SPIRIT
I
n the early 1990s, one of the great med-
ical research exercises of modern times
took place. It became known as the Nun
Study. Some 700 American nuns, all mem-
bers 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 aging and
Alzheimer’s disease. At the
start of the study, the partic-
ipants were aged between 75
and 102.
What gave this study its unusual longi-
tudinal scope is that in 1930 the nuns, then
in their 20s, 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 assess-
ing 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 60 years later. Because
they had all lived a very similar lifestyle
during these six decades, they formed an
ideal group for testing hypotheses about
the relationship between emotional atti-
tudes and health.
The results, published in 2001, were
startling. The more positive emotions —
contentment, gratitude, happiness, love and
hope — the nuns expressed in their autobi-
ographical notes, the more likely they were
to be alive and well 60 years later. The dif-
ference was as much as seven years in life
expectancy. So remarkable was this finding
that it has led, since then, to a new field of
gratitude research, as well as a deepening
understanding of the impact of emotions
on physical health.
What medicine now knows about
individuals Moses knew about nations.
Gratitude — hakarat ha-tov — is at the
heart of what he has to say about the
Israelites and their future in the Promised
Land. Gratitude had not been their strong
point in the desert. They complained about
lack of food and water, about the manna
and the lack of meat and vegetables, about
the dangers they faced from the Egyptians
as they were leaving and about the inhab-
itants of the land they were about to enter.
They lacked thankfulness during the
difficult times. A greater danger still, said
Moses, would be a lack of gratitude during
the good times. This is what he warned:
“When you have eaten your fill and have
built fine houses and live in them, and
when your herds and flocks have multi-
plied, and your silver and gold is multi-
plied, and all that you have is multiplied,
do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord
your God, who brought you out of the land
of Egypt, out of the house of slavery …
Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the
might of my own hand have gained me this
wealth.
’” Deut. 8:11-17.
The worst thing that could happen to
them, warned Moses, would be that they
forgot how they came to the land, how
The Power of Gratitude
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
52 | AUGUST 18 • 2022
A WORD OF TORAH