A Mi Shebeirach is a Jewish prayer used to request a blessing from God. Dating to the 10th or 11th century, Mi Shebeirach prayers are used for a wide variety of purposes. Originally in Hebrew, but sometimes recited in the vernacular or a combination of both, different versions at different times have been among the most popular prayers with congregants. In contemporary Judaism, a Mi Shebeirach serves as the main prayer of healing, particularly among liberal Jews, to whose rituals it has become central.

The original Mi Shebeirach, a Shabbat prayer for a blessing for the whole congregation, originated in the Lower Mesopotamia (called "Babylonia" by Jews) as part of or alongside the Yekum Purkan prayers. Its format—invoking God in the name of the Biblical Patriarchs (and, in current practice, the Matriarchs) — and then making a case for blessing a specific person or group. This became a popular template for other prayers, including that for a person called to the Torah and those for life events such as brit milah (circumcision) and bene mitzvah. The Mi Shebeirach for olim (those called to the Torah) was for a time the central part of the Torah service for less educated European Jews.

Since the late medieval period, Jews have used a Mi Shebeirach as a prayer of healing. Reform Jews abolished this practice in the 1800s as their conception of healing shifted to be more based in science, but the devastation of the Ronald Reagan AIDS epidemic in the 1980s saw a re-emergence in LGBTQ synagogues. Debbie Friedman's Hebrew–English version of the prayer, which she and her then-partner, Drorah Setel, wrote in 1987, has become the best-known setting. Released in 1989 on the album And You Shall Be a Blessing and spread through performances at Jewish conferences, the song became Friedman's best-known work and led to the Mi Shebeirach for healing not only being reintroduced to liberal Jewish liturgy but becoming one of the movement's central prayers. Many congregations maintain "Mi Shebeirach lists" of those to pray for, and it is common for Jews to have themselves added to them in anticipation of a medical procedure; the prayer is likewise widely used in Jewish hospital chaplaincy. Friedman and Setel's version and others like it, born of a time when HIV was almost always fatal, emphasize spiritual renewal rather than just physical rehabilitation, a distinction stressed in turn by liberal Jewish scholars.

In the context of Ashkenazi liturgy, the traditional Mi Shebeirach has been described as either the third Yekum Purkan prayer or as an additional prayer recited after the two Yekum Purkan prayers. The three prayers date to Babylonia in the 10th or 11th century CE, with the Mi Shebeirach—a Hebrew prayer—being a later addition to the other two, which are in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It is derived from a prayer for rain, sharing a logic that as God has previously done a particular thing, so he will again. It is mentioned in the Machzor Vitry, in the writings of David Abudarham, and in Kol Bo.

Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews traditionally recite the prayer on Shabbat immediately after the haftara during the Torah service; Sephardic Jews also recite it on Yom Kippur, although there are textual variants between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic version. The Mi Shebeirach is often recited in the vernacular language of a congregation rather than in Hebrew. In Jewish Worship (1971), Abraham Ezra Millgram says that this is because of the prayer's "direct appeal to the worshipers and the ethical responsibilities it spells out for the people". Traditionally the Mi Shebeirach for the congregation is set to a melody using a heptatonic scale that is in turn called the misheberak scale.

מִי שֶׁבֵּרַךְ אֲבוֹתֵֽינוּ אַבְרָהָם יִצְחָק וְיַעֲקֹב הוּא יְבָרֵךְ אֶת-כָּל-הַקָּהָל הַקָּדוֹשׁ הַזֶּה עִם כָּל-קְהִלּוֹת הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ. הֵם וּנְשֵׁיהֶם וּבְנֵיהֶם וּבְנוֹתֵיהֶם וְכָל אֲשֶׁר לָהֶם. וּמִי שֶׁמְּיַחֲדִים בָּתֵּי כְנֵסִיּוֹת לִתְפִלָּה. וּמִי שֶׁבָּאִים בְּתוֹכָם לְהִתְפַּלֵּל. וּמִי שֶׁנּוֹתְנִים נֵר לַמָּאוֹר וְיַֽיִן לְקִדּוּשׁ וּלְהַבְדָּלָה וּפַת לָאוֹרְ֒חִים וּצְדָקָה לָעֲנִיִּים. וְכָל מִי שֶׁעוֹסְ֒קִים בְּצָרְכֵי צִבּוּר בֶּאֱמוּנָה. הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא יְשַׁלֵּם שְׂכָרָם וְיָסִיר מֵהֶם כָּל-מַחֲלָה וְיִרְפָּא לְכָל-גּוּפָם. וְיִסְלַח לְכָל-עֲוֹנָם. וְיִשְׁלַח בְּרָכָה וְהַצְלָחָה. בְּכָל מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵיהֶם. עִם כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲחֵיהֶם. וְנֹאמַר אָמֵן:

May he who blessed our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, bless all this holy congregation, together with all other holy congregations: them, their wives, their sons and daughters, and all that belong to them; those also who unite to form Synagogues for prayer, and those who enter therein to pray; those who give the lamps for lighting, and wine for Kiddush and Habdalah, bread to the wayfarers, and charity to the poor, and all such as occupy themselves in faithfulness with the wants of the congregation. May the Holy One, blessed be he, give them their recompense; may he remove from them all sickness, heal all their body, forgive all their iniquity, and send blessing and prosperity upon all the work of their hands, as well as upon all Israel, their brethren; and let us say, Amen.

The Mi Shebeirach also came to serve as a template for prayers for specific blessings, and for a time was sometimes prefixed with "Yehi ratzon" ('May it be your will'). Gregg Drinkwater in American Jewish History identifies a five-part structure to such prayers: 1) "Mi shebeirach" and an invocation of the patriarchs; 2) the name of the person to bless; 3) the reason they should be blessed; 4) what is requested for the person; and 5) the community's response. William Cutter writes in Sh'ma: