Wonder of Wonders

(Published in The Outreach, July 2003)
The Outreach is the newsletter of Valley Outreach Synagogue, Reseda, California
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So often in our cycle of Torah study and holidays, we celebrate the miraculous. Yet miracles, in the context of our modern lives are generally relegated to the realm of mythology. It seems trite to say that miracles are occurring on a moment to moment basis in the year, 2003; in the days of Abraham, maybe, but now? If not ridiculous, then it certainly sounds, at best, like positive thinking, and at its extreme, as the teachings of religious zealots.

A major divide between the orthodox and liberal Jew is the concept of the unknowable Creator, and hence, of the miraculous. Does God exist and if God does exist, did God deliver Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai, or did humanity, at the pinnacle of ethical genius, come up with both the grand myth and its enduring laws? Was God’s hand truly “outstretched” in the epic of our Exodus? Did a donkey really speak to Balaam? Does God truly create the world anew on a daily basis?

Both the orthodox and reform Jew consider themselves to be of the same faith, and yet something as fundamental as our faith in the workings of God and the veracity of Torah are at odds. From one point of view: If Torah is divine, then who are we to chose the mitzvot or commandments that fit comfortably into our lives and discard the less convenient or archaic ones? And from the other: If Torah is indeed derived of ancient human wisdom, then certainly, we can make wise distinctions in our own age and pick and choose the mitzvot and “moral myths” that have relevance to our lives. (How do we present the divine and miraculous to our children?)

To see God in the "fireworks" of Mount Sinai or in the Egyptian Exodus is something that any of us can do. As the sages say, "A child at the splitting of the sea saw more than the prophet, Ezekiel". Indeed, how could he not? It is obvious that God is at work in the wholesale upending of the natural order. How could we not have faith in the power of such moments? Yet, with our distance from the time and place, the entire story is called into question. Our faith is either established or discarded.

A more challenging and deeper understanding of God and of the divine is that the continuous natural cycle is no less a miracle than the splitting of the Red Sea or the miraculous drama of the Exodus. As Jews we begin and end each day in recognition of the One who separates darkness from light, orders the stars in the universe and changes the seasons. Perhaps the only difference between these “ordinary” miracles that occur in nature and the ones of Hollywood proportions is frequency and magnitude.

When our perception is driven by the force of the spectacular, we are "forced" into recognizing our relationship to God. But when we choose to see God’s essence in the first green shoot of wheat or the perfect beating of our child’s heart, then we have found God not as an external force impacting our world, but as the very fabric of what can only be an extra ordinary existence.

Nature exists because God chose the natural order as the "default" option for all time. Miracles, on the other hand, are a concession to the human need to see things from a different perspective in order to apprehend what they've already seen.