Illness and Healing

Catalog description

Physical illness and healing are core spiritual concerns – and uniquely potent to focus individuals, families and communities on life's Big Questions. Our course will explore Jewish approaches to illness and healing, and what we make of them in ourselves and our roles as clergy. Using Tanakh, Talmud, Codes, Hasidut, liturgy and modern sources, we'll use tradition's riches to ask (and maybe answer) Big Questions: How does Judaism respond to illness? What is healing? What tools can we offer amidst illness and healing (or not-healing)? What do the spiritual and psycho-emotional dynamics of illness and healing (or not-healing) ask of us in our own journeys of faith, spiritual practice and clergy service? What might these dynamics – and Judaism's doctrinal and theological pluralism around them – teach about the soul and the nature of Jewish tradition itself? This course fulfills a spirituality elective.