Of Miracles, Past and Present

There’s a curious observation in the Talmud, in Niddah 31a by Rabbi Elazar:

“אפילו בעל הנס אינו מכיר בנסו”
Even the one for whom a miracle occurs does not recognize his miracle.

He draws this from an expression from Psalms 71:17 (“Blessed is … the Lord of Israel who performs great wonders alone”) that reverberates throughout the Passover Haggadah.

Rashi sharpens this even further:

“הוא לבדו יודע שהוא נס, אבל בעל הנס אינו מכירו”
G-d alone knows it is a miracle—but the beneficiary does not recognize it.

This raises an obvious question:
How can a beneficiary of a Divine miracle not recognize it?

Fortunately, the Torah gives us a case study.

In Egypt, Pharaoh’s scientists—the חרטומים—pretend to replicate the first two of G-d’s plagues, giving Pharaoh just enough plausible deniability to say, “See? Nothing supernatural here. Just… Egyptian science.”

We might call this today cognitive dissonance: when reality conflicts with what you want to believe, you don’t change your beliefs—you upgrade your explanations.

We would like to think that modern scientists are more rational than Pharaoh’s. History suggests otherwise.

In 1894, Albert A. Michelson, a Nobel laureate in Physics, confidently declared at the dedication of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory (at the University of Chicago) that the fundamental laws of physics had essentially been discovered:

“it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles [of physics] have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles.”

A few years later, David Hilbert laid out twenty-three problems in an attempt to place all of mathematics on firm logical foundations. Alas, Kurt Gödel came along in the 1930s and dashed any hope at formalism by proving that any sufficiently complex system must be incomplete (meaning that there are statements that cannot be proven true) or inconsistent (meaning that there are statements that can be simultaneously proven both true and false). In other words, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (a name with its own bit of cognitive dissonance!) showed that mathematics could never be placed on a rigorous foundation.

So much for “we’ve got this all figured out.”

… by the third plague even Pharoah’s scientists are getting a little nervous, declaring

אצבע אלקים היא
This is the finger of God.

Notice the phrasing: not the hand of God, not the arm of God—just one finger.
Even in concession, they’re hedging. Just enough acknowledgment to sound impressed, but not enough to force a change in worldview.

By the seventh plague (hail), some of the Egyptians themselves start realizing something supernatural is going on:

הַיָּרֵא֙ אֶת־דְּבַ֣ר ה׳ מֵֽעַבְדֵ֖י פַּרְעֹ֑ה הֵנִ֛יס אֶת־עֲבָדָ֥יו וְאֶת־מִקְנֵ֖הוּ אֶל־הַבָּתִּֽים׃
Those of Pharoah’s servants who feared G-d’s word brought their own servants and livestock into the houses.

Still others do not:

וַאֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹא־שָׂ֛ם לִבּ֖וֹ אֶל־דְּבַ֣ר ה׳ וַֽיַּעֲזֹ֛ב אֶת־עֲבָדָ֥יו וְאֶת־מִקְנֵ֖הוּ בַּשָּׂדֶֽה׃.
And those who did not heed G-d’s word left their servants and livestock in the field.

Alas, Jews also initially seem to have doubts about the miraculous abilities of G-d, repeatedly begging Moses to return to the land they love … Egypt. However, at the end:

“ויאמינו בה׳ ומשה עבדו…”
… and they believed in G-d and Moses his servant.

Perhaps Rabbi Elazar’s point then is not that miracles are invisible. It’s that they are explainable. There is always a way—intellectual, psychological, political—to explain them away … to call them coincidence, strategy, technology, luck, or “just a certain finger.”

Let’s return to the present, where, like it or not, we live in a time of open miracles. After the catastrophe of October 7, two leaders, each reviled by roughly half of their populace, led the US and Israel to simultaneously defeat seven large and loosely coordinated enemy armies. One can certainly explain each piece of puzzle on its own:

• Iranian overreach;

• Hezbollah miscalculation;

• enemy incompetence;

• brilliant intelligence;

• elite training;

• astonishing “beeper” tech;

• audacious annihilation of the entire Iranian leadership;

• obliteration of inferior Russian and Chinese air defenses;

• elite training; and,

• deft diplomacy that returned every single living hostage from fanatical psychopaths.

All true, perhaps. But the existence of explanations does not preclude the possibility of providence. Pharaoh also had explanations. So did his scientists. So did the Egyptians who left their livestock in the field.

It is easy to thank G-d when providence arrives in the costume we would have chosen ourselves. It is much harder when it appears through leaders we find vulgar, compromised, exasperating, or worse. Theologically, we prefer our redeemers polished. We would like our instruments of salvation to come hechshered with our own moral and aesthetic tastes. Tanakh is not especially accommodating on this point. God’s history is full of unlikely instruments — flawed people, foreign kings, stubborn shepherds, hot-tempered prophets, and even anti-Semitic donkey beaters.

Our sages, of course, warn us sharply:

לא סמכינן אניסא
We do not rely on miracles.

And:

אין מביאין ראיה מן החרוב
We do not establish truth on the basis of miraculous signs

Miracles are not a policy framework. They are not a substitute for strategy, prudence, morality, or responsibility. They cannot absolve leaders of their failures, nor citizens of their obligations. One may fully acknowledge military success without canonizing politicians, and one may retain one’s political judgment without becoming blind to providence.

But there is an equal and opposite danger: not that we will rely too much on miracles, but that we will refuse to recognize them because we cannot bear the messenger.

We do not want to say that G-d’s hand might be visible in events connected to people we voted against, protested against, mocked at dinner, or wished would disappear forever from public life. We would rather keep our theology clean and our politics tribal. But history, and certainly Jewish history, is rarely so considerate.

In a December 1926 letter to Max Born, Albert Einstein complained (about the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics) that “[G-d] does not play dice.” To this, Niels Bohr is said to have responded, “Stop telling God what to do!” We all do it. We tell God whom He is allowed to use. We tell Him what redemption should look like. We tell Him which outcomes count as providential and which do not. We tell Him, in effect, that if salvation does not arrive wearing our preferred party label, then it does not count.

That may be the deepest meaning of אפילו בעל הנס אינו מכיר בנסו. Even the beneficiary of the miracle may fail to recognize it, not because nothing happened, but because recognizing it would require too painful a revision of his worldview.

So yes, our sages are right. Do not rely on miracles. Do not draw reckless conclusions. Do not turn every geopolitical success into a messianic announcement.

But perhaps another caution belongs nearby: do not become so allergic to bad theology that you end up with no theology at all. Do not become so committed to rational explanation that you lose the capacity for astonishment. And do not be so certain that G-d must share your political sensibilities that you fail to notice what He is doing in plain sight.

If God wishes to move history through leaders who are beloved by some, loathed by others, and trusted completely by almost no one, that would hardly be the strangest thing He has ever done.