We are rapidly closing in on the Jewish holiday of Passover in which we commemorate the miraculous exodus of the Jewish people from slavery and bondage from ancient Egypt.
Passover is the holiday that we celebrate not just one, but many miracles performed by God for the benefit of the Jewish people.
10 PLAGUES PLUS THE SPLITTING OF THE SEA
Aside from the 10 plagues where each one was multi-faceted miracles as explained in the Haggadah, there was the ultimate miraculous phenomenon of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. This wonder accomplished two opposite things at the exact same time with the very same water. While the Jewish people were being rescued from the waters and certain death, the Egyptians were drowning in the turbulent waters.
MANNA & WATER
Of course, once they left Egypt, the Jewish people found themselves in an uninhabited desert with no food or water to be had. They had to rely on many wonders and miracles. There was the daily manna that fell from the sky in the form of little seeds and the well of water that always seemed to be present no matter where they travelled around the desert.
SNAKES, SCORPIONS AND SANDSTORMS
While in the desert for 40 years, they were protected from natural enemies, including your typical desert predators such as snakes, scorpions, heat stroke, and sandstorms. In fact, the Torah makes a point of sharing one time in the four years of sojourning that a snake attacked them. The Torah clarifies that this was indeed a rare event and was a punishment for having a bad attitude. The other 1,459 days they were protected. This was a miracle.
DO MIRACLES HAPPEN TODAY?
Therefore, the obvious question that comes to mind is, do miracles happen today. The Jewish belief is that not only that they do happen, they occur more often than you think. In fact, most people are completely oblivious that even if they do witness a miraculous phenomenon, they simply cannot process it and therefore dismiss it as non-consequential. You see, sometimes we see something with our own eyes that is inexplicable but we either are so clouded by cynicism or believe that there must be a natural explanation for what transpired, so we end up pooh-poohing an actual bona fide manipulation of nature (a miracle) as nothing special. Nothing to see here folks.
DAILY MIRACLES
The truth is, according to Judaism, everyday simple acts of nature are in fact miraculous. Just because they happen every day, we are content to call it nature/natural, and if it only happens occasionally, we then call it a rare natural event. If it never happened before, we call it an inexplicable freak of nature. Judaism explains that everyday occurrences such as the sun rising is also miraculous. The fact that the sun rises in the east is an added miracle. Additionally, the fact that there is enough of an atmosphere to sustain this planet as opposed to other planets is supernatural.
DAILY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Every morning there is a ritual in which we recite a formal blessing thanking God for giving us life for yet another day. This is because waking up is a miracle. We also thank God for our sight, hearing and gait. Nothing is to be dismissed as normal and everything needs to be viewed as something special.
OTHER TYPES OF UNDENIABLE MIRACLES
Take for example the following story, which is in fact a miracle like the Passover story that happened in my lifetime.
SIX DAY WAR
This happened in 1967 during the Six Day War.
According to all the military analysts, Israel was going to lose the war and lose badly. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) consisted of 275,000 troops, compared to the 456,000 soldiers of the combined Iraqi, Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian armies. The United Arab forces had way more military equipment at their disposal. The Arab forces had more than double the number of tanks, and close to four times the amount of combat aircraft. The Israeli civilians and military were filled with dread, shock, and fright for the upcoming battle.
So pessimistic was the outlook that the nation’s national parks were marked to become gravesites for the many who would perish during course of the war.
However, despite all the predictions, by the time the war ended, the territory under Israeli control had tripled in size. Jews returned to sites where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years, sites from which waves of terror were launched against them for so many years. One of the craziest stories happened on the sixth and final day of the war, where not unlike the Greeks in the Chanukah story, the 75,000 strong Syrian army simply fled from the mountains of the Golan Heights leaving their weaponry behind. The strategic Golan upon which the Syrians used to murder Israelis was now in the hands of the Israeli army.
SADDAM HUSSEIN AND 39 SCUDS
The miracles experienced in Israel during the Gulf War are too numerous to mention. The television was filled with images of people buried in rubble yet walking away without a scratch. In all, 39 scud missiles fell – many in heavily populated areas – causing only two deaths. Can you imagine 39 missiles and only two deaths? Altogether over ten tons of explosives fell on Israel; 15,000 properties were damaged which included 10,992 apartments, 235 houses and 3773 other buildings.
In all, 13 people died. Two directly from a missile and 11 indirectly from heart attacks or misuse of a gasmask. Scuds landed between two buildings but did not explode. The list goes on and on.
A true miracle.
CONCEPTION & PH LEVELS
I believe that conception is a miracle, and that birth is just as miraculous. The fact that there are close to 7.5 billion people born does not in any way detract from the miracle of conception, gestation, and birth.
Take the following amazing example that has me convinced that conception is nothing short of a wonder.
A body’s potential hydrogen (pH) level directly impacts your overall health and even a woman’s fertility. The pH scale ranges from zero (highly acidic) to 14 (very basic). Human life requires a tightly controlled pH level in the serum of about 7.4. A pH of seven is considered neutral. An imbalanced pH level in the cervix or vagina can damage sperm enough to prevent it from fertilizing an egg. The most ideal vaginal pH level for a woman who wants to get pregnant is between 3.8 and 4.5, outside the days she is ovulating. During ovulating, surges in hormones are meant to maintain a pH level optimal to increase the chance that sperm reaches the egg. In fact, when the pH level is between seven and 12, sperm can survive as long as 48 hours within the female reproductive system. Amazing, no?
Lastly, I am the first to state that The Chai Center, the organization that I founded, is a miracle. I continue to see miracles and have had many angelic encounters with beautiful people who share the vision.
Please contact me if you wish to continue to talk at [email protected].
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