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Rachel Cowan

“I believe that it took a group of women—including rabbis—to break through the Jewish cultural barrier that saw medical treatment as the only response to illness.” – Rachel Cowan
Statement

A small group of women created the Jewish Healing movement in 1990 to expand the normative definitions of Jewish practice to include providing spiritual resources for Jews facing serious illness and their families and caregivers. Five of us – three rabbis (Nancy Flam, Susan Friedman and myself), a breast cancer survivor (Ellen Hermanson z”l who later died of that cancer), and Nessa Rapoport, a novelist who had sustained deep family losses – came together to speak of an enormous absence we had each experienced in our Jewish lives. The Jewish wisdom and practice that help people deal with the suffering that surrounds personal loss and serious illness were not readily available when we needed them.

We were soon joined by Rabbi Amy Eilberg, who formed the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center with Nancy Flam. The healing movement, though not directed at issues unique to women, models the impact of women rabbis on Jewish life. I believe that it took a group of women – including rabbis – to break through the Jewish cultural barrier that saw medical treatment as the only response to illness. We understood that even though illness might not be curable, there were many ways to relieve the suffering. Rituals could restore a sense of calm and order to the emotional and physical chaos of the experience of illness. We knew that relationships and community were the key to healing. So we devised healing services, wrote prayers for patients and doctors alike, created mikveh (ritual bath) rituals, and ran support groups. We helped revitalize synagogue bikkur holim (visiting the sick) groups.

The movement recently celebrated its bat mitzvah. There are now over 40 Jewish healing centers (www.ncjh.org). The misheberakh (blessing for healing) is now prayed for the ill in thousands of synagogues. Jewish patients and their families now have Jewish resources to make the experience more bearable – and often even transcendent.

And then, from working with the spirituality of brokenness, women took the lead in understanding more deeply the spirituality of wholeness, shlemut. Amy Eilberg went on to co-create the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction (www.yedidyacenter.org), and Nancy Flam and I helped to found the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (www.ijs-online.org).

Rachel Cowan, Rabbi and leader in Jewish healing.

Courtesy of Rachel Cowan and the Waters of Eden, San Diego Community Mikvah and Education Center

Rachel Cowan was the Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She was previously the Program Director for Jewish Life at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Cowan earned her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and Master’s degrees from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where she was also ordained as a rabbi in 1989. She wrote Growing Up Yanqui and Mixed Blessings: Untangling the Knots in Interfaith Marriage (with Paul Cowan), as well as numerous articles in Moment, Sh’ma, and anthologies. Cowan received several honors, including being counted among the “Forward 50” in 2000 and 2001. Rachel died on August 31, 2018.

3 Comments

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I was in a Book store in new York recently and happened to pick up the book written by your husband Paul

I must tell tell you, I enjoyed reading his book, He most have been an incredible Human Being and I wanted toi share it with you

Than I read what you had accomplished and was in awe of you

Do you come to N,Y to speak?.

My wife and I would love to meet you and listen to you

Love to hear about your Children  and where they are now?

have a  Happy and Healthy New year

Jerry Grossman

98 Patriots way

Somerset N,J 08873

I am Charles Edward Miller, Jr. of Chesapeake, Virginia.  My grandparents were Duncan Winston Miller and Essie Edward Cowan of Bertie County, North Carolina.   My Cowans were from Coleraine, Ireland and Scotland.  I am a Southern Baptist.  I am a third cousin to internationally known artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan.  I hope you find this of interest.

Edward Miller, BA, Old Dominion University; MAR, Liberty University

I'm in the middle of reading Wise Aging. Thank you for this book filled with understanding, spiritual guidence and love for ones self and our world. Rabbi, I'm a Catholic and God is my center. You're book is one that every person becomes a uniting thread for all. Try to get to Connecticut our State needs you and oh I'd love to see and hear you. Thank you, your book is powerful in a visceral beautiful way. Maria

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Rachel Cowan." (Viewed on March 28, 2024) <http://jwa.org/feminism/cowan-rachel>.