When is a Miracle Really a Miracle?

Rabbis checking the Eruv in Bnei Brak

The border between Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan was hit last night. A rocket was fired into that location by Hezbollah. Fortunately it was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome. But shards from the interceptor rocket destroyed an empty bus, did some minor damage to property, and injured 5 people. VIN reports that one of the people injured was saved from bleeding to death by a group of nursing students that at the time happened to be studying in an adjacent building. The text of the article called it ‘a remarkable stroke of fortune’. But the headline called it a miracle.

Reacting in a similar way was a group of rabbis as reported by Rafi Goldmeier on his blog, Life in Israel: 

(The) rav of the local eruv went out to fix what he assumed would be a destroyed eruv, sensing that the eruv poles and wires in that immediate area would have been damaged by the explosion. When he got there with his tools he discovered the eruv was fully intact having incurred no damage at all… a miracle

This was such an amazing miracle that the rabbonim of Bnei Braq went out to see the miracle for their own eyes and expressed that in the merit of shabbos observance of the people of Bnei Braq it protected the city.

Rafi’s reaction was as follows: 

This is a tremendously busy area. There are skyscrapers there alongside large malls and businesses, with almost permanent traffic jams. A large missile hit the area, did not hit any of the large buildings , caused some damage to a couple stores and a bus but it didn't knock down any of the skyscrapers it narrowly missed, didnt destroy tens of people in their cars on those busy roads, injured only 5 people in an area that could have seen tens of injured or killed...  But the eruv is the big miracle.

I have to agree with Rafi’s sentiments. The idea that they consider that an Eruv wasn’t damaged to be the big miracle and not the fact that not a single building or any of the people in those buildings were hurt was not even worthy of mention in that regard. The important thing was that the Eruv a religious item wasn’t damaged. That’s the miracle. 

But I would take this a step further. There were 5 people injured. One of them so seriously that if there hadn’t been the fortuitous intervention of a group of students, she would have died. And the were happy about an Eruv remaining intact? Where was their miracle? Why do a couple of poles and the fishwire atop of them being spared from any damage merit praise as a miracle in the face of that?!

A word of an explanation is in order here. The Hebrew word for miracle is Neis. There are 2 types of Nissim (plural for Neis): Neis Nigleh – an open miracle. And Neis Nistar – a hidden miracle. 

A Neis Nigleh is when the plane of nature is broken. Something that cannot be explained by physical means. The splitting of the Red Sea upon Israel’s exodus from Egypt would be an example of that. We no longer have that kind of miracle in our day. 

What is possible today is a Neis Nistar, which can be explained via a physical phenomena. An example of that would be Israel’s War for Independence or the Six Day War. The odds were so stacked against Israel that only a miracle could save them. And yet Israel won both wars. When something like that happens – the plane of nature has not been broken and yet winning a war against such great odds is surely a miracle. 

I don't think an event where a rocket misses hitting an Eruv qualifies as any kind of miracle when people get hurt in that very same event.  And it really upsets me that there are rabbis that can say such things.