I received an email alert from my cantorial friend, Michael Horwitz, regarding the life-threatening condition of liberal Jewish singer and songwriter Debbie Friedman just before Shabbat. I met Debbie when I first began my rabbinical studies 20 years ago (how can I possible BE that old?) I was attending a summer Wexler Family Education Program at what was then called the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. Debbie was giving a concert for the students on the program. I remember a poor shlump in the audience missed the request not to take flash photos. He did and Debbie went down as if she had been hit by a taser. Up popped fellow singer/songwriter Craig Taubman who played while Debbie pulled herself together. When she came back up, she and Craig sang a duet, and then Debbie continued on.
I continued my rabbinical studies in Jerusalem and when I entered year three of my studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, I found Debbie was my new almost next-door neighbor, living adjacent to Anshe Chesed Synagogue, on the Upper West Side. Debbie would hold these wonderful monthly healing services in the jam-packed chapel of Anshe Chesed. My wife, Elissa, and I would regularly attend -- not that we needed specific healing, rather life in Manhattan requires spiritual healing for anyone who lives on that congested island. In addition Debbie hosted Refaeinu Conferences, with the hope of spreading Healing Services to synagogues throughout America.
When I came to my first pulpit, B'nai Tikvah Congregation in Los Angeles, I began guitar-led Healing Services almost immediately (using the excellent Women's League for Conservative Judaism Healing Service booklets), and of course incorporated Debbie's Misheberach healing prayer into every Shabbat service. During my tenure as rabbi, Debbie also came to LA and did a fundraiser for our synagogue, as well as Mishkon Tephila in Venice and Adat Shalom in West LA. She was gracious and a crowd pleaser.
Now, 20 years after my first Debbie Freidman encounter, I am in Wilmington, Delaware, and I have introduced her Healing Services at our Delaware-based Jewish Family Services Healing Center and her Misheberach prayer is a standard for our Morning Minyan, Hebrew School prayer services as well as weekly Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Shalom.
At 9:12 p.m. this Saturday evening, our Wilmington gathering of Albert Einstein Academy staff, Board Members and parents joined with our friends across the country in singing Debbie's Misheberach prayer, and directing our prayers and music to her hospital room in my hometown of Orange County, California. We hope our prayers help bring her out of her medically-induced coma and allow her lungs to heal, for her to breath on her own, the breath, the neshima that fuels her neshama, her soul, which has allowed us all to sing in harmony together, across the movements of Judaism, and across the country. Debbie has been a great unifer, and even if our prayers do not get us our much-hoped-for results of a healthy Debbie Friedman, they have already achieved the power of once again unifying American Jewry the way her music has for decades.
May her music always be for a blessing.
And let us say amen.
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