What do we call it when the impossible happens, and then we forget about it by morning? Almost exactly one year ago, as families around the world were preparing for Pesach, something happened. Iran launched a barrage of nearly 300 ballistic missiles directly at Israel. These weren’t the kind we’ve sadly grown accustomed to from Gaza—these were long-range, high-speed, high-precision threats, many aimed squarely at densely populated cities. Intelligence officials and military analysts braced for disaster. There were dire warnings. Frantic updates. And then… silence.
Every missile was intercepted. The ones that weren’t landed harmlessly in open areas. It was, in every measurable way, a military impossibility. Afterward, we learned the truth: the systems that protected Israel—Arrow, David’s Sling, Iron Dome—had never been tested like this. They weren’t designed for this. Even in optimal conditions, they were expected to block about 75% of missiles. This time, they blocked 99%. Some say 100%.
So, was that a miracle? Or was it just good defense?
We don’t have to go far to find a parallel. Every year on Shvi’i shel Pesach, we stand again at the shores of the Yam Suf, watching the sea split. It’s a scene etched into our collective memory: the waters part, the walls rise, and the nation walks through on dry land. But if you look closely at the Torah’s telling, you’ll find something strange. It wasn’t just a sudden split. The Torah tells us, “Hashem drove the sea back with a strong east wind all night.” Not an explosion. Not a thunderclap. A wind. Long. Slow. Natural.
Which one was it? Was it a miracle? Or a meteorological event? The Torah gives us both.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l notices this tension and asks: why would the Torah present both a supernatural and a natural account of Kriyat Yam Suf? Why would it risk weakening the miracle by implying it could have been explained? His answer is as radical as it is beautiful: the Torah isn’t trying to impress us. It’s trying to transform us. In his words, “A miracle is not defined by suspending the laws of nature. A miracle is something that transforms us. That awakens faith. That reveals justice.” It’s not the fireworks. It’s the change inside us.
We often imagine that if we had only been there—standing at the sea, seeing the water rise, hearing the thunder of chariots behind us—we’d never doubt again. But the Torah tells us that just days later, Bnei Yisrael were complaining about water. Weeks later, they were begging to return to Egypt. And we’re not so different.
We experience moments that should awaken us, averted disasters, uncanny timing, near misses that leave us breathless. That job offer coming through right when savings were depleted. The car accident narrowly avoided when you inexplicably decided to take a different route. And yet, just like that, we move on. We explain it away. What happened a year ago, 300 missiles, no casualties, should have stopped us in our tracks. But how many of us treated it like a moment of national Kriyat Yam Suf? And if we didn’t, what would it take? 400 missiles? 500? A casualty or two? Would that finally make us call it a miracle?
In our lifetime, we’ve seen other moments that seem impossible until they happen, just like that night of missile interceptions. The Soviet Union, once the world’s most feared and repressive regime, collapsed not through revolution or war, but quietly, almost anticlimactically. It had imprisoned Jews, crushed religious practice, and cast a long shadow of terror. And then it just dissolved. Was that a miracle? Or just politics? According to Rabbi Sacks, the answer doesn’t lie in what happened, but in how we respond.
The brilliance of the Torah’s dual narrative, the east wind and the water walls, is not in its ambiguity but in its invitation. It says: choose how to see. Choose how to live. If you’re inspired by nature, the Torah gives you wind. If you’re inspired by wonder, it gives you walls of water. But either way, it demands one thing: don’t be passive. Don’t explain it all away. Look up. Ask yourself: did this moment awaken anything in me? Did it stir awe? Did it reveal truth? Did it spark gratitude? If it did, then it was a miracle.
The Ramban, at the end of Parshat Bo, says that open miracles exist only to teach us how to notice the hidden ones—those everyday occurrences we take for granted but are actually divine orchestration. That there is no such thing as “natural.” That the apple is no less miraculous than the splitting sea. You just have to notice. And yet, we live in a world where noticing has become optional. We admire science, and rightly so, but we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the One behind it. Like the man who prays for a parking spot and when he finds one right in front of the building, will casually look up and say, “Never mind, Hashem. I got this.” We all do it.
Rabbi Sacks highlights another layer to Kriyat Yam Suf – divine justice. Egypt’s military might, its chariots and horses, were the most advanced weapons of their time. And yet, it was precisely those chariots that got stuck. Their wheels fell off. Their strength became their weakness. And they drowned. Their very power destroyed them. Justice wasn’t just served, it was seen.
That, too, was a miracle—not just because it happened, but because it meant something. The same can be said for the fall of oppressive regimes, for the attacks that failed, for the quiet acts of preservation that play out in our lives. With those 300 missiles, wasn’t there justice in seeing weapons of destruction rendered harmless, their very purpose nullified? If these events reveal meaning—if they stir faith—they are miracles.
The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim writes that people who think about Hashem more often experience more hashgacha pratis—divine personal supervision. But maybe that’s not a reward. Maybe it’s simply awareness. The more we think about Hashem, the more we notice Him. The more we look for His hand, the more visible it becomes. The miracles don’t increase, we just stop missing them.
What does it mean, then, to relive Kriyat Yam Suf this year? It means asking: when was the last time the sea split in my life, but I called it wind? It means realizing that we may have lived through one of the greatest miracles of our generation and barely blinked. And it means understanding that Hashem doesn’t always split seas with drama. Sometimes He sends a quiet wind. Sometimes He lets the wheels fall off the chariots. Sometimes He lets missiles fail.
But always, He is present in both the dramatic and mundane. The question isn’t whether miracles still happen—they surround us daily—but whether we’ve trained ourselves to recognize them. The sea splits differently for each generation; sometimes through water, sometimes through wind, sometimes through missile interceptions that defy probability. When we finally understand this, we discover the most profound truth: we have never stopped walking on dry land between walls of water, we’ve just stopped looking up.
To Whom It May Concern 
What a wonderful message and so beautifully expressed!Â
From our early childhood, my father a’h’ always pointed out to my brother a’h’ and me the miracles and the beauty that we could see around us, even in the dirty big city streets of Philadelphia — the gasoline leak in the middle of the street that turned into a rainbow when the sun hit it; the early spring flowers that Hashem gave energy to push up their heads through the icy-cold soil, and the grass that managed to find its way through the cracks between the pavement squares, and many other examples of chasdei Hashem that were all around us if we just paid attention and learned to look and listen for them. He said these were all there to encourage us to recognize the true Source of our own potential strengths, which was always available to us, we just had to reach out to connect.
Mollie
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