This parasha contains words that are very familiar to us here at Kol Shofar because they’ve made their way into our liturgy. At the very end of the parasha, Miriam is struck with a skin disease called tzaraat as a punishment for speaking with Aaron against their brother Moses and his wife. The rabbis understood that this biblical disease, which is discussed in detail in Leviticus, was the consequence of gossip and slander. When Miriam becomes afflicted, Moses prays for her: El Na Refa Na La, please God, please heal her. Every Shabbat we sing these words as part of our misheberach for the cholim, our prayer for healing which is traditionally done during the Torah reading.
People take this prayer for healing very seriously. Every week, we get calls from people asking for someone to be put on the misheberach list. And no matter how hard it might be for us to pray, to connect to the service, to have a real experience of prayer, I notice that everyone is focused during this one. I see people crying while singing these words. I cry sometimes while singing these words, especially when I look out and see you all saying it, knowing that this one of you has cancer, this one of you has a mother who is dying, this one has an ill child, this one of you is waiting for a diagnosis.
Reading the list of names at the Torah, saying the names aloud, singing these words that Moses prayed for Miriam, matters to us. And the question that I’d like us to explore today is: why? Do we believe that prayers of healing work? If so, how do they work?
There have been studies done that show that prayer has an effect on healing. Double-blind studies have been done at respectable research hospitals here in San Francisco and around the country that suggest that people did better when they were being prayed for, even at a distance by people unknown to them, even when they didn’t know they were being prayed for! Now, certainly there are other researchers who argue that prayer does not affect healing. We really can’t know for certain, but does it really matter? We pray not because we think that prayer is magic, that we can somehow control God and the universe through our thoughts and words. We pray for healing for all of the reasons that you said.
Praying for healing “works,” not because it cures illnesses necessarily, but because it brings us closer to the Divine.
Praying helps those who are being prayed for because it makes them feel less alone and afraid, knowing that others are thinking of them. When Miriam is afflicted with tzaraat, she is shut out of the Israelite camp for 7 days. Just like people who are sick, at home or in the hospital, or people who are suffering emotionally feel isolated. But the Torah says that the Israelites would not march on until Miriam was readmitted to the community. How healing it must have been, knowing that in her illness, she was being prayed for and that her community would not abandon her.
When I was hospitalized a few years ago with a serious illness, and I received visitors, phone calls, cards, flowers, it was healing. Not because the attention necessarily cured my illness, but because I felt the presence of God through the compassion and love and prayers of others.
And praying works not only for those who need healing but for those who are praying for others by bringing them closer to the Divine as well. The Torah says that Moses cries to God El Na Refa Na La, and as we all know, tears are very healing. Our tear ducts are like our own little built in mikvehs, transforming us the way a mikveh does. Prayer can give us moment of beauty or community or hope or comfort in the fear and pain we have when we’re worrying about someone. And that is the healing Presence of the Divine, even if our prayers are not answered with a miraculous cure or supernatural intervention.
The singing, the chanting, the expressing of what’s in our hearts brings us a sense of wholeness and comfort and even gratitude. The poetic simplicity of Moses’ prayer is noticeable because it comes immediately after Aaron’s long winded plea: “account not to us the sin which we committed in our folly. Let her not be as one dead, who emerges from his mother’s womb with half his flesh eaten away.” Moses says five simple words: El Na Refa Na La, God please heal her please. It’s like the words were written to be a meditative healing chant.
And finally, praying works because when we pray for someone’s healing, especially aloud, we let others know who needs us, and we remind ourselves and others in our community to reach out to those who are ill. Rashi comments on the brevity of Moses’ prayer by saying: Why did Moses not pray at length? So that we would not say: his sister is in distress and he is going on and on in prayer. Rashi suggests that it’s not enough just to pray for the person, but we should then do something: that is, the very important mitzvah of bikkur cholim, visiting the sick, caring for them. The rabbis say that visiting the sick takes away 1/60 of their illness, meaning: the comfort provided by being cared for when you’re sick is healing. It’s one of the things we do to manifest the divine image, as the rabbis teach us: God visited the sick when Abraham was recovering from his circumcision, so too, we must visit the sick.
I’d like to add that we as a community could be better organized when it comes to bikkur cholim. We have a wonderful system set up with our gemilut chesed committee to provide meals to the sick, and we have a wonderful system to care for the dead and the mourners with our chevra kaddisha. I know that friends take care of each other in our community, but we don’t have a structure for Bikkur Cholim for those people who might not have the support system of friends. The rabbis visit people in the hospital and at home, but it shouldn’t just be the rabbis who do this mitzvah. I invite anyone of you who is interested in this to step forward. Also, in the fall we will expand the work of our Chevra Kaddisha to include visiting the sick, and you are invited to attend a training workshop for the Chevra Kaddisha.
Miriam was cured of her disease, but we can’t know if our prayers of healing can do that. But we do know from our own experience that prayer works. So, when we quote Moses’ prayer for Miriam, may our prayer, like his, be healing.
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