Healing and the Jewish Imagination: Spiritual and Practical Perspectives on Judaism and Health

If you are looking for a compassionate how-to for healing, this academic exploration of Jewish texts isn't it. In a ponderous introduction that distinguishes between healing and curing, Cutter, director of the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, says outright that "these pages are intended to be more scholarly than restorative." Essays treat the intersections of literature, philosophy, mysticism, Bible, history, biography, science and contemporary society, and are primarily penned by scholars, teachers, artists and activists who are not involved in hands-on clinical or spiritual aspects of the work. Tamara Green's essay on her personal search for answers to the questions her own illness provoked: "Could I be spiritually healed even if I never got better physically; and if I was not to be cured, what did Adonai [God] expect of me?" Her interpretation of the shattered tablets in the Ark of the Covenant and each individual's responsibility to bring about the repair of the world are beautiful nuggets buried amid pages of academic discourse. But those willing to plow through will find that, as Green concludes, "spiritual healing may be possible, even if we cannot be made whole again." (May)