{"id":75244,"date":"2020-05-26T17:54:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T14:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=75244"},"modified":"2020-05-26T18:05:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T15:05:50","slug":"everyday-miracles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/everyday-miracles\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Miracles\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"75244","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64460,"related_cahpter":"489","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Where all the rest is metaphor\r\n\r\n","content":"

For modern Jews, the concept of the miraculous has been one of the most difficult parts of their religious inheritance. For many, the rise of modern science seems to rule out the possibility of such acts as the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the stopping of the sun at Jericho, or the Hasmonean\u2019s cruse of oil. Some Jewish thinkers responded to this challenge by allegorizing the miraculous events in the Bible and Rabbinic literature. Others, without giving up the idea that such events really had occurred, claimed that in Judaism (as opposed to, say, Christianity), little turned on miracles. What all of these attitudes have in common, is the assumption that when we say \u2018miracle,\u2019 what is primarily meant is a sudden interruption in the working of natural law. However, without denying that there are moments in our texts which speak of miracles in that sense, it is far from clear that this is always the most important sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

A good counter-example is to be found in Ezekiel\u2019s prophecy regarding the valley of bones, in which the prophet is given a vision of a mass resurrection of the dead. This would seem to be precisely the kind of impossible occurrence which so offends modern sensibilities, and which modern Jewish thinkers have, in embarrassment, turned to allegorize. But what is so striking about this prophecy is that here, the valence is reversed. The miraculous event which Ezekiel is predicting is the national regeneration of the Israelites, their return to the land and the reestablishment of a vibrant national life; resurrection is marshaled as a rhetorical device to convey this restoration. God is going to \u201clift you out of the graves, O My people, and bring you to the land of Israel\u2026I will put My breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil\u201d (37:12-13). There is nothing <\/span>supernatural <\/span><\/i>about such a restoration, but it is an occurrence which the prophet takes to be a demonstration of God\u2019s sovereignty \u2014 in other words, a miracle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The modern mind is used to thinking about a \u2018miracle\u2019 as a magical occurrence, and the extension of the category to events which do not break natural laws as a case of metaphor. But in Ezekiel\u2019s prophecy, it is the \u2018ordinary\u2019 event which is the primary miracle, and the supernatural occurrence which is the metaphor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that events which do not break the laws of nature have just as much right to the title of \u2018miracle\u2019 persists in Jewish thought. The <\/span>Shulhan Arukh<\/span><\/i>, in codifying the blessing on seeing a place where a miracle was done, mentions both \u201ca miracle that deviates from the pattern of nature\u201d and \u201ca miracle that is within the pattern and causality of nature\u201d (O.H. 218).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Texts like these testify to the powerful idea that God\u2019s power can sometimes be most obvious to us in moments when nothing \u2018supernatural\u2019 seems to have happened at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: Abraham Rattner, In the Valley of the Dry Bones (study for “Ezekiel”), chinese ink, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Abraham Rattner, 1981<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":75245,"id":75245,"title":"","filename":"ez37-ARattner-vision-sketch.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ez37-ARattner-vision-sketch.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/everyday-miracles\/1981-153-21_1-tif\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"1981-153-21_1-tif","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":75244,"date":"2020-05-26 14:54:08","modified":"2021-04-07 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