, as she lost many friends to AIDS and separately several to cancer, she traveled across the country performing at sickbeds. From 1984 to 1987, she lived with Rabbi Drorah Setel, then her romantic partner, who worked with AIDS Project Los Angeles.Marcia "Marty" Cohn Spiegel, a Jewish feminist activist familiar with as a prayer of healing from her Conservative background, asked the couple to write a version of the prayer. Like the Sha'ar Zahav, Friedman and Setel's version emphasized spiritual healing in the face of a disease which most at the time were unlikely to survive. was defined as the renewal, rather than repair, of body and spirit. Using a mix of Hebrew and English, a trend begun by Friedman in the 1970s, the two chose to include the Jewish matriarchs as well as the patriarchs to "express the empowerment of those reciting and hearing the prayer". After the initial , they added . The first two words come from ; , while grammatically masculine, is often used in modern feminist liturgy to evoke childbirth. Friedman and Setel then reversed and in the second Hebrew verse in order to avoid gendering God.
Friedman and Setel wrote the prayer in October 1987. It was first used in a service at Congregation Ner Tamid celebrating Cohn Spiegel's eldering, led by Setel, openly lesbian rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, and feminist liturgist Marcia Falk. Friedman included the song on her albums And You Shall Be a Blessing and Renewal of Spirit and performed it at Jewish conferences including those of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, through which it spread to Jewish communities across the United States. "Mi Shebeirach" became Friedman's most popular song. She performed it at almost every concert, prefacing it with "This is for you" before singing it once on her own and then once with the audience.