Hellbunny, it's funny you should mention:
Moshe Steinberg was a professor of international relations at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem...his long work hours, combined with neglect for rest and proper nutrition, led to a heart-attack in his mid-fifties...During the surgery he went into cardiac arrest, and the doctors could not get the heart started for many minutes. At first the surgeons thought the patient was lost. Although the medical team finally succeeded in their efforts to resuscitate Dr. Steinberg, considerable brain damage had occurred. After surgery, the professor seemed to be partially paralyzed... One week later, the surgeons had to do another procedure to stop internal bleeding. This time the professor did not wake up after surgery, and he lay in a coma for a few days.
[His son] Shlomo told us that a special prayer group was being organized at the Western Wall to recite psalms and to give his father a new name. The Talmud teaches us that one of the ways to change someone's fate is by changing his or her name...
The prayers lasted for a couple of hours. During that time, we gave the professor the new name his family had chosen for him: Raphael Brucha Steinberg, a name combining the healing power of God (raphael) with the spirit of blessings (brucha). The next day, Raphael Brucha came out of his coma...
Professor Steinberg did in fact begin his life anew. After nine months of recuperation, he began to play music and fell in love with watercolor painting. Although he taught occasionally, his primary interest was to become an artist. Last I heard, eight years after his illness, he was spending his summers on the Italian Riviera, painting one or two canvasses every day.
Rabbi David A. Cooper, God is a Verb pg. 127-8
So, in some cases, apparently, giving the desperately ill a new name is thought to be exactly the right thing to do. |
