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Michael Linetsky

It’s a miracle!

“Its a Miracle!” – These are words that all of us have used and misused. When something unlikely happens we tend to call it a “miracle”. However, many of us will find upon introspection that we use this exclamation rather loosely.

We may find that we make such an exclamation because it is satisfying religiously or distances us momentarily from atheism, but do we necessarily believe that an event is miraculous? — perhaps anomalous but not truly miraculous.

The Sages of the Land of Israel espoused a firm belief in the existence of miracles even today and even for an ordinary person. God will go against the workings of nature for the good of an individual and how much more so for our People in their entirety.

The Talmud of the Land of Israel rules that if a woman’s husband falls into a lion’s den or into pillar of fire we do not testify to his death. Perhaps a miracle occurred and he was saved like Hananiah, Mishael and Azarya in the Book of Daniel. (Yevamoth, 83a)

The lesson that the Talmud of the Land of Israel teach us here is that miracles are not as unlikely as we think and are not reserved for the incredibly pious and righteous. Miracles can happen to all of us every day and we may never exclude them as a possibility.

The next time we say “Its a miracle!” we should mean it!

May God open our eyes to the miracles that surround us and give us cognizance of His presence in our world and our lives!

About the Author
Rabbi Michael Linetsky has published a number of works, some of which receiving approbations from scholars such as Nahum Sarna, David Weiss Halivni, the late Lord Emanuel Jacobovits and Dr. Norman Lamm. michael@torateretzyisrael.org www.torateretzyisrael.org