The Blogs: Not a Miracle: The Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty

Today’s blogpost is dedicated to the memory of President Jimmy Carter, who died this week at age 100, after a lifetime of service and selfless dedication to fighting discrimination, negotiating peace treaties, and helping humanity.

The Rambam’s position on the miracle of the oil is unique when compared to the Talmudic account. In Tractate Shabbat 21b, the Talmud explains the miracle as follows:

And when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient for one day’s lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit [the lamp] therewith for eight days.

But when the Rambam retells the Talmudic story, he leaves out a key phrase:

The day on which the Israelites were victorious over their enemies and destroyed them was the twenty-fifth day of Kislev. When they re-entered the Temple, they found within its precincts only one cruse of ritually pure oil, enough to burn for but a single day. Yet they kept alight with it the required number of lamps for eight days, until they could press some olives and produce new ritually pure oil.

As Professor Menachem Kellner points out, the Rambam omitted the phrase “a miracle was wrought,” leaving room to interpret the event as a natural occurrence or an unexplained phenomenon. This aligns with his tendency to downplay disruptions to the natural order.

This suggests that we often cannot rely on others to achieve something that might be considered a miracle; instead, we must take matters into our own hands and make it happen.

The three leaders who took matters into their own hands

Fast forward to 1977: President Anwar Sadat shocks the Arab world by announcing in the Egyptian parliament that he is willing to visit Israel and talk about peace with Israel. Begin answers the call and sends an official invitation. The historic visit of Sadat to Israel on November 19, 1977, which I witnessed on television as an elementary school kid, fascinated me. Thanks to the determination and resolve of President Jimmy Carter, it eventually led to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt–in which Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, and Egypt promised to establish normal diplomatic relations between the two countries and open the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping.

Carter achieved what was considered a “miracle” when he brokered the peace treaty [full text] signed with much pomp and circumstance in March 1979 on the White House lawn. Yet, he succeeded only because he did not think of the process as “miraculous.” Despite many setbacks along the way, and several instances when both sides threatened to abandon the negotiations, he relentlessly fought to get it done. May his legacy be for a blessing.