Mi Sheberach
Also called Mi Shebeirach, the prayer for the sick.
The Jewish prayer for the sick, offered by name during the Torah reading and at bedsides.
Mi Sheberach is the central communal prayer for healing in Jewish practice. Its name is simply its opening words, “May the one who blessed”, and the blessing it asks is refuah shleimah, a complete healing, understood in the traditional formula to cover both the body and what the tradition calls the soul.
It is offered aloud during the Torah reading, naming the sick person and, customarily, their mother rather than their father. Congregations keep lists of names, and in many synagogues anyone present may add one. The same prayer travels to hospital rooms, where chaplains and relatives say it at a bedside without a Torah scroll or a congregation.
A musical setting written by Debbie Friedman in 1988 is widely sung in liberal congregations and has carried the prayer well beyond synagogue use. Wording and custom vary by movement, and there is no single authorised text.
Why the words are not here
No public-domain edition has been found for it, and this page used to say otherwise. The obvious candidate, Singer's prayer book, was opened and searched: its 1904 seventh edition prints a blessing beginning "May he who blessed our fathers" for the congregation and another for donors to hospitals, and a separate prayer to be said by a sick person, but no blessing that names someone who is ill. The wording also varies by prayer book and by movement, so publishing it means choosing one edition and naming it, and the modern prayer books that print one are in copyright.
Every text on this site names the edition it came from and was checked against it twice. A prayer nobody can cite an edition for does not get printed here, however well known it is. The verification record lists what was held back and why, and how rights are established explains the test.
What we do hold
When is this prayer said?
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Which tradition is this prayer from?
This page describes a prayer and, where we hold one, prints a named edition of it. It does not tell you whether to say it, or when. That judgment belongs to someone credentialed in the tradition, and nobody has signed anything here.
Content last changed 15 October 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.