The Nature Of Miracle

Imagine you meet someone and immediately notice something peculiar: he walks around incessantly clapping his hands. The next day, you realize that once again he is walking around clapping his hands. As this pattern continues for several weeks, you assume that he must have some kind of biological disorder forcing him to act this way. You begin to get used to the strange behavior, accepting this boy’s nature. One day, as per usual, you see him clapping his hands.

Suddenly, the inexplicable happens: the boy stops clapping his hands, looks right, then left, waves at you, and then goes back to clapping his hands again. Your first response is absolute shock; a moment later, you begin to realize the fascinating truth: this boy doesn’t have a disorder, and he isn’t being forced to clap his hands. Every moment, he chooses to clap his hands. As soon as you witness a brief moment when he chooses not to clap his hands, you know that the clapping has been in his control all along.

The Miraculous and the Natural

Through the miracles and makkos of yetzias Mitzrayim, Hashem revealed Himself to the world. The laws of nature were broken, the impossible became possible, and the unfathomable, fathomable. But to fully understand and appreciate the meaning of a miracle, we must first attempt to understand nature itself.

The very idea of nature is enigmatic. After all, what do we mean when we refer to the natural? Naturally, what goes up tends to come back down. Nature also causes rainstorms, hurricanes, tornados, and appears to be responsible for disease and illness. We tend to give nature credit for most of what happens in this world. However, any thoughtful Jew should be troubled by the concept of nature. If Hashem created this world, how are we supposed to approach nature? Is nature independent from Hashem? To answer these questions, let us take a step back and analyze the different forms of belief and disbelief in Hashem.

Three Forms of Disbelief in Hashem

• The first category is comprised of those who do not believe in Hashem at all. They believe instead that the world has always existed, without any creator whatsoever. After all, when you look around, do you see Hashem? You can’t see, hear, touch, smell, or taste Him, so how can you know that He exists? Such questions have caused many to reject the existence of Hashem altogether.
• However, there is a second category of disbelievers: those who are willing to accept Hashem’s existence. They look around and observe a world that is so exceedingly sophisticated and beautiful and conclude that there must have been a creator who designed it. Just spend a few days studying human biology, and you will marvel at the wonder and brilliance of a single human being. However, this second category of people claim that once Hashem created the world, He left. As a result, Hashem is unaware of anything happening in this world. This is referred to as the watchmaker theory: once a watchmaker creates a watch, he leaves it and it continues to run completely on its own.

Within this group, others mistakenly think Hashem is like most human beings, who begin a project, eventually tire of it, and move on to something else. They claim that after creating the world, Hashem moved on to some other project or interest, leaving us abandoned in the universe. These are just a few of the reasons that this second group of people claim that Hashem has left our world to the random and coincidental occurrences of nature.

• Finally, the third group claims that Hashem did not leave this world, but is rather limited and weak, unable to intervene in the events in this world. He is fully aware of what is happening in this world but remains passive. This group claims that Hashem might have been powerful enough to create the world, but He is not powerful enough to control it. Thus, they question Hashem as an all-powerful being.

Yetzias Mitzrayim: Uprooting All Three

What Is Nature?

Three Ways of Understanding Nature

1. Hashem Created Nature

2. Hashem Created and Controls Nature

3. Nature Itself is the Constant Will of Hashem

This third level is the one presented by the Ramban in the same passage we mentioned above. He explains that the open miracles of yetzias Mitzrayim revealed to the world that nature itself is really a hidden miracle. In other words, there is no fundamental difference between the astounding miracles and wonders that Hashem performed in Mitzrayim, whereby He uprooted the laws of nature, and the extraordinary wonders Hashem performs every single day. There is no template or natural system called nature. Rather, Hashem wills the same wonders into existence every second, to make it appear as if there is an independent system in place (to ensure that we have free will). We perceive and refer to these constant miracles as nature.

Recognizing the Miraculous within the Natural