torah: rabbi david etengoff

Beha’aloscha: The Nature of Prayer

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The end of our parasha contains a very difficult narrative in which Miriam and Aaron speak against their beloved brother, Moses:

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses regarding the Cushite woman he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. They said, “Has the L-rd spoken only to Moses? Hasn’t He spoken to us too?” And the L-rd heard. … The L-rd suddenly said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Go out, all three of you, to the Tent of Meeting!” And all three went out. The L-rd descended in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the Tent. He called to Aaron and Miriam, and they both went out…

With him [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth; in a vision and not in riddles, and he beholds the image of the L-rd. So why were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses? The wrath of the L-rd flared against them and He left. The cloud departed from above the Tent, and behold, Miriam was afflicted with tzara’ath, [a spiritual malady with physical manifestations] as [white as] snow. Then Aaron turned to Miriam and behold, she was afflicted with tzara’ath. (Bamidbar 12: 1-10, this and all Bible translations, The Judaica Press Complete Tanach, verse selections and brackets my own)

At this point in the story, Aaron turns to Moses and implores him to intercede with Hashem on behalf of their sister, Miriam. Moses immediately entreats the Almighty to heal Miriam in the following famous words: “I beseech you, G-d, please heal her.” (12:13) While the English translation is a mere seven word prayer, the original Hebrew is even shorter, “A-le nah refah nah lah.” Moses’ prayer is shockingly short and, seemingly, almost perfunctory in nature. Beyond a doubt, it is certainly not the kind of prayer we would have expected from the greatest prophet of all time when his sister’s life was hanging in the balance. How, then, are we to understand Moses’ mystifying response to Aaron’s desperate plea?

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