The Blessing of Removing Anxiety

 At beginning of Parshat Ekev, Moshe lists a number of rewards that Bnei Yisrael will receive if they observe the mitzvot. Among those rewards is “וְהֵסִ֧יר ה מִמְּךָ֖ כָּל־חֹ֑לִי וְכָל־מַדְוֵי֩ מִצְרַ֨יִם הָֽרָעִ֜ים אֲשֶׁ֣ר יָדַ֗עְתָּ לֹ֤א יְשִׂימָם֙ בָּ֔ךְ: And the Lord will remove from you all sickness, and all of the evil diseases of Egypt which you knew.” In Sefer Shemot (15:26) Hashem promises the Jewish People that if they follow His commandments, then: כָּל־הַמַּֽחֲלָ֞ה אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֤מְתִּי בְמִצְרַ֨יִם֙ לֹֽא־אָשִׂ֣ים עָלֶ֔יךָ “all the sicknesses that I have visited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I, the Lord, heal you.”

If Choli/ Machala refers to sickness, then what exactly does Moshe mean when he talks about removing “the evil diseases of Egypt”? Based on Yerushalmi, Madvei refers to fear and anxiety; not only anxiety surrounding illness but anxiety of all types.

Some people suffer from debilitating anxiety that can and must be addressed by mental health professionals. There should be no stigma surrounding anxiety disorders. Mental health disorders should be viewed and can be treated just like other medical conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure. Even if one is not diagnosed with a pervasive or generalized anxiety disorder, most of us (if not all of us) experience anxiety at some point in our lives. Sometimes that anxiety can be as bad as or worse than whatever it is we are worrying about.  President FDR had a point when he said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Anxiety has been scientifically proven to harm your health, putting one at higher risk for heart disease to cancer to the common cold. When we realize the damaging impact that anxiety can have, we can begin to appreciate the Divine blessing of removing such worries from our lives.

Fortunately, emotions need not only be a negative force in our lives. Studies have shown that the impact of positive emotions on physical health can be positive. In the early 1990s one of the great medical research enterprises of modern times took place. It became known as the Nun Study. Some 700 American nuns, all members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in the United States, agreed to allow their records to be accessed by a research team investigating the process of ageing and Alzheimer’s Disease. At the start of the study the participants were aged between 75 and 102.

What gave this study its unusual longitudinal scope is that in 1930 the nuns, then in their twenties, had been asked by the Mother Superior to write a brief autobiographical account of their life and their reasons for entering the convent. These documents were now analyzed by the researchers using a specially devised coding system to register, among other things, positive and negative emotions. By annually assessing the nuns’ current state of health, the researchers were able to test whether their emotional state in 1930 had an effect on their health some sixty years later. Because they had all lived a very similar lifestyle during the intervening six decades, they formed an ideal group for testing hypotheses about the relationship between emotional attitudes and health.

The results, published in 2001, were startling. The more positive emotions, ie contentment, gratitude, happiness, love and hope, that the nuns expressed in their autobiographical notes, the more likely they were to be alive and well sixty years later. The difference was as much as seven years in life expectancy.

Let’s remember the relationship between emotions and health, and how we feel is in our control. Let us also pray that Hashem will remove our anxieties.  And Hashem can do that for us. For as philanthropist Mary Crowley once quipped “Every evening, I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway!”