אל נא רפא נא לה
El na refa na lah. O Lord, please heal her, please.
(Numbers 12:13, in this week’s Torah portion)
These five Hebrew words are Moshe’s prayer to God to heal his sister, Miriam, after she has been afflicted with leprosy as a divine punishment for speaking slanderously. The text tells us little about her slander — only that it concerned Moshe’s marrying a “Cushite” woman. Many identify Cush with Ethiopia, meaning that what Miriam objected to was Moshe’s having married an African woman.
Moshe — who was slandered — stands now in prayer for her healing. Let us take a minute to feel the full impact of his prayer for his sister.
El na refa na lah. Five Hebrew words. Literally, they mean: “Lord Please Heal Please Her.” Note the chiasm (A-B-C-B-A), how the word for heal, refa, is perfectly centered, sandwiched on either side by the force of the plea — the word “please,” na, repeated twice, standing with urgency and intensity on either side of the healing, and then, framing the prayer as a whole are the two who need connecting in order for healing to happen — the One who heals and the one who is is in need of healing. The healing sits at the heart of the matter. It happens through the channel of our intensity and our heartfelt pleading; through prayer, Moshe–the one who was wronged– becomes a prophetic link between heaven and earth, between the Lord and his sister, so that the essential divine force of healing can come down through him, though us, into the world.
The prayer physically looks like an embrace. It reminds us that healing happens when arms are held out in love and pleading, when heaven and earth meet through the intensity of our desire for such healing.
That intensity is reflected in the word na, literally, “please,” which is repeated twice. Many commentators explain that the second na has a slightly different force; it doesn’t just mean “please”; it means “now.” Lord, please heal her please– now! The desire for healing has become so intense at this moment, that it has shifted into urgency. The please becomes now; the plea becomes a demand, an insistence.
How does all of this relate to us? Note that Moshe does not actually name Miriam in this plea. It is as if he wanted to make this plea universal and eternal, as if perhaps to signal us to use it today.
It feels like Moshe meant for this prayer to be said again by others. Many of the commentators notice that the phrase the Torah uses to introduce this prayer uses the word lemor, “saying” or, literally “to say.” Vayitzak Moshe el Hashem lemor. Moshe cried out to God saying. That last word, lemor, is unnecessary, and implies that Moshe is asking for someone else to say something in response to his words. Perhaps demanding a response from God, some commentators suggest.
But perhaps the lemor is also an invitation for other people to repeat the prayer, like the lemor of Az Yashir, the Song at the Sea–they said it then in order for it to be said again and again, to be repeated by others for generations to come. Perhaps Moshe’s intention was similar: he said his prayer in the hope that it would catch on; he posted it on Facebook, as it were, so that others could “like” and repost it and the word would spread — the prayer for healing would spread, the sense of urgency and the sincerity of the desire for some healing would go from one lip to the next and a popular swelling would arise. Waves of people would feel this ripple, this turn towards healing. Perhaps Moshe did not intend for his prayer for healing to stop with that generation but rather, in its simplicity and its sincerity, for it to have impact long past its time, for us to continue to yearn for healing through his words, and to understand that healing comes, not just when one person wants it, but when there is also the lemor aspect, the aspect of communal response and repetition and participation and expansion. He said it so it would be said again because he understood that that is how healing happens.
O Lord, please heal her now. This is our prayer, too, to heal “her,” to heal our broken, tired world, to heal those many who are physically sick, to heal those who suffer from systemic discrimination — both those who suffer from being wrongly judged and those who suffer, like Miriam, from holding the judgment, and always also to heal ourselves in all our own suffering. We are, like Moshe and Miriam and Moshe’s wife, all one family; let us feel the embrace that joins us in healing.
Praying does not preclude action. What it does is to clarify and purify the earnestness of our seeking. Let us pray:
El na refa na lah. O Lord, please heal her now!
Please help us to be channels for divine healing in our world.
