I have found myself at times at a loss of words over the last few months. How many words are there to offer someone who is suffering a horrible illness like COVID-19? What can I say to someone who lost someone to the disease? What can I say to someone who is lonely as they spend months on end staying home to avoid catching or spreading the virus? The task of providing support was made even more difficult precisely by not being able to just sit in someone’s presence or to lend a hand. What can words do?

Moshe Rabbenu wins the award for both the longest and the shortest davening in history. The Gemara (Berachot 34a) describes how on two separate occasions, two students of Rabbi Eliezer were the shlichei tzibbur (prayer leaders), and the other students complained both times. One was too short, one was too long. Rabbi Eliezer, in both cases, justified their prayers by saying that Moshe Rabbenu outdid both of them, respectively. When Moshe gives his speech to B’nei Yisrael before entering the land, he mentions how he “lay prostrate before God those forty days and forty nights…” - ואתנפל לפני ה׳ את ארבעים היום וארבעים הלילה (Devarim 9:25), so presumably, no prayer was longer than that. And then in this week’s parasha, we see the shortest prayer, also offered by Moshe. When Miriam was struck with tzara’at, Aharon begs Moshe to pray on her behalf, and he cries out to God, קל נא רפא נא לה - “O God, pray heal her!” (Bamidbar 12:13).

In his lecture on biblical prose prayer, Dr. Moshe Greenberg distinguishes between prayer in the Bible composed by professionals versus those uttered outside the formal context. He notes that “the most prominent forms of worship and prayer in the Bible seem to leave little room for free, simple, spontaneous expression,” such as psalms sung in the Beit HaMikdash. Laypeople had little role in the recitation of prayer during sacrifices. But the prayers embedded into the text, said by individuals in specific contexts, can tell us of the piety of individuals who cried out to God.

Dr. Greenberg breaks down the structure of these less formal petitionary prayers in Tanakh. The bare skeletal structure is: (1) address; (2) petition; and (3) motivation. In our case, it’s so short it just has the first two:

            Address: O God (קל נא)

            Petition: Pray heal her! (רפא נא לה)

The role of the address is that it “establishes contact with an invisible presence.”

Rav Shimshon David Pincus z”l uses this prayer as an example of the form of prayer called קריאה, calling out, which he argues is “the foundational point of prayer and all avodat Hashem, the simple grasp of the reality that God’s presence is an actually reality.” When one engages in קריאה, one calls out to God with clear recognition that God is on the other end and that God listens and fulfils requests. The emphasis is on directing the prayer specifically to God, not just crying out in pain. One might wonder why the short prayer offered by Rabbi Eliezer’s student deserves praise - Rav Pincus says the reason is because this is a paradigmatic example of a prayer that is directed to God. Sharp and razor thin, it does the job with precision. Dr. Greenberg wants to suggest that this five-word prayer demonstrates an unenthusiastic compliance with Aharon’s request that Moshe pray; Rav Pincus would say to the contrary, this most concise plea was the right prayer at this time.

A full study of tefillah will obviously demonstrate different types of tefillah in a variety of contexts and situations. But to the extent that we discuss length of tefillah - how long davening is overall, who has the longest/shortest shmoneh esreh, it’s important to remember the tremendous value that can be found in multiple approaches to the length of a tefillah. While a long shmoneh esreh may be seen as extremely pious, we learn from Moshe Rabbenu that in fact, sometimes the shortest tefillah may be the most powerful and appropriate. Rashi asks, “why did Moshe did Moshe not elongate his prayer? So that [B’nei] Yisrael should not say ‘his sister is in pain and he’s standing and saying lots of prayer.”

Dr. Greenberg noted that these petitionary prayers are supposed to be representative of the types of tefillot that the common individual could say. Therefore, we can all learn from Moshe’s tefillah. From Moshe’s short prayer, we can learn that we do not need to hear ourselves talk in order to accomplish the task of responding to crisis. Less is more. Carefully chosen words, however brief, can pierce the gates of heaven. Furthermore, while the artistry of the psalms can be beautiful and moving, a short, heartfelt prayer addressed to God in times of need, even if not particularly embellished, is something we can all do spontaneously. In fact, at certain times, it is our obligation to do so.

While we are hopefully seeing a turnaround in the current crisis, many in the world are still suffering. If we need inspiration for how to daven right now, beyond the standard text we have, we can turn to Moshe’s example and say something short like: קל נא רפא נא לה.