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

