The Miracle We Would Have Called a Tragedy
Some events need no embellishment. They need us to look clearly at what happened—and at what nearly did.
On Wednesday, a FlyDubai flight travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after a violent incident in the cockpit. Israel’s prime minister said the co-pilot had attacked the captain and appeared to try to crash the plane. Passengers and crew intervened. The plane landed safely in Tabuk. Both pilots were injured and taken to hospital; more than 170 people were on board. The investigation is continuing.
The difference between the story we have and the story we might have had is stark. Had the aircraft gone down, we would have called it a tragedy. We would have mourned the passengers and crew, asked how it could have happened, and remembered the flight for years.
Instead, it landed. People acted with courage. Lives were spared.
We are quick to search for meaning in catastrophe. We ask what failed, what warning was missed, what should have been done differently. When disaster is averted, we often settle for “luck” and move on. Luck may describe the outcome. It does not answer the deeper question: how did so many things have to come together, at just the right time, for these people to survive?
We know some of the answers. Passengers and crew intervened. The aircraft was brought to a safe landing. Those actions matter. But a list of causes does not make the outcome ordinary. We can recognise human skill and courage while still asking whether human beings are protected by something beyond what we can see, measure or command.
A secular reader need not accept a religious answer to take that question seriously. To say “we cannot know” is not the same as saying “there is nothing more to know”. And to call something luck is not to explain it. It is simply to give the mystery a name.
That is one reason the sukkah speaks beyond the religious community. It is a shelter, but not a fortress. Its roof is open to the sky. It embodies a truth that modern life encourages us to forget: we can build, prepare and protect, yet we cannot make ourselves invulnerable. Jewish tradition calls the protection beyond us Hashem. Others may call it providence, mystery, or the limits of human control. The disagreement over the name should not prevent us from noticing the reality.
The Jewish people have lived with that reality for centuries. Our survival was never guaranteed. The Western Wall stands as a remnant of destruction and a witness to continuity: the story did not end where many expected it to end. To call that miraculous is not to deny history or suffering. It is to recognise how astonishing it is that the story continues.
The point is not that nothing terrible can happen. Terrible things do happen. The point is that when lives are preserved, we should not be embarrassed to say that it matters—that we are grateful, and that we may be standing in the presence of something larger than ourselves.
Had this flight ended in disaster, we would have called it a tragedy and remembered it for years. Since its passengers survived, why should our gratitude last only a moment?
