We're all in need of healing.

This week in the Torah portion we read of Miriam's illness and Moses' famous plea to God to heal her. (Miriam is struck with illness because she insulted Moses' sister - a complicated story for another time.)

El na refa na la, Moses says, which we are supposed to take as: Heal her, God - urgently.

What does it mean to pray for healing, today, with urgency in June 2020? There is so much we pray for.

We pray for healing from COVID-19.

We pray for healing from racism and hate.

We pray for healing from the legacy of violence and the Civil War.

We pray for healing in so many ways.

None of this will come about from simply reciting liturgy, though. Prayer isn't magic that makes healing occur. Instead, prayer is the existential crying out that we do to make us human - and it is that human vulnerability that God loves.

In Judaism, a person in a period of fear or distress is religiously obligated to cry out to God. The calling out of your soul - that's a prayer. The sense of unease or frustration or grief you have these days - that's the beginning of a prayer. The anger, the snapping at others, the depression that afflicts so many of us - even that is the very, very beginning of a prayer, the giving voice to which is a prayer. These hard things that we face are not the opposite of prayer, but are the engines of prayer.

Like many of us, I spend nights lying awake, worrying about our country and world, updating the news, and feeling a mix of guilt and fear and sadness and anger. All of that, if I open myself, is a form of prayer. What we believe is: our authentic emotional reaction to brokenness in the world is itself a prayer. Our love is itself a prayer. Our concern for the other is itself a prayer.

When we pray, we collect these scraps of brokenness and lift them up. We build from them something holy and meaningful, and it is that way that prayer heals. It is that way that we say, El Na Refa Na La: Please, God, heal her now.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Woodward