Refoel is a Yiddish-influenced form of Raphael, from Hebrew meaning 'God has healed.'
Refoel is the Yiddish rendering of the ancient Hebrew name Raphael (רְפָאֵל), built from two elemental roots: rāfāʾ, meaning "to heal," and ʾēl, "God" — giving the name its luminous meaning, "God has healed." The name enters recorded history in the Hebrew scriptures, where Raphael appears as one of the seven archangels, the divine physician dispatched to restore sight to Tobit in the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit. His role as celestial healer made the name beloved across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions for millennia.
In the Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora, the name took on the warm Yiddish phonology of Refoel, softening the final syllable and embedding the name firmly in Eastern European Jewish culture. It was common among rabbinical families and scholarly communities from Poland to Ukraine, often given with the hope that the child would carry forward a legacy of spiritual or practical healing. The Italian master Raphael Sanzio, known simply as Raffaello, carried the Latin cognate to artistic immortality in the sixteenth century, though the Yiddish variant remained distinctly communal and sacred in character.
Today, Refoel is experiencing quiet renewal within Orthodox and Hasidic communities worldwide, particularly in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, and Antwerp, where Yiddish naming traditions are lovingly preserved. While secular parents often reach for the Spanish-inflected Rafael or the English Raphael, Refoel carries a particular tenderness — the sound of a name whispered in a shtetl, carried across an ocean, and given new life in a nursery that still hears prayers in Yiddish.