How one rabbi reached a young woman with anorexia when no one else could.

Illustration by Michael Morgenstern

I did not envy Rabbi Bill Berk when he told me he’d been asked to see the sixteen-year-old daughter of a congregant who’d been readmitted to the hospital for treatment of anorexia nervosa, a hard-to-treat, sometimes deadly eating disorder. Terry*, in the late phase of anorexia, weighed fewer than 90 pounds. She had been in and out of a multitude of treatment programs with little benefit. Maybe, her parents thought, Rabbi Berk could reach her in some way.

In a moment of inspiration, before leaving the temple to visit Terry, Rabbi Berk took a Torah from the ark. Upon entering Terry’s hospital room, he placed the scroll on a chair in the corner. He then sat down next to her.

As Terry promised again and again to do better, to try eating more, the rabbi sensed the emptiness of her words. He invited Terry to hold the Torah and she accepted. “I often pray to God to keep me small,” she confided.

“God does not want us to be small,” the rabbi responded. “He wants us to grow. Growing does not mean seeing yourself as your imperfections. Stand tall when you pray because you are so beautiful.”

The rabbi then asked Terry if she remembered the Shema. They sang the Shema together. Then he asked her if she remembered the Avot and Gevurot prayers. She nodded and they sang the Avot together. When they got to the Gevurot prayer, which thanks God for the powers God has given us, he thought of the dissonance between the prayer and the sixteen-year-old who didn’t have the power to put food in her mouth—and suddenly started to cry.

When she also began to cry, the rabbi sobbed. Then she began to wail.

When Terry stopped crying, she asked if she could have lunch. They both started to laugh.

When lunch came, they recited the blessing before meals. Holding the Torah in one arm and her fork in the other, Terry began to eat. “It tastes good,” she said. “I know God loves me, whether I eat or not, whether I’m fat or thin.”

Terry soon left the hospital and went back to school. She subsequently experienced only one setback. Since then she has been eating well. She graduated from college and got married.

Sacred objects can play a powerful part in healing. The Torah used by Rabbi Berk was a potent symbol for Terry because it held special meaning to her. Not only did it represent the religion she grew up in, it was brought to her by a beloved and respected rabbi who was moved to tears by her suffering.

Sacred objects are most effective when they signal to the person in distress that something special or extraordinary is about to happen—if he or she can open up to this moment of wonder when all things seem possible. To invite such openings, one must let go of control or expectation of outcome. So it was when Rabbi Berk allowed the spontaneous and unexpected to happen—his weeping.

To be sure, the rabbi’s approach may have had no effect on a different person. One never knows what will create the right conditions for such an opening; there is no standard formula. However, most ill people, given the chance, will embrace rather than resist an opening. For Terry it was her rabbi’s sharing the depth of his grief at witnessing her self-starvation that allowed her to arrive at her own truth, and take a healing step in his presence.

*Name was changed to preserve anonymity.

Howard D. Silverman, M.D. is a family physician and clinical professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and co-author with Carl A. Hammerschlag, M.D. of Healing Ceremonies (Perigee Books/Berkley Publishing Group). Rabbi Bill Berk was then senior rabbi of Temple Chai in Phoenix, Arizona.