Miracles
Based on thoughts inspired by the article Three Natural Miracles from on a talk given by the Lubavitcher Rabbi on the 3rd of Tammuz, 1991. This is in reference to the “miraculous” blossoming of Aaron’s staff after the rebellion of Korach and his companions.
Moses placed each staff before G‑d in the Sanctuary. On the next day … behold, the staff of Aaron was blossoming: it brought forth blossoms, produced fruit and bore ripe almonds.
The Rabbi, may his name and his deeds be remembered forever, spoke of this event as being a “natural miracle”. It did not displace the natural process, rather the natural process of budding, blossoming and the emergence of fruit occurred. Only its occurrance of almonds budding on his staff was miraculous.
Aaron’s staff defied the place in which these laws of life in nature occur, but the process of this life, was according to the natural unfolding that we are all familiar with.
So the Lubavitzer Rabbi differentiates between two types of miracles, a confrontational miracle and a natural miracle. The first ignores the natural norm, creating a reality that is completely out-of-bounds of any natural laws.
A latter is one that nevertheless occurs by natural means, employing natural phenomena and processes to achieve its end, though is no less “impossible” by standard norms.
From the discussion that proceeds, I think there is a third type of miracle, and that is what I would refer to as a perceived miracle. This is something that one believed could never happen, but does. It could be on a personal level—like the popular cheerleader will that notices me; to a more global event like the Berlin wall falling, or Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa—yet is actually part of the greater cycle of life. It is almost covering a wider space or time than I, as an individual, am capable of comprehending.
Let us continue. The Hebrew word for miracle, נס nes, means “aloft” or “elevated”. Simply, it refers to an event that is elevated from the regular order of nature. Nature has certain patterns to which we have no recourse but to conform to. However, the mystery of creation hides in the truth that each one of us, and our world, have been imbued by their Creator with the potential to raise and elevate their existence, to go beyond what is dictated by the “way things are.”
That is not saying that we can create a world that is utopian, but it does say that we can go beyond what is. And miracles have:
“an uplifting an uplifting effect on those who experience it, enabling them to see through the façade of nature, and inspiring them to transcend the perceived limitations of their own nature and the accepted norms of their society. A sudden, shattering change has not transformed nature, but only gone beyond it; but when a miracle is integrated into the workings of nature, nature itself is elevated. A supra-natural miracle liberates the person who experiences it from the natural order; a natural miracle liberates the very substance of the natural order itself.”
The Rebbe gives two other examples of miracles that occurred on the 3rd of Tammuz. The first is when Joshua during one of the battles of conquest, causes the Sun and the moon to stop in the heavens (Joshua 10:12). Here our sages ask, why the drastic change in the heavens for Joshua? Could not site not have been illuminated by some other supra-natural means? But would that have meant that the laws of nature had not been transformed, but that they were merely “ignored”.
“To inspire the people to not only transcend their natural self but to transform and sublimate it, the miraculous light provided them was natural sunlight—even if this meant creating a new natural order in the heavens.”
The third example, I believe, falls into the realm of the perceived miracle. This is the release of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe from a Soviet prison, days after being arrested.
He (the author of the article) encapsulates this with this paragraph:
The 3rd of Tammuz was the day that a new reality supplanted the old. Yet this new reality came into being by wholly “conventional” means, in the gradual and incremental manner that is the hallmark of a natural development.
Which is his underlying explanation of the “natural miracle”.
Here lies the lesson of the 3rd of Tammuz that the Rebbe wanted to transmit to us.