DO YOU SEE MIRACLES IN YOUR LIFE?

The anecdote is told that some years ago, the Israeli Knesset, once convened an emergency session to figure out a solution for the broken Israeli economy.

One brilliant minister said, "Let's declare war on the U.S., and then, in the wake of the utter destruction America will bring upon us, we will receive billions of dollars for reconstruction, like Germany and Japan.

"Sounds great," responded another member of the Knesset. "One problem: What will we do if we win the war?"

When do we celebrate Purim in a leap year the first month of Adar or the second Adar?  The holiday of Purim always falls in the second Adar. Why? The Talmud explains that it is “preferable to juxtapose [one] redemption to [the other] redemption,” Purim to Passover.

But why must these two redemptions celebrated in close correlation? On the surface, the two redemptions could not be more dissimilar. During the redemption of Passover, the liberation from the  comes from Above, and the redemption from below, from our resourcefulness.

In effect, the progression in the Jewish calendar from Pesach to Purim mirrors our historical development. We began as dependents of Hashem, and we were sustained directly by His hand. But as history moved on, His miracles were hidden and His Providence more subtle. On Purim, it seemed like it all happened because of natural forces.

Why do we eat hamantashen on Purim?

Jews can always find food to tell a story. In this case, it is the hamantash. The outside of the hamantash is just plain dough. The true flavor is concealed inside. Beyond the very ordinary veneer is the heart of the hamantash, bursting with sweetness.

Our lives are much the same. At times it seems that we are being pushed and pulled by accidental forces. Things happen to us that seem random; there seems to be no direction in this cold and harsh universe. This is not true. There is a system. But it is hidden. Below the surface, there is a sweet hand and a warm heart that directs the universe.

Who would have thought that in the Bible, there be an entire section without G-d showing up? But show up He did, just not in a revealed manner. This is what the Purim holiday is all about seeing G-d in the supposed 'chance,' 'luck' and 'coincidences' in our lives, seeing G-d in the natural events.

The Hand of G-d remains visible to anyone who wonders how we were able to survive in the inhospitable climates of one exile after another. But we must see it, identify it, and reveal it.

For this reason, we dress up in costumes and wear masks on Purim, heightening our awareness of the reality that G-d is constantly clothing and masking Himself within the natural and the mundane. When we internalize this, we come to see that really, it's not a question of the miraculous versus the natural, but a question of the revealed miracle versus the hidden miracle.

That is why the Sages established Purim right before Passover, to underscore that the two redemptions may be different than each other in every form, but they were truly one: G-d is always involved in every detail of our life. The question is only in what form. Your mother thinks about you when you are 40 no less than when you were ten. It is just that when you are 40, she must take a step back...

In May 1967, Egyptian and Syrian troops massed on Israel's borders, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and Egyptian President Gamel Abdal Nasser filled the airwaves with calls to drive the Jews into the sea. The mood in the 19-year-old country of Israel was bleak. Facing five well-equipped, Soviet-trained Arab armies, Israel's defeat was virtually a foregone conclusion. The black humor on everyone's lips that Spring was: "The last one out, don't forget to turn off the lights."

Everyone knows that instead of defeat, Israel achieved a stunning victory. On June 5 at 7:46 AM, Israeli planes destroyed the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. In six days, Israel tripled its territory,   gaining the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and -- most precious of all -- the Old City and the Temple Mount.

The crucial strategy of destroying the Egyptian air force while their planes were still on the ground opened the way for the Israeli victory. The success of the maneuver is generally attributed to the Israeli planes flying below the tracking altitude of Egyptian radar. Many other factors, however, contributed to the success of the air strike and the subsequent battles. The coincidences and unlikely happenings at precisely the right time were so plentiful that, as we learn the details of the victory, the bulge in the curtain almost knocks us over.

For example, a few days before the war, the Commander of Egyptian forces in the Sinai was ordered to change commanders in most of his brigades, putting in charge officers who didn't know the terrain or  their forces.

On the very morning of June 5th, three hours before the Israeli air strike, Egyptian intelligence did issue a warning that an Israeli air attack would begin "within minutes." At that point, Egypt still had time to get its planes off the ground and save them. The message reached the command bunker in Cairo. An aide-de-camp signed a copy, but no one bothered to look for the Commander in Chief.

On the same morning of the attack, Egyptian officers stationed at the radar station in northern Jordan picked up the scrambling Israeli aircraft and sent a red alert message to Cairo. The sergeant in the decoding room of the supreme command tried to decipher the message using the previous day's code and failed.

And where was Egypt's Commander in Chief? The night before, he and most of his top officers attended a party at an air force base in the northern delta area, at which a renowned belly dancer performed. Early the next morning, he took off for the Sinai, where he had ordered all his top commanders to assemble to meet a high-level Iraqi delegation. When the Israeli strike happened, not one senior officer was at his post.

With Jew hatred on the rise across the world; with communities in fear and Jews concealing their identities lest they be attacked in the street; with Israel and world Jewry targets of fanatical Muslims who yearn for supremacy over the Jews and elimination of the Jewish land; with the Western world, especially including the United States, unsure of its path and reluctant to embark on a global campaign to eliminate the jihadi threat before it acquires the capability to cause even greater harm; and with this  generation’s Persians obsessed with acquiring the weaponry to carry out their ancestor Haman’s final solution, it is easy to forget that G-d is right here all the time, with each single one of us and with His people.

Yet all of history is a movement from acts done by G-d for the sake of human beings to acts done by human beings for the sake of G-d. It is a story of the progression from the redemption of Peach to the redemption of Purim. Our generation is both blessed with capabilities and uniquely placed to move Jewish and world history to its majestic culmination. We must, with courage and resolve, take on our enemies through every means possible, remembering that G-d is right there in the “hamantash” guiding us and protecting us.

A father was very “enlightened” and did not want his son to believe in G-d. So one night, as the boy was sound asleep, his father placed a note under the boy's pillow, which read "G-d is nowhere."

The boy arose in the morning, and with excitement, he came running to his father, saying: "Dad, this morning I discovered under my pillow a message saying, "G-d is now here."

Shabbat Shalom and A Happy Purim,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky