Rabbinic notion of daily miracles: “Come and consider how many miracles the Holy One blessed be He, performs for people, and they are unaware of it. If a person was to swallow bread without chewing it, it would hurt them terribly, but God created people with mouths which lets them to chew and then swallow.” (Exodus Rabba 24:1).
Avraham Joshua Heschel talked about the mystery of the universe – how it came to be like it is and the rules that make it work – and how that makes us feel a great sense of wonder” (God in Search of Man).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Peggy Noonan: “I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.” Peggy Noonan is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She has written eight books on American politics and culture. Quote is from: What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990).
Rabbinic notion of daily miracles: “Come and consider how many miracles the Holy One blessed be He, performs for people, and they are unaware of it. If a person was to swallow bread without chewing it, it would hurt them terribly, but God created people with mouths which lets them to chew and then swallow.” (Exodus Rabba 24:1).
Avraham Joshua Heschel talked about the mystery of the universe – how it came to be like it is and the rules that make it work – and how that makes us feel a great sense of wonder” (God in Search of Man).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Peggy Noonan: “I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.” Peggy Noonan is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She has written eight books on American politics and culture. Quote is from: What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990).
Monday, July 9, 2007: He survived against all the odds; “now Peng Shulin has astounded doctors by learning to walk again. When his body was cut in two by a lorry in 1995, it was little short of a medical miracle that he lived.
It took a team of more than 20 doctors to save his life.
Doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Mr Peng’s plight late last year and devised a plan to get him up walking again. They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it.
He has been taking his first steps around the centre with the aid of his specially adapted legs and a resized walking frame. Mr Peng, who has to learn how to walk again, is said to be delighted with the device.
In November 2009, the Australian Daily Telegraph reported that Peng had opened his own bargain supermarket, called the Half Man-Half Price Store.
Rabbinic notion of daily miracles: “Come and consider how many miracles the Holy One blessed be He, performs for people, and they are unaware of it. If a person was to swallow bread without chewing it, it would hurt them terribly, but God created people with mouths which lets them to chew and then swallow.” (Exodus Rabba 24:1).
Avraham Joshua Heschel talked about the mystery of the universe – how it came to be like it is and the rules that make it work – and how that makes us feel a great sense of wonder” (God in Search of Man).
Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
Mordechai Kaplan explains the miracles in Jewish literature as reflecting the attempt “of the ancient authors to prove and illustrate God’s power and goodness” (Judaism as Civilization, p. 98) Kaplan maintained that these traditions concerning miracles were in conflict with modern thought, and that the belief in miracles that contravene natural law is a “psychological impossibility for most people.” (Questions Jews Ask, p. 155-156)
Peggy Noonan: “I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.” Peggy Noonan is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She has written eight books on American politics and culture. Quote is from: What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990).
The real question for moderns is not can miracles happen, but did they and do they happen. As Hume recognized, the question is one of evidence. Many events that were seen in the past as miracles can now be understood as due to the operation of natural laws, even though Hume himself is less than categorical about the absolute necessity of cause: A) always to produce the effect, B) it usually seems to produce.
Undoubtedly, a modern Jewish believer will be far less prone to attribute extraordinary events to a supernatural intervention, but his belief in God’s power will not allow him to deny the very possibility of miracles occurring.
A Hasidic saying has it that a Hasid who believes that all the miracles said to have been performed by the Hasidic masters actually happened is a fool, but anyone who believes that they could not have happened is an unbeliever. The same can be said of miracles in general.
Monday, July 9, 2007: He survived against all the odds; “now Peng Shulin has astounded doctors by learning to walk again. When his body was cut in two by a lorry in 1995, it was little short of a medical miracle that he lived.
It took a team of more than 20 doctors to save his life.
Doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Mr Peng’s plight late last year and devised a plan to get him up walking again. They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it.
He has been taking his first steps around the centre with the aid of his specially adapted legs and a resized walking frame. Mr Peng, who has to learn how to walk again, is said to be delighted with the device.
In November 2009, the Australian Daily Telegraph reported that Peng had opened his own bargain supermarket, called the Half Man-Half Price Store.
In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
At the creation of the State of Israel on May14th, 1948, David Ben-Gurion became the first Prime minister of Israel and its Defense Minister. For more information, see: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_gurion.html
The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) launched an effective critique of miraculous claims. This sceptical rationalism was a major challenge to religious belief throughout the later 18th and 19th centuries.
From David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation….
1. In the storm, a bolt of lightning came down and split the tree in half. 2. I fell off my bike speeding down the hill, but didn’t even get a scratch. 3. I wanted an ice-cream but didn’t have any money me –then I found $1.00 on the ground, so I could buy one. 4. When I saw the fire truck going to a house that was on fire, I prayed that everyone would get out of the fire safely and they did. 5. I wake up every morning feeling fresh and ready to start the day. 6. When the forest fire was out of control, the wind turned and the rain came and put it out. 7. God created the world in seven days. 8. I prayed that something bad would happen to the boy at school who is always teasing me, and then he broke his arm. 9 . A standard passenger plane weighs more than 100 adult elephants when it is loaded, and yet it can still get into the air and fly!
2 And he lifted his eyes and saw, behold, three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and bowed down to the ground,
5 And I will fetch a little bread, to sustain your hearts; after that you will go on, because you have passed by your servant.” And they said, “So you will do, as you have spoken.”
10 And he said, “I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold – there will be a son, to Sarah, your wife.” And Sarah heard from the entrance of the tent, behind him.
1. As I was walking home I was thinking “wouldn’t it be great to have money to buy an ice-cream” – and then I saw a dollar coin in the gutter. 2. In the storm, a bolt of lightning came down and split the tree in half. 3. I fell off my bike speeding down the hill, but came out of it without even a scratch. 4. When the house down the street caught fire, I prayed that everyone would get out of the fire safely and they did. 5. I wake up every morning feeling fresh and ready to start the day. 6. When the forest fire was out of control, the wind turned and the rain came and put it out. 7. The fortune teller told my sister that she would meet someone and fall in love and she did. 8. God created the world in seven days. 9. Jonah was swallowed by a whale/big fish and survived. (Is this the same as no.8?) 10. I prayed that something bad would happen to the boy at school who is always teasing me, and then he broke his arm. (How does your answer here compare to your answer to no. 4?) 11. A standard 747 airplane weighs more than 910,000lbs when it is loaded, and yet it can still get off the ground!
In this text Sarah laughs be-kirba (בְּקִרְבָּהּ). What kind of laughter is this? The laughter is a ‘close’ laughter, translated variously as laughing ‘to herself’, ‘within herself’ or ‘at herself’. For Samson Raphael Hirsch it is “the natural, involuntary laughter which we can hardly keep back at the sight of some absurdity” (Hirsch, 1963, p. 352). The question is whether Sarah’s laughter is one of sheer incredulity or of irony, or something else. Two things happen later that further complicate things.
(i) She denies laughing (18:15). Why does she do this? What might this say about her laughter? (is she embarrassed? Is she in denial? Is it possible she was so amazed she was unaware of laughing? Or maybe, if she had worked to suppress her laughter, she now wanted to assert that she hadn’t really laughed because she had consciously controlled herself from doing so, keeping her laughter within.)
(ii) She speaks about laughter (21:7). When she gives birth to Yitzak a few verses later she says: “ God has made laughter of me, everyone who hears will laugh”. Here too the passage is open to different readings – is she saying that, in giving birth in old age, God has made her into a laughing stock and everyone will laugh at her (Hirsch), or that God has brought laugher to her and that everyone who hears will laugh with her in joy (Rashi)?
Those who read Sarah as fearing laughter tend to read her earlier reaction in the tent as a negative laughter, while those who read it as joy see her earlier laughter as incredulity or disbelief when told good but improbable news. Sarah is not the only one who laughs. One verse earlier (Bereshit 17:17) Avraham ‘falls on his face and laughs’ when he is told he will have a child by Sarah. If Sarah’s laughter is inward, Abrahams laughter seems to be blatantly outward.
Several discussion plans and exercises explore the nature of laughter:
(i) One looks at how we laugh (where it happens in our body, the control we have over it, inward and outward laughter). This provides different resources for reflecting on how Sarah might have laughed be-kirba (בְּקִרְבָּהּ).
(ii) One looks at emotions that lie behind laughter and causes of laughter (insecurity, joy, embarrassment, etc). This looks at what Sarah might have been feeling as she laughed.
(iii) one looks at kinds of laughter (some distinctions to think about include whether the pictures shows people laughing with or at something, laughing as expression of joy, laughing inside or laughing openly, seeking to hide laughter, openly showing laughter, embarrassed laughter, laughing in amazement).
Discuss what the term ‘miracle’ means in each of these sentences: 1. “It was a miracle he survived the accident” 2. “At Hannukah we talk about the miracle of the oil” 3. “When my baby brother was born and I saw him for the first time I thought ‘this is a miracle’” 4. “The lion tamer performed miraculous feats of daring” 5. “My biology teacher talks about the miracle of life on earth” 6. “It was a miracle that I got my homework done on time” 7. “The magician pulled a rabbit out of the hat – it was a miracle!’ 8. I used to take butterflies for granted, but now we have studied them, I think each one is a tiny miracle!
Discuss what the term ‘miracle’ means in each of these sentences:
1. “It was a miracle he survived the accident” 2. “At Hannukah we talk about the miracle of the oil” 3. “When my baby brother was born and I saw him for the first time I thought ‘this is a miracle’” 4. “The trapeze artist performed miraculous feats of daring” 5. “My biology teacher talks about the miracle of life on earth” 6. “It was a miracle that I got my homework done on time” 7. “The magician pulled a rabbit out of the hat – it was a miracle!’ 8. I used to take butterflies for granted, but now we have studied them, I think each one is a tiny miracle!
1. In the storm, a bolt of lightning came down and split the tree in half. 2. I fell off my bike speeding down the hill, but didn’t even get a scratch. 3. I wanted an ice-cream but didn’t have any money me –then I found $1.00 on the ground, so I could buy one. 4. When I saw the fire truck going to a house that was on fire, I prayed that everyone would get out of the fire safely and they did. 5. I wake up every morning feeling fresh and ready to start the day. 6. When the forest fire was out of control, the wind turned and the rain came and put it out. 7. God created the world in seven days. 8. I prayed that something bad would happen to the boy at school who is always teasing me, and then he broke his arm. 9. A standard passenger plane weighs more than 100 adult elephants when it is loaded, and yet it can still get into the air and fly!
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