I’m writing to wish you all a healthy and happy Hanukkah season, this Festival of Lights, and to share with you some reflections that I offered this past Shabbat on the question: what is a nes — Hebrew for miracle? What do we mean when we invoke the existence of miracles on Hanukkah and when we invoke miracles in Jewish tradition writ large?
Hoping this teaching offers a small modicum of additional light on this Hag Ha’urim, Festival of Lights, which we celebrate in our hearts, in our homes, and in our communities, together.
We just completed a prayer, the Amidah, which includes one of the keystone words from this holiday season, and that word is nes — miracle.
From the letters that adorn our dreidel — nun for nes in the declaration, nes gadol hayah sham, a great miracle happened there (or po instead of sham if you’re spinning a dreidel in the Land of Israel, a great miracle happened here); to the second blessing we say when we light the Hanukkah candles — Barukh Atah Adonai… she’asah nisim lavoteinu bayamim hahem bazman hazeh — Blessed are you Adonai… who made nisim, miracles, in those days during this season — in both of these places, we invoke the centrality of miracles to our holiday season.
But we don’t only reference miracles during these ritual moments; they also come up in the context of prayers like the ones we just offered in our Shabbat service. Some of you may be familiar with those points in the siddur, in the prayer book, where it says, “On Hanukkah insert the following paragraph:” or “on Hanukkah insert the prayer on p. 430.” Well, the name of that prayer, that insertion, is al hanisim — for the miracles: “We thank you, God,” we say, “al hanisim, for the miracles you made for our ancestors bayamim hahem bazman hazeh, in those days during this season.”
What’s interesting though, is where it is in our prayer service that it calls upon us to insert this special Hanukkah al hanisim blessing.
It comes in the second to last blessing of the Amidah (when we’re getting ready to take our leave from the intensity of God’s presence), and we say “modim anahnu lakh — we thank you, God, for…” and then we go on to list all that for which we are thanking God. This is a section of the prayer we say every day, traditionally three times a day, not just on Hanukkah. And in this daily, non-Hanukkah section, we say “modim anahnu lakh,” “we thank you, God,” “al nisekha sheb’khol yom imanu.” “We thank you, God, for nisekha,” “for your miracles,” “which are with us, b’khol yom,” not just on Hanukkah, but “each and every day.”
So here we have a prayer that we traditionally say three times a day, not just on Hanukkah, in which we thank God for the miracles which are with us each day.
And then on Hanukkah, we add additional language to this prayer, in which we say “we thank you, God,” “al hanisim,” “for the miracles, which you made for our ancestors in those days during this season.”
So it begs the question — what’s a miracle? According to Jewish tradition, what is a miracle, given that we both express thanks for nisekha sheb’khol yom imanu, for your miracles which are with us each and every day and al hanisim, for the specific miracles which you made for our ancestors in those days during this season of Hanukkah. What’s a miracle, according to Jewish tradition, and what can we take from that for our own lives?
Well, if we’re talking about the miracles that are with us every day, we don’t have to stretch our imaginations too far to imagine what that’s referring to: in a phrase, the miracle of life.
I’m reminded of my classmate, Rabbi Ariana Katz, who was having a friendly argument with her avowedly atheist brother, who was trying to convince her of the non-existence of God. “But Ariana!” he exclaimed, “the Big Bang!” “I know!” she said, “it’s a miracle!”
It doesn’t take a viewing of more than a few nature documentaries or the pondering of the birth of a child or marveling at the stars in the sky to conclude how improbable, and dare we say, how miraculous, life, existence, is.
“You were right about the stars,” the rock band Wilco sings, led by Jewish songwriter Jeff Tweedy: “each one is a setting sun.”
Each star is a setting sun. The number of miracles present in the day to day existence of the universe, of our lives, is unfathomable.
One inference we can draw from the invocation of miracles in our day-to-day liturgy is that it is an invitation to, shall we say, marvel more; to be in awe more; to say, “how miraculous is all of that which lays before me:” each organism, each cell, each musical note, each emotion — wow; all of it. “Thank you, God” — whatever that word means, whatever is at the center of all of this, from which all of it flows — ”thank you God, for your miracles which are present in my life, in all of our lives.”
Still, this blessing seems to be saying, there are miracles and then there are miracles. There’s the baseline miracle of the reality of existence, how improbable this is, and then, during the season of Hanukkah, we make a note to point out specific miracles that happened bayamim hahem bazman hazeh, at that time in this season.
How do we understand miracles in that sense? What meaning can we make of the fact that there are certain events in our history which we make a point to call miracles beyond the baseline level miracle of existence?
In answering this, it may be helpful to point out which events in our tradition lead us to invoke the blessing of miracles and which do not. The “al hanisim” blessing is invoked specifically on two holidays: (1) yes, Hanukkah, and (2) Purim, but not, in perhaps a notable omission, Pesah, Passover.
Why is that, and how does that inform our understanding of what a nes, a miracle, is?
At first glance, no event would seem more miraculous in Jewish tradition than the splitting of the sea. The sea acts in a way a sea never does: it opens up so that we can pass through, and then, just as we’ve made it to dry land, crashes back down. Why do we not say the blessing thanking God for miracles in commemoration of that occasion?
Well, suggests the Hasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, the al hanisim blessing — she’asah nisim lavoteinu bayamim hahem bazman hazeh — really refers to that which is performed bazman, in time, which means, he says, batevah, naturally. Zman, time, he says, is a natural phenomenon, and therefore, he says, we say this blessing, bazman hazeh, over nisim, miracles, which occur naturally. Not supernaturally, transcending time and space like the supernatural splitting of the sea, that experience of redemption. Most miracles are those which happen naturally. ]
The events of Hanukkah, the events of Purim, were events that were, yes, improbable, but not impossible.The smaller Maccabean army defeated the larger Syrian army; Esther persuaded the king to save her people; a tiny cruse of oil lasted not one, not two, but eight nights. Each of these were perhaps improbable, but not impossible.
When we invoke the notion of a miracle on Hanukkah — when we celebrate the notion of a miracle — we’re not celebrating the impossible, that which can’t really take place on an earthly timeline; we’re celebrating the improbable — that which is unlikely, and yet which can take place and has taken place, and which can happen again.
Think of the miracles which we celebrate in contemporary parlance: the “Miracle on Ice” — when the US hockey team somehow beat the four-time defending gold medal champion Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Olympics: the “Miracle at the Meadowlands,” when, in the final seconds of the game, the Philadelphia Eagles recovered a fumble by the hometown New York Giants (whose home stadium is in the New Jersey Meadowlands), improbably returning it for a touchdown. In a more significant miracle, some refer to the “Miracle of Dunkirk,” when 338,000 Allied soldiers escaped from their entrapped position in Dunkirk, France, across the English Channel, in, among other vessels, hundreds of civilian boats, to safety.
The Hanukkah invocation of miracles celebrates not the impossible, but the improbable, and yet which nonetheless does occur.
And, returning to our blessing, what is more improbable than life itself: the vastness of the universe, the countless stars. And yet here we are, all we living creatures, with our melodies, and our emotions, and all the things which we take for granted each day.
Hanukkah comes to remind us that the improbable is indeed possible. For evidence, it points to a cruse of oil that lasted eight days rather than one, a tiny army which defeated a larger one, the existence of life for which we are eternally grateful.
Wishing you a year filled with more beautiful improbabilities that become actualities.
Shabbat Shalom and Hag Hanukkah Same’ah,
Rabbi K.