What is Shir Refuah?
Shir Refuah (Song of Healing) offers the ancestral medicine of music to support Jews in healing from intergenerational trauma and antisemitism. Shir Refuah facilitates song circles, concerts, workshops, and prayer services for synagogues, universities, and a range of Jewish organizations. Shir Refuah also releases recorded music to nourish people in their homes and communities.
How can music help us heal?
Our people have sung for thousands of years as a practice of resilience, long before all the studies demonstrating the benefits of song for physical and emotional healing (see Washington Post article below!). Singing and listening to music can relax our bodies, helping us soften and release what we’ve been carrying within—our accumulated life hardships and those we have inherited genetically and epigenetically. While we can each do valuable healing work in more personalized therapeutic settings, there are collective and ancestral experiences that are challenging to process in an individualized framework. We can heal together through shared experiences of joy, grief, yearning, and aliveness that music helps us express.
Why is this healing needed in the Jewish community?
Many Jews experience chronic feelings of isolation, fear, unworthiness, distrust of other people, disconnection from our bodies, and lack of belonging in the greater picture of humanity and the earth. These are among the impacts of internalized antisemitism, and we need spaces that are dedicated to helping us recover from this historical and present oppression. In addition to expanding our access to joy, connection, and relief from anxiety, healing can help us more effectively meet the challenges of the present moment and build coalitions across difference.
Why create healing spaces specifically for Jews and their loved ones?
We all hold pain that is unique to our lives, identities, and histories, and as we work to be in right relationship with each other, it’s valuable to have distinct spaces where we can heal in connection with others who share meaningful aspects of our experience. This project is primarily focused on providing healing opportunities for people who carry trauma from Jewish lineages in our bodies, while acknowledging that many Jews carry multiple identities including non-Jewish ones, and all Jews and their loved ones are welcome at Shir Refuah’s events.
I have some Jewish ancestry, but I don’t identify with it and don’t practice Judaism. Why is this relevant to me?
Even if you feel that you don’t share meaningful aspects of your experience with most other Jews, if you have some Jewish ancestry, it’s likely that you are affected by that genetic/epigenetic imprint and may benefit from entering a healing space with other people who share it. If you have been made to feel unwelcome before in Jewish contexts, attending a healing event like this may be particularly integrative and helpful. Also, it is often part of internalized oppression for people to feel that they are either “not Jewish enough” or “too Jewish” to participate in something. If you’re asking the question, this space is for you!
Who leads Shir Refuah?
Shir Refuah is a new project directed by Rena Branson (www.renabranson.com), currently in the seed-funding stage. Rena is a soulful composer and prayer leader with Hasidic lineage. In addition to Chabad nigunim (melodies), Rena shares original music that weaves together traditional liturgy and Ashkenazi cantorial modes with new English poetry and prayers for healing. Shir Refuah is fiscally sponsored by Beloved Builders, Inc., an organization that supports socially-conscious Jewish community startups.
To learn more about the healing benefits of song, check out this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/25/singing-with-others-mental-physical-health/