An Age of Rationalist Miracles

It doesn't need to be supernatural to be a miracle

The destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and American’s show of determination and strength, is a fantastic development. So is the progress of the war against Iran in general. But are these actual miracles? Do they have religious significance?

The mystical, non-rationalist view, which is the one taught in the Israeli charedi and American yeshivish world, is that the Age of Miracles expired long ago. Genuine miracles are wholly supernatural events. Furthermore, miracles are of an extreme nature. Thus, the plague of frogs involved a giant frog erupting with millions more, the Splitting of the Sea involved it dividing into twelve separate channels with fruit trees growing out of the walls, and there were only 13 Maccabees who overcame the Seleucid Greeks. Moreover, miracles only occur with people of a spiritual level that we cannot even begin to fathom. Thus, it would be ludicrous to consider such things as the creation of the State of Israel, or its military successes, to be genuine miracles on par with Biblical or even Talmudic events. Miracles are Magic Frogs, not B-2s.

Yet as I explain in my book Rationalism vs. Mysticism (which should be purchased on the museum website, not on Amazon), the rationalist view, on the other hand, seeks to naturalize miracles as much as possible. Miracles, according to Rav Soloveitchik, are not (necessarily) supernatural events; they are unusual but naturalistic events whose significance lies in their timing and correlation with the fate and fortunes of the Jewish People.

So are the current events a miracle? It’s often difficult to properly assess the significance of historical events when you live through them. People live in the moment, and adapt very quickly to new circumstances, and thus things which ought to appear extraordinary are seen as not particularly unusual. It takes effort to “zoom out” and gain a broader perspective. But let’s try to do that.

In 2007, historian Benny Morris wrote a terrifying article in The Jerusalem Post titled “This Holocaust will be Different.” It was about how Iran was inexorably marching towards nuclear weapons, and would almost certainly use them to destroy Israel. Morris also explained why there would be nothing that Israel could do to prevent such a thing. Israel’s nuclear weapons are effectively unusable, because it would always be premature to use them until it was too late, and there would be no conventional way of destroying Iran’s nuclear project.

In the following years, things only became worse. Israel managed some covert operations to delay the nuclear program, but was unable to stop it. And taking direct action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, as Israel had done with Iraq, was tempting but it would involve consequences too terrifying for anyone to contemplate. Because meanwhile Iran had assembled its “Ring of Fire” around Israel.

Can you imagine if Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran had simultaneously attacked Israel?! This morning’s missile barrage of just 30 missiles was devastating. Imagine if would have been thousands of missiles, raining down all over Israel every day for weeks or months. The loss of life, the devastation, would have been absolutely catastrophic. Even without Iran using nuclear weapons, it would have been a second Holocaust.

So what could Israel do? Very little. American leadership was weak and lost its appetite for foreign wars. Bibi made powerful speeches at the UN, but when Bennett took office, he was amazed to discover that there wasn’t even any kind of operational plan to attack Iran; it was simply unthinkable. Israel appeared to be marching towards destruction, with no way of stopping it. People accepted all of it, all the missiles of Hezbollah and Iran pointed at us, as part of life in Israel, but anyone who was thinking about the big picture realized that we were in serious trouble with no good options.