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Torah portion: Miracles on the plains

Parashat Vayelech (Deuteronomy 31:1-31:30)
[additional-authors]
September 16, 2015

We live in an age of miracles — as, in fact, every age has. In ancient times, miracles could be seen more clearly because God revealed Himself more manifestly. He spoke directly to our forebears. He smote Egypt with Ten Plagues, delivered the Jews from bondage to freedom, divided the Red Sea, and revealed Himself at Mount Sinai amid lightning and thunder and great shofar blasts. 

Our rabbis tell us that even the two tablets bearing the Ten Pronouncements that Moses brought down from Sinai were miraculous. They were engraved completely through the stone to the opposite side; yet, if one looked at the writing from either side, neither side’s divine inscription appeared as a reverse of the other.

The miracles were everywhere. A well of ample water traveled with the wandering Jews, slaking their thirsts, as long as Miriam lived. Clouds of glory protected the nation from desert sun and sand throughout Aaron’s life. The manna fell from heaven, feeding the nation daily throughout Moses’ life. The nation lived these miracles so completely, and they touched every aspect of their lives — their clothes and sandals never wore out through 40 years, and their feet never showed swelling or felt the worse despite wandering desert sands for nearly half a century.

That was then. It is different now.

Miracles no longer are as manifest. In this week’s Torah portion, God tells Moses that, in time, in the face of our people deviating from His word, He will hide His face from them — from us: “And I surely will conceal My face on that day because of all the evil that [the people will have] done, for [they will have turned] to gods of others” (Deuteronomy 31:18).

Thus, unlike the Dor HaMidbar (Generation of the Desert), among whom even the lowliest handmaiden and male servant merited the prophetic grace of beholding God’s divine revelation at Sinai, future generations would be left with Hester Panim (the concealing of His face). Miracles no longer would be manifest.

Nevertheless, though less obvious, miracles would continue. That is the message of the Book of Esther, the outlier biblical volume that uniquely takes place in Persia at the very last phase of the biblical epoch. In that Megillah, God’s name never appears. Seas do not split, and food does not descend from the sky. Yet, miracles unfold. 

As Bigtan and Teresh plot to assassinate the king, Mordecai just so happens to be at the right place at the right time, overhearing the plot. His beloved Esther just so happens to have been selected queen of Persia, so Mordecai can warn the king through her. Later, after Haman has risen to power and begun implementing his plan to destroy us, the king cannot sleep one night, so he asks a servant to read from his diary-like chronicles — and the servant just so happens to turn to the story of how Mordecai the Jew saved the king’s life when he uncovered the Bigtan-Teresh murder plot. And so on.

The Book of Esther points the way for post-biblical Jewish life outside Israel — life in exile. At critical times in life, things just so happen to occur — sometimes good, sometimes painful. Sometimes they are miraculous, and sometimes they just are the way He wanted His natural order of things to unfold. By hiding His face, He leaves us unable to discern or decipher what is particularly miraculous and for what purpose. 

When a leaf falls, we do not know whether that leaf fell for a profound reason or whether it fell merely because He created trees that way — perhaps to ensure a source of oxygen for us as well as a consumer of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis  — and it just was that leaf’s time. We live in a world with all kinds of wonderful surprises that thrill us, but also with hurricanes and tornadoes, tsunamis and quakes, and other natural disasters that attorneys and contracts call “Acts of God.” 

We do not know how or whether to interpret because we cannot know; He hides His face.

However, here is what we can do: We can pause from time to time to contemplate. Perhaps in the car, we can turn off the smartphone, car radio and DVD player. Perhaps during the quiet of the Shabbat day, we can be introspective. We can look back at critical, turning-point moments in our lives, moments whose full import may not have been discernible to us years earlier but can be defined more clearly now. 

The job I always wanted: Why did I lose it, and how did that setback lead to the happiest developments in my life? The spouse I wanted: Why did that fail to play out as expected or not materialize at all, and how did that setback lead to the best relationship of my life? My aspirations and hopes as a teenager and collegian: How did they play out, why did some succeed while others failed, and how did those setbacks lead me to enriching vistas I never could have imagined?

We do — each of us — live in an age of miracles. But in an era of Hester Panim when He hides His face, we need to occasionally stop texting and tweeting and posting to Facebook, pause from struggling to keep pace, and realize that He has been here all along, working miracles as great as those that were beheld at Sinai.

Rabbi Dov Fischer, adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School and UC Irvine School of Law, is a member of the national executive committee of the Rabbinical Council of America and rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County. His writings appear at rabbidov.com.

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