By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Miracles awaken our capacity to experience wonderment and awe. They speak to the deepest recesses of our soul without words—but through beauty. In the liturgy, Jewish tradition frequently invokes the imagery of the Red Sea, when Moses and his mighty staff made the waters part into two. I don’t know about you, but I have often asked myself: So God, what have You done for us lately?
Even the miraculous can seem routine if we fail to internalize its inner message to our soul. Although the splitting of the Red Sea was a dramatic event, especially as narrated through myth and liturgy, I suspect it also conveys a subtle spiritual and transpersonal message.
For one thing, the survival of the Jewish people is not a fortuitous event. Faced against the great walls of history, somehow our ancestors traversed a path through history and have remained intact for the most part.
Mark Twain perhaps said it best:
- If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
Mark Twain’s comments might also help explain why anti-Semitism still exists in the world. Totalitarian regimes cannot survive without destroying a nation’s conscience. As witnesses to God’s Presence in history, some people—especially dictators—find such a theological prospect threatening and subversive. If every human being bears the image of the Divine, then each of us must treat every human being with an attitude of reverence since we all bear the Divine likeness and image. If God is a reality, then there has to be ethical implications that we dare not ignore.
Yes, the Jewish people’s preservation as God’s witness to ethical monotheism has not been an easy task to master. While nearly every people around the globe has believed that the gods or God has chosen it for a specific purpose, the Jewish people routinely are attacked because of the ethical message they are compelled to witness to the peoples of our world. However, chosenness comes with great responsibility. At times, when we face the forces of nihilism, it is easy to lose one’s sense of faith. My grandfather experienced such pangs of unbelief as he watched some of his family walk to the crematoria. He uttered, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, “Ribbono shel Olam (“Master of the Universe!), if we are supposed to be Your “chosen people,” then why don’t You choose someone else for a change?”
Yet, as Mark Twain observed, the Jew has not vanished. The Jew is a survivor. Who would ever imagine that the Jews would return to their homeland after nearly 2000 years—almost immediately after we witnessed the ashes of the Holocaust?
For this reason and others, I believe that we are witnessing the beginnings of a great miracle of redemption unfold in our time.
A first-century Jewish sage once said, “What God has brought together let no man tear asunder.” Sixty-three years since the birth of Israel, I find myself asking whether it is possible for man through artifice, stupidity, and sheer wickedness to undo the greatest modern miracle of Jewish history? If history is our guide, our ancestors somehow managed to thwart God’s miracle of Jewish restoration initiated by Cyrus the Great of Persia, Ezra and Nehemiah. We would be foolish to think that such a travesty cannot happen again.
As we approach the 9th of Av, we witness Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel throw debris and human waste at women as they gather to pray at the Western Wall. We also witness today’s religious zealots commit gratuitous acts of violence upon the Israeli populace and refuse to defend the Holy Land—while demanding the State to subsidize their religious lifestyle, at the expense of the country. Instead of acting as a force of cohesion and blessing, the religious right—the Haredi, Chabad, and other sundry religious groups—continue to divide the Jewish nation through the insane “Who is a Jew?” issue, while attempting to create an Iranian-type theocracy in the Holy Land.
Today’s fast day, the 17th of Tammuz, recalls a time and historical memory when the Babylonians breached the Temple walls. But today, it is not the Palestinians or other adversaries who are breaching the spiritual walls that are protecting our people. Religious fanaticism is attempting to divide Jew from Jew, Haredi from secular, and so on.
Unless we learn from the mistakes of our past, we will unwittingly fulfill what George Santayana famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I pray it is not too late to repair the damage that we are guilty of allowing to happen. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook was an amazing man–arguably the greatest Jewish mystic of the 20th century who believed in the peaceful co-existence between Jews and Arabs. He also did his best to reconcile the chasm that exists between the religious devout and the secular Jewish communities. He is quoted as saying:
- The Second Temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred. Perhaps the Third will be rebuilt because of causeless love.
I pray that we take Rav Kook’s soulful advice to heart. God’s capacity to initiate new beginnings and new possibilities is obvious to anyone who has visited the Holy Land. We still have a long way to go in creating a peaceful atmosphere where all peoples will journey to Jerusalem for inspiration and holiness.
These I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered.
Isaiah 56:7-8