Cancer and Other Illness as Part of a Spiritual Story

Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, author and cancer survivor, uses his experience of illness to address the spiritual dimension of healing. However controversial of whether the spirit can heal, there is no doubt that despair disables the patient. He focuses on how patients create meaning out of the cancer experience rather than on how spirituality affects illness. He addresses: “What advice can we give to someone stricken with illness to enable them to view it as other than a pointless calamity?”