Q&A: Your Attitude Toward Miracles / Providence
Your Attitude Toward Miracles / Providence
Question
Hello, Rabbi,
It is well known what your view is regarding miracles and individual providence: you think that in our time this does not happen, and if it does happen it is very, very rare…..
There is a story circulating online which, briefly, goes like this.
A soldier from Hebron Yeshiva was on his way to the yeshiva and was stabbed by a female terrorist. Luckily for him, there was a soldier there who neutralized the terrorist and called for help, and he survived.
Now the main point of the story, which he took as providence (and I also tend to accept that—although I consider myself your student in approach to the matter of providence :-))
30 years before this incident, the mother of the soldier who saved the young man wanted to have an abortion, and she went to a doctor who was actually the mother of the young man who was stabbed.
The young man’s mother (the doctor) persuaded her not to have the abortion, and indeed succeeded in convincing her, and so this child was born—the one who years later became a soldier and saved the young man.
Assuming the story is true in all its details—do you still maintain that this is the hand of chance?
Thank you
Answer
Absolutely. I don’t see any indication of anything else. If you’ve read things I wrote, you surely know about my own "miracle" in the accident in Gedera. If not, search the site.
All this is assuming the story is true. A priori, I would bet not really. People have a tendency to embellish and manufacture miracles.