JewsByChoice.Org

My local chat list here in Israel had the following message yesterday:

“A special Yasher Koach [Well done!] to all the women who participated in baking challah for Nitzana Chaya bas Devora and David ben Freida.  They have b”H been blessed with a baby girl just 9½ months after the Shabbos that challah was baked for them.  Mi KeAmcha Yisroel!”

While appeals for people (40 is the magic number) to bake challah with a blessing and say a special prayer for the sick and the infertile are fairly common on this list, this is one of the few heartwarming times I have heard of this segula (ritual-based appeal) actually being credited with working.  There are sgulot of all kinds around issues of health and childbearing, including saying extra prayers before immersing in the mikvah and baking challah.

While I agree that these practices can sound like nutty Orthodox mumbo-jumbo, there are a few underlying traits that I think are worth noticing.  One is the belief that good things come from God.  Another is the belief that while performing mitzvot, we have God’s attention, making that an appropriate time to ask for important things.  And a third is the act of chesed (lovingkindness) in asking for something important for someone else.  If I bake challah on Friday with 40 other women and pray to God to heal someone (a friend or a stranger) from a serious illness or give them a child, the idea is that not only am I doing a mitzvah for myself, but that I have God’s ear and can tag on a petition for that person’s health.

Performing an act of chesed can also be done when praying for oneself.  If I want to have a child (or find a job, or recover from an illness), I should pray for someone else who wants the same thing.  By taking my desires outside of myself to include the desires of others, the thinking is that God will see not only a person with needs and desires of her own, but someone conscious and concerned about the needs of others.  And for the petitioner, it can be an encouraging reminder that these needs are not unique, and that she is not alone in having them.

The last sentence of the message above means, “Who is like Your people Israel!”  While I have come across many practices in Judaism which I think are irrational, picky, or totally unnecessary, sgulot have found a place in my heart.  I can forgive them for their superstitious-seeming nature and see their rootedness in faith, in the performance of mitzvot, and their selflessness and love of fellow human beings.  Mi KeAmcha Yisrael!