In this spirit, generations have turned to the Psalms many of which are written from a place of broken heartedness. Three thousand years before the birth of the blues, David sang of woe, loss, love, and despair, as in the 77th Psalm, where he cried: “I moan, I try to speak and my soul feels suffocated.” Or in the 16th Psalm where he wrote: “As a woman whose labour pains turn to sweet joy, I must see my fate as beautiful…even though my nights feel imprisoned.”

David’s words are a tremendous Jewish resource because they directly convey the “reaching in,” the connection to the personal, emotional landscape of suffering. Other Jewish texts speak of the “reaching out” — the relationships that develop among people in the journey of illness. A Talmudic discussion illuminates this idea: Rabbi Huna taught that one who visits the sick lessens one-sixtieth of the pain. But other scholars challenged him, saying: “If that is true, then why not send sixty people to visit a patient?”

Huna replied: “You have misunderstood me. It is not the number of people that lessens the pain — it is the visit itself! On each visit a sixtieth will be lessened, and this will give relief to pain.”

People who come together when illness strikes are the best source of healing: friends, family, medicos, even strangers. This point cannot be overemphasised. In a culture that thrives on self-autonomy, there is a tendency to be myopic about the role of relationships in healing. — Beliefnet.com