Jan 20/07 — Parashat Va'era

Commentary by Chazzan Aníbal Mass

A group of students at the Chassidic Yeshiva are discussing miracles. One says with remarkable excitement: “A real miracle is when God does what the Rebbe wants.” And the shammes, who was accidentally listening to the conversation, says: “No my friends, a miracle is when the Rebbe does what God wants.”

The truth is that since our early days we know that all that is out of the ordinary catches our attention. Do you remember the stories that used to (and probably still) fascinate you when you were a little boy or girl? If you don’t, just pay attention to books and movies that today’s kids like: Harry Potter the wizard, Superman, The Fantastic Four, and so on.

Why are we so attracted by the supernatural? Is our life so routine and boring that we wish to live in a fantasy world better than ours?

This week’s Parashah speaks about the supernatural, speaks about miracles. Moshe tells Pharaoh that if he doesn’t allow the Jews to leave Egypt, he and his people will suffer all kinds of plagues—and the plagues all come to pass. And as if this is not enough for you, each time the Egyptians suffer a plague, the Jews living in the land of Goshen are totally safe!

But, have you ever thought: why do miracles happen? Are miracles really positive? Before anything else, it would be convenient to know that a miracle, taken as something supernatural, is not the only phenomenon that we call “nes” (miracle). If you come enough to Shul (if not, you can always ask someone who does come or you can just believe me), we pray in the Amidah, three times a day during weekdays and four times on Shabbat and festivals: “al nisecha shebechol yom yimanu”—"for Your miracles which daily attend us".

Now, there are many things that happen to us on a daily basis, but they don’t seem to be miraculous things or things outside the order of the nature. In fact, the reference in this prayer is to those “natural miracles” that happen every single moment of our lives, but to which we are so accustomed that we find the fact that they happen “natural” and “normal”.

Things like the wonders of our body: breathing, the circulatory, nervous and reproductive systems, etc.; things like the cosmos, the force of gravity, photosynthesis, etc., allow us to live a “normal” life. We are so sure that nature will continue working in its habitual way that we are unable to realize that each one of these things is itself a miracle.

And although the miracles of Egypt happened to allow a group of people (Egyptians and Jews) to recognize God, it is a higher proof of faith to be able to recognize the Almighty in these “small natural” miracles rather than to be unable to believe unless someone can demonstrate to you that nature can be modified in the name of God.

So that makes me think of the way we teach our children about the existence of God and how we try to strengthen their faith in God. How many times we have referred to stories of great Tzadikim (righteous people) who have survived difficult situations thanks to a miraculous event? And we conclude, for that reason, we should believe in God. But our children quickly discover that there were many other Tzadikim who, in spite of their faith, lived in poverty, were pursued, sick or martyred and were not saved, apparently, by any supernatural miracle. But if you really want to educate your children with all these stories, tell them that those Tzadikim never lost their faith in God, whether the story had a happy end or not.

I believe that the challenge is teaching our children to find God everywhere—in our daily sustenance, in their and our abilities and gifts. Instead of insisting on miraculous stories, we should insist on explaining to them (and maybe there is something that we can also learn from this) that the effort involving the internal fight to be better all the time and to be a better Jew every day, shouldn't diminish, even if we cannot see "miraculous" miracles.

Maybe we can learn not to wish to modify nature to our will, but rather to allow God to modify us to live in a better world.

Shabbat Shalom.