Mi Shebeirach

A Mi Shebeirach is a Jewish prayer used to request a blessing from God. Dating to the 10th or 11th century, Mi Shebeirach 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 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 the Lower Mesopotamia (called "Babylonia" by Jews) as part of or alongside the Yekum Purkan prayers. Its format—invoking God in the name of the Biblical Patriarchs (and, in current practice, the Matriarchs) — 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 (circumcision) and bene 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 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...