Tamuz 5785 - When God Was Medicine

It’s been a wildly beautiful month for Shefa–from being featured in the New Yorker, co-hosting the Jewish Psychedelic Summit at Psychedelic Science in Denver, completing our data collection for the Jewish Journeys study to hosting our ongoing in-person programs in the Bay Area. We’re building up momentum as an organization, and as a more widely recognized movement, but from so many of the workshops, conversations, and presentations, it is evident to me that we are missing some core component of Jewish engagement with medicine work as a life path–a powerful, shared myth that helps us understand Jewish cosmology, theology, and ritual in light of the embrace of psychedelic practices. Like Rebbe Nachman once said, while the world is telling stories to put people to sleep, what is a story we can tell that will help wake us up?

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When God Was Medicine

Before the beginning, God encountered something other than Godself—a void. With infinite awareness, God gazed upon the void and did not turn away. The void was fractured, but free; broken, yet still brilliant. It shimmered with chaos and throbbed with yearning. It was a mystery unto itself—full of its own emptiness, whole in its hollowness. 

And God, in lovingkindness, did not flee. God did not rush to fix the void, to order its disorder or silence its shadows with light. Instead, God made space for it— a radical act of divine attention. God came close, as close as the void would allow. No imposition. No answers. Only presence. God sat beside the void. Listened to its silence. Mirrored its pain. Held its sorrow without fear, without judgment, without urgency. 

God did not recoil. Did not seek to soothe or solve. Did not try to shape the void into something more manageable. Instead, God remained. Still. Present. Trusting the void to speak for itself. And in the safety of that sacred steadiness, the void began to tremble— to soften, to breathe, to open. God’s presence was the first healing. Not by force, but by fidelity. Not through transformation imposed, but through love held back from control. Not through answers, but through unwavering being-with. 

And from that sacred witnessing, a new kind of light stirred— not brilliance that blinds, but a warm, relational glow. This was the first shefa: a current of life-force awakened not by command, but by connection. A flow of divine attention made visible. Only then—when the void, in its trembling, came to trust God's presence— did God offer breath as medicine. Not to fill or fix the void, but to bless it, to affirm it, to meet it with tenderness. 

Divine breath moved across the face of the void like a medicine. And the first act was not command, but communion— a resonance of light within darkness, a pulse of warmth within cold, the sacred intention to tend, to awaken, to repair. 

The Holy One did not abandon the wound. God became a healer. The first Rofeh. The wellspring of shefa. The flow of sacred vitality that sustains all things and calls them back toward wholeness. God whispered to the void: You are not lost. You are learning. 

And in the sacred garden, humanity was not merely formed from dust—the void spaces within us were also breathed into being, and we carry that medicine with us to this day. As divine breath embodied,we were placed in a living world already pulsing with wisdom.

It is there we began to learn from the plants that were there before us—rooted, reaching, listening. They had already tasted the light. They knew how to transmute shadow into sweetness, how to lean toward nourishment, how to offer their bodies for healing.

They became our teachers. In leaf and bark, seed and bloom, they whispered the ancient patterns of balance and renewal. To walk in the garden was not only to be alive, but to be in dialogue—with creation, with Creator, with the more-than-human kin whose medicine preceded our wounds.

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Why does a myth like this matter? For one, it reclaims Jewish cosmology as a site of healing. Many Jews drawn to medicine work have felt alienated from the Jewish story yet drawn to other traditions—Eastern, indigenous, and otherwise. This myth says: you were always part of this story. You don’t need to borrow someone else’s cosmology. The Torah’s deepest current is already about presence, repair, and relational medicine. Rather than appropriating other traditions, this myth put a spiritually and ethically grounded origin story for how to engage with sacred medicine. It offers a posture of humility, listening, and partnership—with plants, with ancestors, with the Divine. For many of us, this story may also help heal the God-Wound. Many Jewish seekers carry a sense of exile from God, or associate God with silence, trauma, or command. This medicine story reshapes the Divine into an archetype of loving witness and patient healer—precisely the posture many aspire to in psychedelic caregiving. Finally, it invites the reader to perform it the text l. If myth becomes reality through ritual, then this myth becomes a blueprint for sacred, embodied practice: holding space like God held the void, breathing intentionally as divine medicine, and walking amongst and working with plants as Adam and Chava did—listening, learning, giving thanks.

May this bold vision from time immemorial inspire us to carry this ancient medicine work forward—with courage, reverence, and love.

Hodesh tov,

Z