In my various jobs as a rabbi I have worked with preschoolers, older adults, and now college students. One of the questions that everyone asks, regardless of age or education is this: "Why are there so many miracles in the Torah, but no miracles happen today?" And then the people go on to cite the famous instances of miracles in the Torah: the splitting of the Red Sea, the ten plagues, and even the miracle in this week’s parsha, the ground opening up to swallow Korach and his 250 protesters, as evidence for the miracles in the Bible. "And so," they continue, "if only God would demonstrate miracles for us like in the old days, everyone would acknowledge God’s power and presence in the world. But, since there are no miracles today, we simply cannot believe in God the way that the ancient Israelites did!"
This is an essential question for us modern Jews, and perhaps one that defines, or even divides us. It is the question of miracles -- how and when did they occur? And do they occur today?
If you have ever spoken with people wrestling with a terminal illness - when all hope is lost - they will say that they are still hoping for a miracle.
If you have ever spoken with people having difficulty praying - when pressed about it they will say that they cannot praise God, in the Mi Chamocha, for splitting the sea - they cannot pray for healing in the Mi Sheberach - because they do not believe that God performs miracles.
And in the Torah we read of Korach and his followers, Israelites who rebelled against Moses and his leadership with such tenacity and hatred that God, if it is possible to say, causes the ground to open and swallow them up. It was a miracle. It was magical. Could it have happened? Why did it happen? What if we can’t believe in the possibility of God causing the ground to open up and swallow our enemies? Who are we as Jews if we cannot understand miracles? Is it possible that miracles occur and we explain them away - ignore them?
And yet, with closer examination of the Torah we find that exactly the same business of faith and doubt existed in the minds of the ancient Israelites. As the ground opens up and swallows Korach and his followers, we read: "And all Israel around them fled at their shrieks, for they said, ‘the earth might swallow us! (Numbers 16:34)’"
And yet all is forgotten the following day: "Next day the whole Israelite community railed against Moses and Aaron, saying, "You two have brought death upon the LORD’s people (Numbers 17:6)!"
The same thing happened even after the miracle at the Red Sea. At first the people credited God with the miracle: "And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the LORD had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD: they had faith in the LORD and His servant Moses (Exodus 14:31)."
But the next day, the people who had proclaimed God’s sovereignty now said to Moses and Aaron: "If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death." (Exodus 16:3)
These are the people we claim to have experienced miracles? These are the people we claim had perfect faith! They are just like us. One minute they say, "Thank God!" The next moment they say, "Where is God? Not with us!"
Many a Jewish scholar has tried to explain away the miracles of the Torah. Seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, reported that miracles were, instead, natural events that the ancient Israelites could not explain. Mordecai M. Kaplan, the 20th-century rabbi who inspired the founding of the Reconstructionist movement, argued that modern science challenges the credibility of miracles as described in Torah.
We wonder about the meaning of the miracles in the Torah. What are they pointing to? What are we meant to learn from them - and are there, in fact, miracles today? Are we just not seeing them? Are we not counting them as miracles?
Nehama Leibowitz, in her commentary on Korach writes: Miracles cannot change men’s minds and hearts. They can always be explained away…. Miracles convince only those who can and are prepared to see them."
David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, once said: "In Israel, to be a realist, you must believe in miracles."
May this be our task - to wonder how we, as modern Jews, will wrestle with our faith. May we balance our own efforts -- the work of our minds and the strength of our hands -- with a faith in God, whose presence is with us in our struggle for life.
Prepared by Andrea Steinberger, rabbi, Hillel at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Additional commentaries and text studies on Korach at MyJewishLearning.com.