The Eternal’s strength and His vengeance were my salvation; this is my God, and I will make Him a habitation, the God of my father, and I will exalt Him.
Shemot 15:2
Jewish history consists of many epoch-making events. However, not all of these occurrences have entered the consciousness of the Jewish people. For this to happen, the event must be what Jewish philosopher Emile Fackenheim termed a “root experience”[1] — a moment in which the hand of God becomes apparent through His active participation in Jewish history. Still, even this is not sufficient to transform an event into a root experience of enduring value. It is also necessary for the experience to take place in front of a multitude of observers, as in the case of the splitting of the Reed Sea, when “what a maidservant saw by the sea (the prophets) Yechezkel and Yeshayahu did not see.”[2] It is not the opening of the heavens but rather the transformation of the earth that is decisive in affecting all future Jewish generations.
However, above and beyond all, a third element is necessary. It must be possible for later generations to have access to this vision. Only then can one speak of an actual root experience. If a vision cannot be shared with later generations, it will become a mere story of the past and lose much of its religious value within current Judaism.
Miracles in the eye of the beholder
It is most important to realize that it is not the conventional understanding of a miracle that is of importance here. While nobody can deny that the splitting of the Reed Sea was a violation of the laws of nature, this is not the source of its religious power or message. The most important quality of a miracle is not that it is supernatural, or super-historical, but that it is a moment which, even if it can be argued away in terms of science and brought into the nexus of nature and normal history, remains miraculous in the eyes of the person who encountered it.
The real power of a miracle is that it is an astonishing experience of an event in which the current system of cause and effect becomes, as it were, transparent, permitting a glimpse of the sphere in which another unrestricted Power is at work. As such, it destroys the security of all knowledge and undoes the normalcy of all that is ordinary. It is the abiding astonishmentthat is crucial. The religious person stands in wonder; no knowledge or cognition can weaken his amazement. Any natural explanation will only deepen his wonder.
It is in this sense that a historical miracle becomes a root experience and allows later generations to have access to it through their own involvement in it. It is possible for these later generations to relive the experience, not because of what happened, but through the way they perceive it.
The establishment of the State of Israel was no doubt an epoch-making event. It is the completely extraordinary nature of this event that stands out — the transformation of the Jewish people’s earthliness into a radically different situation. While miracles no doubt occurred to enable it to happen, the most important religious dimension is, again, the enduring astonishment at this event, especially after the Holocaust.
Existential dullness
Only when the establishment of the State of Israel is seen in the light of the miracle at the Reed Sea will this astonishment be maintained. And this is exactly where the greatest danger to Israel’s continued existence lies. Just as we are informed that the miracle at the Reed Sea lost its religious impact on the Israelites, and became “normal” — so much so, that they complained that God had left them — so we see a similar trend in Israeli society and leadership today. Just as the complaints concerning food and water took on a new impetus after the great miracle at the Sea, so we see a mentality of psychological denial and existential dullness in the State of Israel, where many people — most of all members of its leadership — no longer see the miracle of the State’s very existence.
And just as the Israelites in the desert paid a heavy price, so will Israeli society if it does not force itself once again to look through the clouds, marvel at the wonder of it all, and rejuvenate itself through the abiding amazement at the miracle before them.
Notes
[1] See Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 8-14.
[2] Mechilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, Bshalach, Masechet Shira, 3.
Questions to Ponder from the DCA Think Tank
- Rabbi Cardozo writes that for a historical event to enter the consciousness of the Jewish people, it must become a “root experience”. What do you think causes an occurrence to become such a root experience?
- In his iconic book, Zakhor, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi writes about this particularly Jewish form of ahistorical memory: “Only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people.  …  If there can be no return to Sinai, then what took place at Sinai must be borne along the conduits of memory to those who were not there that day.” How is such a memory passed on from generation to generation? Is merely telling the story enough to cement the memory in the minds and hearts of the next generation?
- “Many prophets arose in Israel, double the number of those who left Egypt,” says the Talmud, “but prophecy that was needed for future generations was written and that which was not needed was not written.” (Megillah 14a) What do you think determines whether a prophecy or the memory of an event will live on in the Jewish people?
- Several debates are recorded in the Talmud (Mishnah Yadayim 3:5, Shabbat 30a, Megillah 7a) about which books to include and which to exclude from the Jewish canon. Do you see this as an attempt to determine the content of Jewish cultural memory? Do you believe that such attempts inevitably succeed? Who gets to decide which historical memories are preserved?
- “All the holidays will cease except Purim, as it says: And its memory will not cease from their descendants.” (Midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, Mishlei 9). On this, Rabbi Baruch Halevi Epstein, known as The Torah Temimah, writes:
I heard from my father (Rabbi Yechiel Michel Halevi Epstein) that the intention is as follows: the miracle of Purim is different from the miracles celebrated by the rest of the holidays, such as the exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah, the clouds of glory of Sukkot. For those were open miracles, about which there could be no doubt. But the miracle of Purim, even though it was all the work of God’s hands, it was still in the realm of natural occurrences, such that one without belief in God could explain it away as coincidence. This is the meaning, even if open miracles, such as those celebrated by the other holidays, should come to an end, the covert miracles worked out in the way of nature will never cease, as we see in every generation in the workings of history and in the life of the nation of Israel in particular.
Do you think the establishment of the State of Israel, and its continued survival qualifies as a “covert miracle” of the kind described by the Torah Temimah? Does your answer to this question change how you relate to Israel, its people, and its challenges?
