Mi Shebeirach

A Mi Shebeirach is a Jewish prayer used to request a blessing from God. Dating to the 10th or 11th century CE, Mi Shebeirach prayers are used for a wide variety of purposes. Originally in Hebrew but sometimes recited in the vernacular, different versions at different times have been among the prayers most popular with congregants. In contemporary Judaism, a Mi Shebeirach serves as the main prayer of healing, particularly among liberal Jews, to whose rituals it has become central.
The original Mi Shebeirach, a Shabbat prayer for a blessing for the whole congregation, originated in Babylonia as part of or alongside the Yekum Purkan prayers. Its format—invoking God in the name of the patriarchs (and in some modern settings the matriarchs) and then making a case that a specific person or group should be blessed—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 (circumcision) and b'nai mitzvah. The Mi Shebeirach for olim (those called to the Torah) 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 Mi Shebeirach 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 AIDS crisis in the 1980s saw a re-emergence in gay and lesbian synagogues. Debbie Friedman's Hebrew–English version of the prayer, which she and her then-partner, Rabbi 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 Mi Shebeirach for healing not only being reintroduced to liberal Jewish liturgy but becoming one of the movement's central prayers. Many congregations maintain "Mi Shebeirach 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.
In the context of Ashkenazi liturgy, the traditional Mi Shebeirach has been described as either the third Yekum Purkan 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 Mi Shebeirach—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 Kol Bo.
Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews traditionally recite the prayer on Shabbat immediately after the haftara during the Torah service; Sephardic Jews also recite it on Yom Kippur, although there are textual variants between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic version. The Mi Shebeirach is often recited in the vernacular language of a congregation rather than in Hebrew. In Jewish Worship (1971), 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 Mi Shebeirach for the congregation is set to a melody using a heptatonic scale that is in turn called the misheberak scale.
The Mi Shebeirach also came to serve as a template for prayers for specific blessings, and for a time was sometimes prefixed with "Yehi ratzon" ('May it be your will'). Gregg Drinkwater in American Jewish History identifies a five-part structure to such prayers: 1) "Mi shebeirach" 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 Mi Shebeirach prayers are used for life events, including birth (for the mother), bar or bat mitzvah, brit milah (circumcision), or conversion or return from apostasy. Several concern marriage: in anticipation thereof, for newlyweds, and for a 25th or 50th wedding anniversary. Occasional Mi Shebeirach prayers include those for the Ten Days of Penitence, the Fast of Behav, and Kol Nidre (for Jerusalem). During the Khmelnytsky Uprising, Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller originated the practice of saying a Mi Shebeirach 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.
In many congregations, a Mi Shebeirach is recited for each individual oleh (person called for an aliyah), a practice originating among the Jews of France or of Germany, originally just in pilgrim festivals. Historically, in exchange for a donation, an oleh 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 Mi Shebeirach for all olim 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 (va'abbur she'alah/she'aletah 'because he/she has come up') to בַעֲבּוּר הַעֲלִיָה (va'abbur ha'aliyah 'because of this aliyah') and מִשְפַּחְתּוֹ/מִשְפַּחְתָה (mischpachto/mishpachtah, 'his/her family'—not included in Birnbaum's version) to הַמִשְפַּחָה (hamishpachah 'the family').
Macy Nulman's Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer ties the tradition of blessing the sick back to Yoreh De'ah 335:10 [he]. While Jewish liturgical names usually refer to people patronymically ("[person's name], child of [father's name]"), a Mi Shebeirach for healing traditionally refers to the sick person by matronym ("[person's name], child of [mother's name]"). Kabbalists teach that this evokes more compassion from God, citing Psalms 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 Mi Shebeirach 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 Mi Shebeirach does not, however, fulfill the mitzvah (commandment) of bikur cholim (visiting the sick).
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 Mi Shebeirach 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 Mi Shebeirach for healing.
After the AIDS crisis began in the United States in 1981, the Mi Shebeirach and other communal healing prayers began to re-emerge in Reform and other liberal Jewish communities, particularly at gay and lesbian 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 siddur (prayerbook), began a communal Mi Shebeirach written by Garry Koenigsburg and Rabbi 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 (tefilat shav), Sha'ar Zahav's version emphasized spiritual healing as well as physical. Around the same time, Rabbi Margaret Wenig, a gay rights activist, began including a Mi Shebeirach in services with her elderly congregation in New York City, although not framed just as a prayer for healing. At the gay and lesbian synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, a 1985 siddur supervised by Rabbi Janet Marder included several prayers for healing, including a Mi Shebeirach blessing the full congregation with health, success, and forgiveness.
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 Mi Shebeirach as a prayer of healing from her Conservative background, asked the couple to write a version of the prayer. Like the Sha'ar Zahav Mi Shebeirach, Friedman and Setel's version emphasized spiritual healing in the face of a disease which most at the time were unlikely to survive. Refuah shleima ('full healing') 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 mi sheiberach avoteinu ('May the one who blessed our fathers'), they added makor habrachah l'imoteinu ('source of blessing for our mothers'). The first two words come from Lekha Dodi; makor ('source'), while grammatically masculine, is often used in modern feminist liturgy to evoke childbirth. Friedman and Setel then reversed avoteinu and imoteinu 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 Simchat Hochmah (celebration of wisdom) 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 (1989) and Renewal of Spirit (1995) 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.
By specifying refuah shleima as healing of both body (refuat haguf) and spirit (refuat hanefesh)—a commonality across denominations—the Mi Shebeirach for healing emphasizes that both physical and mental illness ought to be treated. The prayer uses the Š-L-M root, the same used in the Hebrew word shalom 'peace'. While refuah in Hebrew refers to both healing and curing, the contemporary American Jewish context emphasizes the distinction between the two concepts, with the Mi Shebeirach a prayer of the former rather than the latter. Nonetheless, Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler critiques the Mi Shebeirach as inapplicable to chronic illness and proposes a different prayer for such cases. Liberal Jewish commentary on the Mi Shebeirach for healing often emphasizes that it is not a form of faith healing, that it seeks a spiritual rather than physical healing, and that healing is not sought only for those who are named.
Friedman and Setel's setting has drawn particular praise, including for its bilingual nature, which makes it at once traditional and accessible. It is one of several Friedman pieces that have been called "musical midrash". Lyrically, through asking God to "help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing", it emphasizes the agency of the person praying. Its melody resembles that of a ballad; like the traditional nusach (chant) for the Mi Shebeirach for healing, it is set in a major key. Drinkwater views the modern Mi Shebeirach for healing as providing a "fundamentally queer insight" and frames it as part of a transformation in Judaism away from "narratives of wholeness, purity, and perfection".
The Mi Shebeirach of healing was added to the Reform siddur Mishkan T'filah in 2007, comprising a three-sentence blessing in Hebrew and English praying for a "complete renewal of body and spirit" for those who are ill, and the lyrics to Friedman and Setel's version. By the time it was added, it had already become, according to Drinkwater, "ubiquitous in Reform settings ... and in many non-Reform settings throughout the world". Drinkwater casts it as "the emotional highlight of synagogue services for countless Jews". Elyse Frishman, Mishkan T'filah's editor, described including it as a "crystal clear" choice and that Friedman's setting had already been "canonized". The prayer is now seen as central to liberal Jewish ritual. In contemporary usage, to say "I'll say a Mi Shebeirach for you" generally refers to the Mi Shebeirach for healing.
Starting in the 1990s, Flam and Kahn's idea of a healing service spread across the United States, with the Mi Shebeirach for healing at its core. In time this practice has diminished, as healing has been more incorporated into other aspects of Jewish life. Many synagogues maintain "Mi Shebeirach lists" of names to read on Shabbat. Some Jews include on preoperative checklists that they should be added to their congregations' Mi Shebeirach lists. The lists also serve to make the community aware that someone is ill, which can be beneficial but can also present problems in cases of stigmatized illnesses. In some congregations, congregants with ill loved ones line up and the rabbi says the prayer. In more liberal ones, the rabbi will ask congregants to list names, and the congregant will then sing either the traditional Mi Shebeirach for healing or Friedman and Setel's version. Sometimes congregants wrap one another in tallitot (prayer shawls) or hold shawls above one another.
Use of the Mi Shebeirach for mental illness or addiction is complicated by social stigma. Some may embrace the Mi Shebeirach as a chance to spread awareness in their community, while others may seek anonymity. Essayist Stephen Fried has advocated for the Mi Shebeirach for healing as an opportunity for rabbis "to reinforce that mental illness and substance use disorders 'count' as medical conditions for which you can offer prayers of healing".
The prayer is often used in Jewish chaplaincy. A number of versions exist for specific roles and scenarios in healthcare. Silverman, who conducted an ethnographic study of liberal Jews in Tucson, recounts attending a cancer support group for Jewish women that closed with Friedman's version of the Mi Shebeirach, even though a number of the group's members had described themselves as being irreligious or not praying. She found that while the Mi Shebeirach of healing resonated widely, many participants were unaware how new the Friedman version was. As Friedman lay dying of pneumonia in 2011 after two decades of chronic illness, many North American congregations sang her and Setel's "Mi Shebeirach". Setel wrote in The Jewish Daily Forward that, while people's Mi Shebeirach prayers for Friedman "did not prevent Debbie's death, ... neither were they offered in vain".