The 11 Letter Name for Healing

We all know the story on its simple level, yet we do not know the full extent of this Kabbalistic Tool. Let's learn today and then say it every day.

Miriam the Prophetess and Aaron the Priest are talking about a concern they have about their brother Moshe. What is the concern? Moshe is doing things on his own that God did not tell him to do. What is that? He is married to Tzipporah the Cushite Women. And he has left her bed. She is being treated the way a man should not treat his wife according to law and custom. Each women is entitled to her conjugal bliss, whenever she desires it.

Moshe without asking HaShem said to himself i need to be able to speak to HaShem whenever He wants me and i can not wait till i become pure from my impurity of being with my wife. So i will not ever be with her.

Moshe was correct on one level and incorrect on another level. He was no longer connected to Tzipporah since he had risen to the level of consciousness to be with the Shechinah. He needed to be available to communicate with the Shechinah whenever she desired. In that was he was correct? But what about poor Tzipporah. Should he not have divorced her so that she was able to receive her conjugal bliss from another more physical human being?

While i am not aware of any answer to this question yet, we can learn what we are meant to learn from this incident in the Torah.

Moshe says 5 words composed of 11 letters and his sister Miriam is cured of her disease of leprosy due to her Loshon Harah (evil speech). No it was not gossip. They were concerned about their brother and his wife and they needed to discuss this issue even at the point of moving into the area of Loshon Harah. If they could slip at their level how do we avoid this same mistake? By learning the Halacha of Loshon Harah.

It is recommended that you sign up for the daily letter from the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation which distributes a daily email about these Halachot.

Let's now turn our attention to the healing tool that Moshe gave us from this incident. Moshe said EL NA REFAH NA LA

אל נא רפא נא לה

Translation

Heal her now, God, I pray you!

I would like you to look very closely at this sequence of letters. If one substitutes an Alef for the last Hay. The first four letters and the last four letters are the same letters. The middle three letters spell the word that translates as healing.

The gematria of these 11 letters is 449 which is the same gematria as the word HaMikdash which means "The Tabernacle." The Kabbalists teach that when we say this we should have the Kavenah of transforming the Pey into a Vav which is the Atbash transformation. This Vav represents the spiritual level which is now in unity with the Malchut as represented by The Tabernacle. When we transform the Pey into a Vav the gematria of the word Refah meaning healing becomes 207 which is the word Light which is the only absolute healing in the world.

The action we take with this phrase in our morning prayers is to list all those people who need healing and then to say this phrase 3 times (right, left, and central) with the certainty that these people will receive the healing they need.