October is always a challenging time of year for me. Fresh out of the High Holydays, a season of reflection and disruption, the rhythm of life shifts into preparing for winter as the days shorten and temperatures drop. My mood often follows, augmented by the anniversary of my diagnosis, now thirty years ago, of type 1 diabetes just before Halloween, the holiday most associated with copious quantities of candy. This holiday was once a religious observance for Christians,  “All Hallows’ Eve”, which highlights the thinned boundary between the living and the dead felt at this time of transition between the seasons. Halloween’s imagery of ghosts, skeletons, and zombies are reminders of this focus, but I suspect few dwell on the implications.

For me, the thought of death comes quickly in this season as just this week I received my annual letter that is twice as thick as the one my wife receives for her grandmother’s yahrzeit; both my biological father and stepfather died within two weeks of each other on the calendar, thought 20 years years apart. This year is the 10th anniversary of my stepfather’s death, but as I considered this week’s berakhah,  Asher Yatzar, a prayer of gratitude for the body’s miraculous functioning my long-deceased biological father looms larger.

Asher Yatzar is found in the Gemara (Berakhot 60b) arises in a sugya (discussion) filled with other prayers of vulnerability: entering cities, bathhouses, or undergoing medical treatment. Each one is a moment of danger, followed by gratitude upon safe emergence, but unlike those other situations, the tone is a bit different. We learn that when a person enters a bathroom, they ask the angels accompanying them to wait outside — “Guard me, guard me; help me, help me; support me; wait for me until I enter and come out, for this is the way of humanity.”

For many chaval, angels were just as real as the numerous frequencies of invisible light that surround us. None of us can trace the path of the WiFi signal, but none would doubt its effects. As a child, I also believed in guardian angels, and was even told they were watching over and guiding my great great aunt who watched over me as a toddler, but whom I watched pass when I was four. The next year, at five,  my father died suddenly of a heart attack; at thirty-seven. I’m not sure where his angels were, but they didn’t seem to be looking out for him. A few years later, I got my diagnosis with T1D shortly after a cousin was diagnosed with leukemia, a few years later his father also died of a heart attack in his early forties.

A thirty-eight, I’ve now lived longer than my father and am approaching my uncle’s age. While I regrettably have no personal memories of either of them, the impact of their lives and deaths do, as do my father’s genetics. While the technology wasn’t around at the time, we suspect that my father and uncle’s hearts failed because of a mutation that leads to excess lipoprotein(a), a form of cholesterol even more dangerous than LDL. Unlike the “good” HDL or the “bad” LDL, lipoprotein(a) is “the worst cholesterol.” It builds soft plaques that silently narrow arteries without symptoms — until one day, the last gap closes and blood flow stops. I’ve been tested and found to have high lipoprotein(a) myself, so I live with the awareness that, somewhere in my arteries, a blockage could form. I don’t know how many; I just know that “if even one were to be sealed”, one would be enough.

In the theme of these discussions, once I’ve collected the data, weighed the logic, and considered the consequences, I inevitably proceed with the question: Should I be saying this blessing and when? We start off well with accolades to the wisdom in the design of our physiologic balance, but when we finish we say “Healer of all flesh, who performs wondrous deeds.” My type 1 diabetes is far from healed, and far from balance; I even have an army of specialized cells intent on destroying pesky insulin-producing cells should they ever reappear. Somehow I and my ancestors missed out on a few of the wonderous deeds and a heap of healed flesh. And yet, I do say this blessing every day.

The Talmud elsewhere asks whether a blind person can thank God for sight. The answer given is an emphatic yes, because they benefit from the sight of others. Even though my “holes” are not all properly sealed or open, many of them are, my survival on life-giving medications depends on wondrous acts depend greatly on the healthy flesh of others: the physicians, researchers, and medicines that keep me alive. In this season when the veil between life and death feels thin, Asher Yatzar doesn’t feel like a routine bathroom blessing, but a profound affirmation of existence. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 23) cautions against letting tzitzit drag over graves, calling it loeg larash, mocking the dead,  because they can no longer fulfill mitzvot. Despite all the loss, when I recite Asher Yatzar, I remember that, if only for now, I still can. I can breathe, move, eat, excrete, help, share, grow, learn, study Torah, think critically, and make great coffee: and say blessings for them all.

Praised to You Adonai our G-d who rules the universe, fashioning the human body in wisdom, creating openings, ateries, glands, and organs, marvelous in structure, intricate in design. Should but one of them fail to function by being blocked or opened, it would be impossible to exist. Praised are You Adonai, healer of all flesh, sustaining our bodies in wonderous ways.

Seder Ha-T’fillot, Forms of Prayer
The Movement for Reform Judaism and Authors 2008
Source: The Sternberg Center for Judaism

Áldott vagy Te, Örökkévaló Istenünk, a Világmindenség Királya, aki bölcsességgel formáltad az embert, és nyílásokat és üregeket teremtettél benne. Dicsőséges trónod jelenlétében nyilvánvaló és ismert, hogy ha ezek közül valamelyik megrepedne, vagy ha valamelyik elzáródna, lehetetlen lenne létezni és a Te Jelenlétedben állni, még egy rövid időre is. Áldott vagy Te, Örökkévaló, aki minden testet meggyógyítasz és csodákat teszel!

Magyar Imakönyv [hu]
Source: binjomin.hu
Digitization: Sefaria
License: [missing]

Bendito eres Tú Adonai, Dios nuestro Rey del universo, que creaste al ser humano con sabiduría y dotaste su organismo de cavidades y orificios. Es manifiesto por las leyes con las cuales riges la naturaleza que si se dilatara o se obstruyese uno de ellos, sería imposible existir. Bendito eres Tú Adonai que concedes la salud a Tu creación con Tus maravillosas acciones.