As Rabbi Gila Ruskin faced breast cancer surgery several years ago, the Jewish tradition passed down to her through countless generations and thousands of years suddenly became more relevant than ever.

She went to the beach one sleepless night and walked into the ocean. She chanted a prayer, sang a song and recited a Psalm.

"It was the last time I was going to be entering the water whole," she said. Or so she thought. By performing that ritual and continuing to recite Psalms during her six months of chemotherapy, she emerged feeling whole again. "It really opened my eyes to the importance of doing these kinds of rituals in the face of illness," she said.

Ruskin is a leader in a growing national movement among liberal Jews that links prayer and spirituality to healing. Nationally, more than 20 Jewish healing centers or projects have opened, including Ruskin's Baltimore Jewish Healing Network.

The Jewish healing movement combines some seemingly New Age ideas with traditional Jewish texts and teaching in a religion not usually known for such practices.

Some Baltimore-area synagogues have started holding healing services, either as part of the Sabbath ritual or in addition to it. Groups of Jews compile lists of family and friends who are ill and gather to recite Psalms for healing. In some cases, synagogues e-mail prayers and Psalms to members so they can pray at home for the ill or distressed.

But this is not faith healing.

"When you hear the world 'healing,' unfortunately some people still hear some kind of magical thinking that is truly foreign to mainstream Judaism," said Rabbi Simka Y. Weintraub, rabbinical director for the National Center for Jewish Healing. "As we talk and people hear that, what we're talking about is the whole person and not necessarily a cure, although we pray for a cure and reach for a cure."

"I make a clear distinction between healing and cure," said Rabbi Floyd Herman of Har Sinai Congregation, where for about three years, healing services were held monthly but are now performed several times a year. "I don't want people to think I'm one of the faith healers on TV. I equate healing with wholeness."

Rabbi Paul Caplan of Beth Am Synagogue, where the healing service has been incorporated into the Sabbath service, said he's stopped using the word "healing" altogether.

"We changed to a Hebrew name, 'shleimut,' which comes from 'shalom,' meaning peace. But it also means a sense of wholeness, completeness, being fulfilled," Caplan said. "The word 'healing' was problematic because it had a Christian connotation and didn't convey the Jewish meaning we wanted to convey.

"We're not here to cure cancer or diseases by saying 'hocus pocus' or a prayer," he said. "The idea is to bring a person hope or courage or acceptance or whatever it is that will put that person in a better place and whole again. Maybe it's a sense of acceptance that they need, that they aren't going to make it and had better put their affairs in order."

But advocates of Jewish healing also point to scientific studies indicating that prayer helps in physical healing. "I don't consider the death of one's client, although I don't seek it, to be a failure. But I have a number of clients with major incurable diseases who are doing much better," said Rabbi Martin Siegel, who is opening a healing center in Patterson Park. "The kind of transformation work we do helps the more traditional therapies. It unifies and enhances the energy levels within the system, so whatever therapies that are done are more effective."

At Ruskin's Chevrei Tzedek Congregation, a boy named Micah became gravely ill with pneumonia and the prayer network went into effect. "It was touch and go for about a month," Ruskin said. "People from our congregation were at the hospital all the time. Whenever a parent was there, at least one person was there to keep them company. We sent e-mails to the congregation urging them to recite Psalms and a prayer for healing that's part of the daily liturgy.

"The parents found that very comforting," she said. "The doctor knew about it. That went on during the whole period he was sick."

For about the past two years, Ruskin, with social worker Israela Meyerstein, has run the Baltimore Jewish Healing Network to promote the concept. "We really want to be a resource to the rabbis and different synagogues in our community," Ruskin said.

Ruskin and Meyerstein are in the midst of leading a course on Jewish healing at Chizuk Amuno Congregation called "Refuat Hanefesh, Refuat Haguf: Healing the Soul, Healing the Body." They expose their students, mostly women, to the Psalms, Talmudic passages, prayers from the daily liturgy and midrash (rabbinical sermons) that will provide comfort and understanding during times of pain, suffering and illness.

"The tradition has always been there, but maybe people haven't looked at it," Meyerstein said. "Until the development of the Jewish healing movement, most of the location of things that could be called healing were in the New Age disciplines."

The first models for modern healing services came from those suffering from or grieving for people with AIDS.

"Now it's really spread," Ruskin said. "We're living in a time right now when people have a thirst for these kinds of spiritual concerns and seek them out. But the sources we use are ancient sources. When we talk about going to the Psalms or Jewish prayers, a lot of them are thousands of years old."

The services don't work for everybody. Rabbi Donald Berlin said he started a regular healing service at Temple Oheb Shalom but canceled it after about a year.

"Part of the problem was that to focus on life's difficulties may have burdened people instead of inspired them," he said. "We came to the conclusion that what is needed is a more uplifting experience, which would involve humor -- I think humor is very healing -- and song," Berlin said.

"I think when people are hurting that sharing the hurt is sometimes good and sharing the hurt can be problematic," he said. "The problem is that when people hurt, they may be in so much pain that they're beyond the point of finding comfort and solace in somebody else."

And, he said, some people said the service was not what they expected. "I think one reason our healing service failed is because people came expecting to alleviate all their psychological pain and their physical pain, and it didn't happen right away," Berlin said. "What people needed to understand is we needed to offer something to heal the wholeness within."

Pub Date: 3/15/99