• Queer Healing:AIDS, Gay Synagogues, Lesbian Feminists, and the Origins of the Jewish Healing Movement
• Gregg Drinkwater (bio)

In September 1987, Paul Cowan, the celebrated Village Voice writer, memoirist, and activist, was diagnosed with leukemia.¹ He died in September 1988, days after turning forty-eight.² After his death, Cowan's wife, Rachel, then a rabbinical student at the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement's seminary, gathered with friends and colleagues around her dining room table. They lamented that there were few Jewish spiritual care resources available for those facing serious illness and their families.³ At the time, there were well-known Christian models of spiritual healing services and other non-Jewish, spiritually-based healing rituals. But the relevant Jewish communal resources were limited to Jewish hospital chaplains, a few Jewish hospices, rabbinic visits for seriously ill congregants, and the traditional practices of bikur holim (visiting the sick) and communal prayers for the ill.⁴ Rachel Cowan and this group of Jewish feminists who had been gathering at her home recognized a widespread hunger for Jewish communal resources devoted to spiritual and physical healing, especially outside of medical contexts.

Cowan and her circle identified this spiritual need at the very moment that gay and lesbian Jewish communal leaders in California were themselves developing new rituals and language to support spiritual healing in a community ravaged by the AIDS crisis.⁵ Unbeknownst to [End Page 605] Cowan and her friends, in Los Angeles in October 1987, Debbie Fried-man and Rabbi Drorah Setel, two feminist innovators deeply connected to Judaism's Reform Movement (and then romantic partners), revised one of the core Jewish prayers for ill people—the Mi Shebeirach ("The One Who Blesses") prayer for healing. At the time, the prayer was rarely used in Reform communities. These two women, both then immersed in the AIDS crisis and the gay and lesbian Jewish community, re-wrote the traditional Mi Shebeirach as an egalitarian, empowering, and spiritually contemplative song for use in communal settings. And just five months before Paul Cowan's death, Yoel Kahn, a young gay rabbi working at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav—a gay and lesbian synagogue nearly 3,000 miles away in San Francisco then being decimated by AIDS—had created a model Jewish healing service.⁶ Indeed, Jewish healing services based on Kahn's model, and this new Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing, both coming out of lesbian and gay contexts, would transform not only the nature of personal prayer, but also the very visibility of illness, spiritual healing, and the body in liberal Jewish communities.

Within overlapping feminist and gay and lesbian Jewish communities on either side of the country, mourning, loss, and gay communal solidarity set the stage for the elaboration of new forms of Jewish healing rituals. Gay, lesbian, and feminist Jews in California met the AIDS crisis with new forms of prayer and ritual, while in New York, the newly ordained rabbis Rachel Cowan and Nancy Flam, along with Rabbi Susan Freeman, the feminist activist and journalist Ellen Hermanson, and the novelist Nessa Rapoport continued their conversations around Cowan's dining room table.⁷ These women envisioned new Jewish spiritual support resources for the ill; along with trainings for clergy, social workers, and medical professionals. They also imagined advocating for research into health and spiritual healing and developing new liturgy and rituals centered on the spiritual needs of the ill, their loved ones, and their caregivers in a Jewish context. Out of these conversations, the framework for what would later become the National Center for Jewish Healing (NCJH) emerged. By the mid-1990s, dozens of newspapers and magazines profiled the national Jewish healing movement that Cowan, Flam, Freeman, Hermanson, and Rapoport had sparked.⁸ This high-profile media coverage and word of mouth helped move the healing movement into the [End Page 606] mainstream of Jewish life.⁹ By 1995, the NCJH had trained hundreds of rabbis and other Jewish leaders on their innovative rituals, liturgy, and program ideas.¹⁰ These included the new Mi Shebeirach song and a complete healing service modified by Nancy Flam and others but based on...

• 酷儿治疗：艾滋病，同性恋犹太教堂，女同性恋女性主义者和犹太人治疗运动的起源
• 格雷格饮用水（生物）

1987年9月，著名的乡村之声作家，回忆录和活动家Paul Cowan被诊断出患有白血病。¹他在年满48岁的几天后去世，他于1988年9月去世。² Cowan的妻子Rachel死后，当时是改革运动的神学院希伯来联合学院-犹太宗教学院纽约校区的一名犹太裔学生，她的朋友和同事围坐在餐桌旁。他们感叹几乎没有犹太精神保健资源可用于面临重病的人及其家人。³当时，存在着著名的基督教精神治疗服务和其他非犹太人基于精神的治疗仪式的基督教典范。但是，相关的犹太社区资源仅限于犹太医院牧师，少数犹太人收容所，对病重的混血儿的阿拉伯拜访以及bikur holim（探望病人）的传统习俗以及对病人的社区祈祷。⁴雷切尔·科万（Rachel Cowan）和一群聚集在她家的犹太女权主义者认识到，人们普遍渴望将其用于精神和身体康复的犹太公共资源，特别是在医学领域之外。

当时，在加利福尼亚州的男女同性恋犹太社区领袖们自己正在开发新的仪式和语言以支持在艾滋病危机肆虐的社区中进行精神康复时，科恩和她的圈子就意识到了这种精神上的需要。⁵瞒着[尾页605]考恩和她在1987年10月的朋友，在洛杉矶，黛比炒人与拉比Drorah SETEL，二女权创新有着紧密的联系犹太教的改革运动（再浪漫的合作伙伴），核心的修订后的一个犹太人为生病的人祈祷-米·希贝拉赫（Mi Shebeirach）（“祝福者”）祈求康复。当时，祈祷派在改革社区中很少使用。然后，这两个女人都沉浸在艾滋病危机和男女同性恋社区中，将传统的米·希贝拉赫（Mi Shebeirach）重新写成一首在社会场合使用的具有平等，权能和精神修养的歌曲。保罗·科万（Paul Cowan）死前仅五个月，年轻的同性恋拉比（Yoel Kahn）就职于Shaarar Zahav会众（一个在旧金山近3,000英里外的同性恋会堂，然后被艾滋病毒dec灭），创造了一个典型的犹太人康复服务。⁶确实，犹太人的康复服务基于卡恩（Kahn）的模式以及这个新的米·希贝拉赫 来自女同性恋和同性恋者的康复祈祷，不仅会改变个人祈祷的性质，而且会改变疾病，灵性康复和自由犹太社区中人的身体的可见度。

在该国两岸重叠的女权主义和男女同性恋犹太人社区中，哀悼，损失和同性恋社区团结为详细阐述新形式的犹太人医治仪式奠定了基础。加利福尼亚的同性恋，女同性恋和女权犹太人以新形式的祈祷和仪式应对了艾滋病危机，而在纽约，新近成立的拉比人Rachel Cowan和Nancy Flam以及女权主义者和记者艾伦·赫曼森（Ellen Hermanson）拉比·苏珊·弗里曼（Rabbi Susan Freeman）小说家内萨（Nessa Rapoport）继续在科恩（Cowan）的餐桌旁讨论。⁷这些妇女为患病者设想了新的犹太人精神支持资源。以及针对神职人员，社会工作者和医疗专业人员的培训。他们还设想倡导对健康和精神康复进行研究，并发展新的礼仪和礼仪，这些礼仪和礼仪以犹太人为背景，针对患者，其亲人和他们的照料者的精神需求。在这些对话中，出现了后来成为国家犹太人治疗中心（NCJH）的框架。到1990年代中期，数十家报纸和杂志介绍了Cowan，Flam，Freeman，Hermanson和Rapoport引发的全国犹太人康复运动。⁸这种备受关注的媒体报道和口耳相传将康复运动带入了犹太人生活的[End Page 606]主流。⁹到1995年，NCJH已经对数百名拉比和其他犹太领导人进行了创新仪式，礼仪和计划思想方面的培训。¹⁰其中包括新的Mi Shebeirach歌曲以及由Nancy Flam和其他人修改但基于...的完整修复服务