A miracle, when you think of the word, is open and visible to all and is wondrous. Like the sudden and strange speaking of an animal, or the splitting of the sea.

In a miracle, the world unravels itself and is upside-down; it is topsy-turvy, in upheaval. What is before us is never thought of when thinking sensibly.



When you think of the word miracle, you think of pulling a great Truth from the air.

But Maimonides says: the miracle is not an utter change. Maimonides says: at the beginning of Time, God commanded all the miracles that would be. So even at Creation miracles were part of what the world is.

A miracle is part of nature! It is not a thing on its own!



A miracle is not an utter break with nature's past or future.

Heretics speak wildness when they feel free. They claim to know, but when they speak, they are against the Truth.

They say, I have searched in all places and I have brought Truth back to you. They say, I have trekked the land and sea, and I have learned that your ways are too old. This is what they say.

But what have they found? Only a thing that is not the Truth.


What will the heretic say when the miracle happens, when God's Hand shines before her like light?


Nakhmanides says this.

Also Nakhmanides says: but God does not answer every apostasy with a stroke of lightning. God does not stop up our mouths before we can speak; He did not make the world to be so simple. And Nakhmanides says: only for the most righteous does God make great miracles; and for the worst sinners.

For everyone else in the world, there is the world of Nature. For everyone else in the world, there is the world of the Regular Things. That is the world of the Hidden Miracle, and not the Open one.


The Hidden Miracle that is the way God rules over all life. The Hidden Miracle that is the way that all things that happen in a person's lifetime are from God's Hand, because there is no such thing as Chance. The Hidden miracle that is because God acts in the world, always, because there is nothing unguided by Him, because open your eyes up now and see God before you, stunning, holding up the world's reigns and cloaked in Mercy but also cloaked in Justice.


That is the world for all of us.

Nakhmanides says: If Open Miracles will not happen daily, then remind the collective memory of the world. Saying: this happened, it was an event, see from here that God is not aloof, and that the Truth is True.

Nakhmanides says: this is why we have holidays, and rituals, and prayers that say:
This happened.

If you see a place where a great miracle happened, say: You are the Source of Blessing Who made miracles for our fathers in this place.

Say thrice daily in prayer: We thank You. . . for Your miracles that every day are with us.


If God reveals Himself to you, say, I have seen.





Abraham Mezrich is the author of Child of a Voice,
a series of poetic meditations on Jewish religious themes.

More by Abraham Mezrich

sha'atnez February, 2003