This past Saturday night, Israel was bombarded by a combination of more than 300 Cruise Missiles, Ballistic Missiles and Attack Drones. More than 99% of them were intercepted by a combination of Israeli and allied forces. When I first heard about it, it was after the attack had ended and I already knew that minimal damage had occurred. My reaction was a little routine. The Iron Dome and the other defensive weapons did their job. It is normal. I almost took it for granted.
After I read a post by Maximilian Abitbol, a professor of astrophysics at Oxford University, who has worked in the defence industry, I realized that a clear miracle had occurred, and I had not noticed. Unfortunately, it is too easy for us to ignore miracles and write them off as normal. In the words of Professor Abitbol, “What happened in Israel on last Motzai Shabbat (Saturday night) was not less than the scale of the splitting of the Red Sea… When I look at what happened on Motzai Shabbat, on a scientific level – it simply cannot happen!! Statistically…The likelihood that everything, but really Everything works out, does not exist in complex systems…What happened is that everyone, but everyone – the pilots, the systems operators and the technology operators acted as one man, at one moment in total unity. If this is not an act of G-d, then I no longer know what a miracle is…It is Greater than the victory of the Six Day War or the War of Independence. Those wars can also be explained through natural events. The rescue that took place for the people of Israel … is simply impossible naturally. “
Next week we will be celebrating Pesach and hosting our Seders. We will recall the miracles of the 10 plagues and the splitting of the sea. Now, those were miracles. Clear and obvious to all. And yet even then, the Jews were able to momentarily forget the Hand of G-d and complain about where they were going and not knowing where their food was coming from.
In this week’s Torah reading Metzora we read of Tzara’as. It could appear on a house, a garment and a person’s body. In each case there were stages to gently warn the person to change his/her ways. Tzara’as was miraculous. It had no medical basis and was a physical manifestation of a spiritual disease. It would start in the house in three stages. If the person did not get the message, it affected his clothing, again in three different stages and finally on the person’s body. If he still didn’t get the message, the Tzora’as would manifest itself in a way that the Kohen had to declare the person Tamei and the person would have to leave the camp or community and be alone. In order to reach the point of being sent away from society, a person had to have experienced numerous inexplicable phenomena, yet ignore the message.
We are living in extraordinary times. Miracles are happening for our people and our soldiers in particular. There are numerous stories of individual soldiers or units being saved miraculously. Last week, the entire country witnessed a miracle firsthand. We cannot let the moment go by. As we prepare for Pesach, and as we relive the Exodus from Egypt at our Seders, we must make sure that we are paying attention to the messages and acknowledge that Hashem is truly running the world at every moment.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom and a Chag Kosher V’Sameach
Rabbi Shaps and the JET Team
