A is a Jewish prayer used to request a blessing from God. Dating to the 10th or 11th century CE, prayers are used for a wide variety of purposes. Originally in Hebrew but sometimes recited in the vernacular, different versions at different times have been among the prayers most popular with congregants. In contemporary Judaism, a serves as the main prayer of healing, particularly among liberal Jews, to whose rituals it has become central.
The original , a Shabbat prayer for a blessing for the whole congregation, originated in Babylonia as part of or alongside the prayers. Its format—invoking God in the name of the patriarchs (and in some modern settings the matriarchs) and then making a case that a specific person or group should be blessed—became a popular template for other prayers, including that for a person called to the Torah and those for life events such as brit milah (circumcision) and b'nai mitzvah. The for (those called to the Torah) was for a time the central part of the Torah service for less educated European Jews.
Since the late medieval period, Jews have used a as a prayer of healing. Reform Jews abolished this practice in the 1800s as their conception of healing shifted to be more based in science, but the devastation of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s saw a re-emergence in gay and lesbian synagogues. Debbie Friedman's Hebrew–English version of the prayer, which she and her then-partner, Rabbi Drorah Setel, wrote in 1987, has become the best-known setting. Released in 1989 on the album And You Shall Be a Blessing and spread through performances at Jewish conferences, the song became Friedman's best-known work and led to the for healing not only being reintroduced to liberal Jewish liturgy but becoming one of the movement's central prayers. Many congregations maintain " lists" of those to pray for, and it is common for Jews to have themselves added to them in anticipation of a medical procedure; the prayer is likewise widely used in Jewish hospital chaplaincy. Friedman and Setel's version and others like it, born of a time when HIV was almost always fatal, emphasize spiritual renewal rather than just physical rehabilitation, a distinction stressed in turn by liberal Jewish scholars.
For the congregation
In the context of Ashkenazi liturgy, the traditional has been described as either the third prayer or as an additional prayer recited after the two Yekum Purkan prayers. The three prayers date to Babylonia in the 10th or 11th century CE, with the —a Hebrew prayer—being a later addition to the other two, which are in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It is derived from a prayer for rain, sharing a logic that as God has previously done a particular thing, so he will again. It is mentioned in the , in the writings of David Abudarham, and in .
Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews traditionally recite the prayer on Shabbat immediately after the during the Torah service; Sephardic Jews also recite it on Yom Kippur. The is often recited in the vernacular language of a congregation rather than in Hebrew. In Jewish Worship (1971), Abraham Ezra Millgram says that this is because of the prayer's "direct appeal to the worshipers and the ethical responsibilities it spells out for the people". Traditionally the for the congregation is set to a melody using a heptatonic scale that is in turn called the misheberak scale.
Specialized versions
The also came to serve as a template for prayers for specific blessings, and for a time was sometimes prefixed with "" ('May it be your will'). Gregg Drinkwater in American Jewish History identifies a five-part structure to such prayers: 1) "" and an invocation of the patriarchs; 2) the name of the person to bless; 3) the reason they should be blessed; 4) what is requested for the person; and 5) the community's response. William Cutter writes in Sh'ma:
Some prayers are used for life events, including birth (for the mother), bar or bat mitzvah, brit milah (circumcision), or conversion or return from apostasy. Several concern marriage: in anticipation thereof, for newlyweds, and for a 25th or 50th wedding anniversary. Occasional prayers include those for the Ten Days of Penitence, the Fast of Behav (for those fasting - one who responds "Amen" to this blessing does not need to accept the fast upon oneself at the Mincha of the proceeding day, as would normally be required.), and Kol Nidre (for Jerusalem). During the Khmelnytsky Uprising, Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller originated the practice of saying a for those who do not converse during prayer. Some prayers exist for particular communities, such as one used in many communities for members of the Israel Defense Forces, or several published by the Reform movement for LGBT Jews.