Mercies and Miracles
Israeli Responses to Six Months of War and an Existential Threat
As the whole world knows, Iran attacked Israel early Sunday morning, April 14, 2024. I am safe, my community was unscathed. But this brings up the question of prayer.
Prayer Works
The first time I knew, absolutely, that prayer is effective was when I worked at a Boston hospital. This was years before WiFi and cellphones. One day Dr. P. sat at a phone near me, dressing down another doctor. Dr. P. was one of my favorites because he was always pleasant and appreciative of anything I did for him. I’d never seen him upset, but now I heard every word. In short, he had gone on vacation and left another doctor in charge of his patients. He had just returned, checked on the patients, and was outraged at what he’d found: the second doctor had ignored detailed instructions on a patient. He had provided palliative care instead of the aggressive measures Dr. P. had directed.
“I don’t care if he looks like he is near death,” Dr. P. roared. “I told you what he needed and you ignored my decision. … I know he might die. And he might live, but now the fight is harder because you did not fight at all during the week I was gone. …This man is a pastor. He is 45 years old and has a wife and several young children who need him. He also has a church that is holding daily prayer vigils for him. I have promised I would not give up on him.” I became interested in the progress of this patient and was pleased to learn that he recovered.
About 20 years later I had occasion to call Dr. P. During the call I asked if he remembered that incident and that patient. He replied, “I sure do. In fact, every Christmas I get a card from him. He has been in complete remission for all these years and is doing just fine.” I asked if he thought prayer had anything to do with it. He replied, “Absolutely. I am not a believer, but all the signs pointed to his imminent death, and he not only survived but is thriving even today. I don’t understand it, but there is real power in prayer.”
The Iron Dome
The Iron Dome is the Israeli apparatus that destroys missiles before they reach us. One of my friends here in Israel is a retired aerospace engineer who worked on its design. One day she told me that it should not work. The inventor told her that although the engineers did excellent work, the only reason it is extremely accurate and effective is because God makes it work.
Old Stories – New Stories
The Bible is full of stories of wars being won by miraculous means. Psalm 20:8 says, “These trust in chariots and those in horses, but we—we call on the name of the Lord our God.”[i] In II Kings 7:6-7, the Arameans who were besieging a city suddenly fled. “For the Lord had made the host of the Arameans to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host; and they said one to another, ‘Lo, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.’ Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.”[ii]
A good friend of mine who is a rabbi and an army veteran told me that he heard a Lebanese general speak once. The man reported that during one of the Israeli-Arab wars he saw pillars of fire surrounding the place he was supposed to attack. The fire looked unnatural and he was so terrified that he turned his soldiers back and made them retreat as quickly as possible.
October 7, the day the Hamas war began, was Simchat Torah, a holy day when we read the last chapter of Deuteronomy, ending the Five Books of Moses, and then begin reading again at the first chapter of Genesis, the first of the Five Books. The holiday’s name means “rejoicing in the Torah,” and singing and dancing are an integral part of the service.
The rabbis of a yeshiva (a Torah academy) near Gaza, having learned of the attacks, knew that they had no protection except God, and decided to continue with the service. The yeshiva was untouched although terrorists burned down many places nearby. The Yeshiva rabbis and students believed it was a miracle, but did not understand how they were saved.
A few weeks later, a newly captured terrorist leader told Israeli interrogators that because of a Gazan informant who worked at the yeshiva, they knew the approximate time of the singing and dancing. They had planned to burn down the building and its occupants at that time, when everyone would be too busy to notice their activity. Inside at that time, the students and faculty danced and sang with fervor, their joy and faith strengthened by the duress of the day. When the terrorists approached the building, they saw that it was already engulfed in flames. The terrorist leader understood that another group had reached there before his, and so he moved his men on. But there had been no natural fire and no damage to the building or the people.
4:8
On April 6, 2024, at the time the United Nations was voting to condemn Israel for its actions in the current war, an earthquake of 4.8 on the Richter Scale hit New York. The UN had to postpone the vote.
This year on 4/8 there was a solar eclipse. Many cultures fear solar eclipses. In Jewish writings, lunar eclipses presage bad things for Israel and solar eclipses predict positive things for us.
And in Exodus 4, God is telling Moses signs to show to Pharaoh when asking the leader to let the Jewish slaves go. Verse 4:8 says, “It shall be that if they [the Egyptians] do not believe you and do not heed the voice of the first sign, they will believe the voice of the latter sign.” These three 4:8s certainly seem like a sign it would be well for our enemies to notice.
A Combat Vet’s Stories
This week a former student dropped by to visit. When she left high school she went into a combat unit of the army, where she became a driver. After completing her service in the summer of 2023 she went to the USA, where she worked at a Jewish summer camp. After the summer she was touring the USA, but she rushed back to Israel when the war started and was immediately called into the reserves.
Her parents had emigrated from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and had been educated as atheists, but her mother’s family had been religious before the Communist revolution and maintained some interest in Judaism, although religion was outlawed in the USSR. In the freedom of Israel they had re-adopted some traditions, but my student was not religious.
However, she told me, her service had shown her that there is a God who cares, and she is interested in learning about our tradition. She proceeded to tell me two things that happened to her during her service.
Usually in October the summer weather ends and the cooler, wet winter slowly begins. This year the hot, dry weather continued for many weeks. My student drove her humvee along the border on patrol, her commander beside her. One very hot day she was going to open her window. Her hand was on the button, but at something her commander said she lifted her finger and turned slightly to him. At that moment a terrorist lobbed a large rock at the humvee. It broke the window, but because it was an armored vehicle the glass didn’t fly. Had she opened the window, the rock would have hit her in the head; the vehicle would probably have gone out of control killing both her and the commander.
One day toward the end of her service, again while on patrol, the commander received an urgent announcement that two assault rifles had been stolen, and to look out for the terrorist-thief. A short time later the commander saw a soldier along the road ahead. In a quick glance, my student noticed that his uniform wasn’t exactly correct and that he had two guns instead of one. She said, “I think that’s our guy.” The commander told her to floor it before the terrorist noticed them. She put the pedal to the metal and knocked the man over, injuring him. They jumped out, subdued him, and took him in for questioning.
“I don’t know how I noticed that the uniform was wrong,” she said. “I didn’t have time to think. I saw there was a problem, told the commander, and took the terrorist down, all so fast. I couldn’t have done it without God’s help.”
The Efficacy of Prayer
We in Israel mourn every one of the 600-plus Israeli soldiers who have been killed, as well as the 1200 mostly civilians killed on October 7 itself. (This does not count the 133 hostages left in Hamas’ control, for whom we pray daily.) But in spite of continual rocket fire at civilian areas and brutal fighting within Gaza, the numbers of Israelis killed is low. One important fact that we Israelis recognize is God’s protection.
My student’s stories are just two out of thousands of close calls and miraculous saves. She reports that many soldiers are recognizing that, whether they are religious or not, Jewish or not (Israel is home to Muslims, Christians, Druze, agnostics, atheists, and others), God has been with them.
A person has to be a determined skeptic to believe that all these things are just coincidences or the imaginings of tired brains.
Prayers of Non-Jews
Judaism, with the Ten Commandments and a strong interest in justice, brought a new kind of civilization into the world. We believe God chose us Jews to add holiness to His world through His commandments. We do not see the commandments as strictures, rather as recipes that we, His emissaries, need to follow step-by-step in order to have God’s desired result.
However, this directive to Jews in no way negates the fact God created everyone and loves His creations. Judaism recognizes that some people from virtually every other culture and corner of the world admire and want to live according to God’s basic laws. We believe that there is a place in Heaven for everyone who makes an effort to live by those basic laws of kindness and justice. God notices and responds to sincere prayers when their results are within His desires.
Many of you, dear readers, non-Jewish as well as Jewish, are also praying for safety for Israel and the Jews, and for a healthy peace[iii] for the world. We know your prayers matter. They are heard in Heaven and they count. Please keep them coming.
[i] Translation by the author.
[ii] Translation from Jewish Publication Society Tanakh, 1917
[iii] Healthy, as filled with kindness and justice, and as opposed to the “peace” of a world under a one-world Communist empire or a caliphate dedicated to repression and control.
Beautiful ❤️