Congratulations to the following presenters:
Poster Session Winners
Prevalence and Types of Miraculous Healings among U.S. Congregations in 2014
Andrew Baccari, BA, Harvard Divinity School
Rebecca Quiñones, MTS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Moral Injury, Spiritual Care, and Mental Heatlh: Toward a Model for Partnership
Aaron Klink, MDiv, ThM, Pruitt Hospice
Role of Religious Sentiments in Improving Compliance of Water Intake In Patients with Urolithiasis
Liaqat Ali, MBBS, FCPS, Institute of Kidney Diseases Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar
Syed Awlad Hussain, PhD, Sarhad Rural Support Programme
Fayyaz Haider MBBS, MS, Quaid e Azam International Hospital, Islamabad
Nasir Orakzai MBBS, FRCS, Institute of Kidney Diseases Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar
Essay Contest Winner
Paper: Connection and Comfort: Ethnographic perspectives on prayer and healing among liberal American Jews
Prayer for healing typically connotes a conversation with God, requesting a cure for a physical ailment. Modern liberal (non-Orthodox) Jewish prayers for healing problematize and challenge these assumptions. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research on prayers for healing among liberal (non-Orthodox) Jews in the American Southwest; I use the lived experience of Jewish prayer to explore the healing effects of religious practices, and seek to understand how participants themselves interpret these effects. Examining the growing prominence of the Mi Sheberach, the Jewish prayer for healing, in liberal ritual life, I explore why non-religious Jews pray, and why they pray for healing, when they are fully invested in biomedicine. By using this methodological approach, rather than focusing on particular biomedical outcomes, it becomes clear that prayers for healing change the illness experience, for both the ill and their caregivers, in ways far more diverse than can be captured in standard clinical narratives. These experiential, embodied outcomes are difficult to articulate, and therefore challenging to study. When people can find words for these sensory experiences, the effects of healing prayer they describe include a feeling of connection to community, ancestors and traditions; the transformation of fear and anxiety into comfort, strength and acceptance; spiritual transcendence; and a sense of agency and control at times of vulnerability and helplessness. Thus, healing in a liberal Jewish context may involve the physical body, but it more often involves emotions, spirit, community, relationships to other people, and relationships to Judaism. Prayer may refer to a dialogue with the divine, but it is also a dialogue between history and modernity, and between the individual and the community.
Author: Gila S. Silverman, MPH, PhD(c)
Gila Silverman is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural and Medical Anthropology at the University of Arizona, and an affiliated scholar with the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies. She also has a Master's in Public Health. Her dissertation research explores intersections of religion, medicine and healing among liberal (non-Orthodox) Jews, as well as the many meanings of Jewish identity in 21st century North America. Before returning to school for her doctoral studies, she worked for 20 years as a Jewish communal professional, in both Israel and the U.S., including serving as the national coordinator of the Shleimut Institute, an initiative to develop health care programs for synagogues.
Prevalence and Types of Miraculous Healings among U.S. Congregations in 2014
Andrew Baccari, BA, Harvard Divinity School
Rebecca Quiñones, MTS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Moral Injury, Spiritual Care, and Mental Heatlh: Toward a Model for Partnership
Aaron Klink, MDiv, ThM, Pruitt Hospice
Role of Religious Sentiments in Improving Compliance of Water Intake In Patients with Urolithiasis
Liaqat Ali, MBBS, FCPS, Institute of Kidney Diseases Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar
Syed Awlad Hussain, PhD, Sarhad Rural Support Programme
Fayyaz Haider MBBS, MS, Quaid e Azam International Hospital, Islamabad
Nasir Orakzai MBBS, FRCS, Institute of Kidney Diseases Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar
Essay Contest Winner
Paper: Connection and Comfort: Ethnographic perspectives on prayer and healing among liberal American Jews
Prayer for healing typically connotes a conversation with God, requesting a cure for a physical ailment. Modern liberal (non-Orthodox) Jewish prayers for healing problematize and challenge these assumptions. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research on prayers for healing among liberal (non-Orthodox) Jews in the American Southwest; I use the lived experience of Jewish prayer to explore the healing effects of religious practices, and seek to understand how participants themselves interpret these effects. Examining the growing prominence of the Mi Sheberach, the Jewish prayer for healing, in liberal ritual life, I explore why non-religious Jews pray, and why they pray for healing, when they are fully invested in biomedicine. By using this methodological approach, rather than focusing on particular biomedical outcomes, it becomes clear that prayers for healing change the illness experience, for both the ill and their caregivers, in ways far more diverse than can be captured in standard clinical narratives. These experiential, embodied outcomes are difficult to articulate, and therefore challenging to study. When people can find words for these sensory experiences, the effects of healing prayer they describe include a feeling of connection to community, ancestors and traditions; the transformation of fear and anxiety into comfort, strength and acceptance; spiritual transcendence; and a sense of agency and control at times of vulnerability and helplessness. Thus, healing in a liberal Jewish context may involve the physical body, but it more often involves emotions, spirit, community, relationships to other people, and relationships to Judaism. Prayer may refer to a dialogue with the divine, but it is also a dialogue between history and modernity, and between the individual and the community.
Author: Gila S. Silverman, MPH, PhD(c)
Gila Silverman is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural and Medical Anthropology at the University of Arizona, and an affiliated scholar with the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies. She also has a Master's in Public Health. Her dissertation research explores intersections of religion, medicine and healing among liberal (non-Orthodox) Jews, as well as the many meanings of Jewish identity in 21st century North America. Before returning to school for her doctoral studies, she worked for 20 years as a Jewish communal professional, in both Israel and the U.S., including serving as the national coordinator of the Shleimut Institute, an initiative to develop health care programs for synagogues.