Pesach is a time of miracles. Great, big, movie-level theatrics types of miracles. Amazing, right? Water turning to blood, frogs jumping around wherever you look, golf-sized balls of hail and fire – you name it. And of course, the splitting of the sea is probably the most famous and awesome of all miracles.
But what is the message for us, nowadays? Is it that G-d is All-powerful? Well, yes. But I would like to suggest that it is more than that.
Let’s start with the event that signaled the beginning of the actual escape from Egypt and for which the holiday of Pesach, or in English – Passover – is named. The tenth plague was different than the nine that proceeded it in that the Israelites were told to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood on the doorposts. Based on this action, Hashem would skip the homes with the blood and only kill the firstborns in homes without the sign on the doorpost.
I would like to focus on two aspects of this event. The first is the idea of Hashgacha Pratit. If until now, the contribution of our people was monotheism and related to the creation of the world, now we were being set up to bring a different concept into the consciousness of the world: the idea that this One Great G-d is also involved in the details. He is aware of and acts in accordance with the human actions in the world that He created.
Let’s pause and think about that for a minute. We are talking not just on a global, historical level, but on a house-to-house individual basis. This is a difficult concept for us to swallow sometimes: why would G-d pay attention to little-old-me? After all, He is infinite, created the entire world, and there are billions of people in the world. Why would He care about me? I’m less than a speck in the scheme of things.
I believe that one of the main messages of Pesach is that He absolutely is involved in our lives, on an individual, house-by-house and person-by-person basis. The message of Pesach is that G-d is both capable of and indeed desires to give individual attention to each of His creations. He can skip over one house and not another, intentionally.
The second aspect of this event is that we were active participants. How did G-d decide who to skip over and who not to? He asked us to be part of the team. If we do our part, we can count on Him to do His part. And that is a message that is also far from trivial. When we take a step, show our commitment, G-d is there, watching over us. The message of Pesach is that we have a relationship with G-d. A relationship! With G-d! If you think about it, that is nothing less than awesome.
The second event, which cannot be ignored of course, is the splitting of the sea. There are those who claim that the splitting of the sea was not necessarily a supernatural miracle. According to some scientific modeling techniques, it can be shown that a very strong wind for a certain period of time could have that effect.
OK, let’s take that for a minute as a given. What are the odds that exactly at the right moment, when Bnei Yisrael were about to be attacked by a mighty and powerful army, this “natural” event occurred? And that just as the army reached the sea, the waters fell back down on them, killing them all? I think it stretches the credibility of any reasonable scientist to say that that is within the realm of possibility. Generally, when scientists are confronted with almost infinitely miniscule odds, they calculate those odds as zero.
So this brings us to the additional incredible aspect of Pesach: the idea of G-d’s intervention in this world on the basis of time. This is probably the subject of a whole different blog, but let’s remember that time is a construct that G-d created and thus is not bound by it. Every once in a while, we may get a glimpse of Hashgacha in terms of timing: something happens exactly then, or events converge in a certain way such that something significant happens. Sometimes we can even look back at past events and see how they tie into things that are happening now. If you pay attention to these types of things, you start to become aware of them more and more, and you start to realize that the odds of all of these things happening in just this way are almost negligible.
But whatever we are capable of seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. If you start to contemplate the enormity of orchestrating the world while still providing us with the freedom to choose how to be a part of this orchestra, then you truly begin to get a glimpse of the awesomeness of G-d as an active Entity in our lives. This Shabbat, Shabbat Hagadol, we can contemplate this gedula, this awesome greatness, to whatever degree our limited minds are capable of contemplating it.
So remember, a miracle is not just a fireworks-type of event that makes us look up and say “wow.” It is found in the daily happenings of our individual lives. We as Jews represent this on a national level. But on an individual level, we must recognize it and embrace it as well.