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
The wording varies by prayer book and by movement, so publishing it means choosing one edition and naming it. The public-domain candidate is Singer's 1890 prayer book, which prints the Hebrew facing its English; that Hebrew has not been transcribed off the scan yet. A modern siddur text would be under 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 people look for this
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Where it belongs
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.