Seeing the Miracles

It is easy to focus on what is broken in the world. The harder—and holier—task is learning to notice what is quietly going right.

Where Does the Hatred Come From?

A few years ago, a series called Messiah was released. It portrays a mysterious figure who appears in Damascus and saves besieged Syrians from ISIS. He then leads about 2,000 refugees toward what the creators describe as the “Promised Land” — Israel. They cross an endless desert, but at the border they encounter the forces of evil: Israeli soldiers manning a post, blocking their entry by firing warning shots into the air.

For days, the helpless refugees — described by the show’s creators as “Syrian-Palestinians” — sit without food or water, waiting. The Israelis are depicted as cruel, indifferent, and heartless.

Later in the series, the same mysterious “messiah” appears at a mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. After evading Israel’s internal security services in a mysterious way, Israeli soldiers identify him and rush toward him as he delivers a message of peace and unity. A shot is fired. A child is wounded. The crowd begins shouting at the soldiers, “Get out of here,” and “This is our country.” Now the Israelis are not only brutal toward refugees — they are also the ones shooting children.

This is not the first time new television series have portrayed Israel in a deeply negative light.

In 2019, the series Our Boys was released. It opens with the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teenagers by Palestinian terrorists. Soon afterward, a Palestinian child is kidnapped and murdered in retaliation. The series focuses almost entirely on the investigation of the Palestinian child’s murder.

The show sparked significant public criticism in Israel. One hundred and twenty bereaved families wrote to HBO, protesting that the series creates the impression that Jewish terrorism is equal in scope to Palestinian terrorism. HBO refused to make any changes or corrections.

In 2015, the series Fauda was released. It follows Israeli soldiers attempting to eliminate a Hamas terrorist responsible for the deaths of over one hundred Israelis. Along the way, many innocent people are killed. By the end, Israel does not come out looking good.

In 2004, Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, depicting Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus. At the time, there was widespread criticism that the film contained antisemitic elements and portrayed Jews as the villains of the story.

Of course, nobody is shocked anymore by these ideas. Antisemitism is clearly on the rise everywhere, including in the United States of America—and even in the youngest of ages. Recently, a Jewish organization in the United States conducted a study and found that the highest levels of antisemitism were among middle- and high-school students, from sixth through twelfth grade. 

The obvious question is: where is this coming from?

The precise answer is hard to pinpoint. But it is clear that these films and series have a cumulative effect. At first, it doesn’t feel significant — it’s “just a show.” But after watching one film and then another, again and again, Israelis are portrayed as the villains and Palestinians as the victims.

Whether we like it or not, today every Jew is identified with Israel — especially in the eyes of children. Children do not have the background knowledge adults have. They don’t know what is happening on the ground. They absorb their understanding of reality from movies and television.

For them, this becomes “the truth.” And over time, at the fringes, that distorted truth turns into hatred — and eventually, into violent attacks.

Open or Closed

Anyone who has ever seen a Torah scroll opened knows that it contains no vowels and no punctuation—only words. Someone reading from a Torah scroll must first memorize not only the cantillation, but also where each verse begins and ends, how each word is pronounced, and what its correct vocalization is—because none of this appears in the Torah scroll itself.

The one structural feature that does appear in the Torah is its division into sections called parashot, which generally divide sections of the narrative from each other. 

There are two types of divisions: an open section (parashah petuchah) and a closed section (parashah setumah). An open section begins at the start of a new line. A closed section, by contrast, begins in the middle of a line, separated from the previous section by a space of at least nine letters.

In other words, some sections end in the middle of a line, and the next section begins on the following line—this is called an open section. Other times, the next section begins on the same line. There is still a space of at least nine letters between the end of one section and the beginning of the next, but since the new section starts on the same line, it is called a closed section.

All weekly Torah portions begin with a new section. Some begin at the start of a line and are therefore open sections; others begin later in the line, after a small gap from the previous section, and are therefore closed. But there is always a visible separation between one section and the next.

When the Seed of Exile Was Planted

But as with every rule, there is an exception — and that exception is this week’s portion, Vayechi.

Vayechi is neither an “open” section nor a “closed” one in the usual sense. It does not begin on a new line, nor does it begin mid-line with a visible space separating it from the previous section. Instead, Vayechi is completely closed. There is no break at all between it and the portion before it. Vayechi continues directly from Vayigash, without any spacing whatsoever.

Rashi opens the portion by asking: Why is this section closed? Why is Vayechi different from every other portion in the Torah?

Rashi answers that once Jacob passed away, “the eyes and hearts of Israel were closed” because of the suffering of the enslavement that had begun (see Rashi to Genesis 47:28). In other words, this complete lack of separation marks the beginning of the exile. When Jacob died, the Egyptians began to enslave the Jewish people, and as a result of that suffering, their eyes and hearts became “closed.”

At first glance, this is difficult to understand.

At first glance, this is puzzling. The story of the enslavement seems to begin at the start of the Book of Exodus. So what does exile have to do with the opening of Vayechi?

After all, the final verse of Vayigash tells us that the Jewish people settled in Egypt, acquired land there, and flourished greatly. Rashi explains that they did not merely reside there temporarily, but established permanent holdings. They bought property and integrated into the good life of Egypt. These were, outwardly, the best years the Jewish people experienced in Egypt. Even more so, the Baal HaTurim notes that Jacob’s finest years were specifically the years he lived in Egypt.

So why is it precisely here that the Torah “closes” the section and hints that the exile has begun?

The Rebbe explains that there is no contradiction. On the surface, they were indeed thriving. But beneath the surface, the Jewish people already sensed that the Egyptian attitude toward them was changing. They could see that the Egyptians no longer regarded them with the same respect as before.

This is why Rashi says that first their eyes were closed — they saw what was happening — and then, gradually, this awareness penetrated their hearts, becoming emotionally painful. The Egyptians did not look kindly upon Jewish success. And it was precisely there, in those seemingly good years, that the seed of future calamity was planted (see Chumash Kol Menachem, vol. 1, p. 349).

Seeing the Miracles

But there is another situation in which it can be said that “the eyes of Israel were closed.”

In 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed and hundreds of thousands of Jews immigrated to Israel, the Rebbe spoke about the fact that we were living in a time when signs of redemption could be seen. The breakup of the Soviet Union—and more than that, the reality that in Russia itself a Jew could live a full life of Torah and mitzvot openly—was something unprecedented. The same was true throughout the world. Never before in Jewish history had there been a moment when Jews could enjoy religious freedom both in the Land of Israel and across the globe at the same time.

The Rebbe emphasized that these were miracles on the level of redemption. Yet, he said, the eyes of Israel were “closed.” People failed to recognize that these were historic, unprecedented changes—changes of a redemptive nature.

I think we can say the same of our times. Today, alongside the rise in antisemitism, we are witnessing positive phenomena as well. 

The following is just one small example, but there are many like it:

A non-Jewish police chief from New Jersey once spoke to a group of teenagers from the NCSY youth movement. He came to address issues of personal safety for Jewish youth in recent times and how to deal with them. During his remarks, he told the students that they should be proud of their Judaism.

He shared that not long before, he had been driving on a highway when he noticed a car pulled over on the side of the road. He stopped to check on it and realized that the driver was a formerly observant Jewish young man. Inside the car were scattered cigarette butts and bottles of alcohol. It was clear that the young man was in emotional distress. The officer began talking with him about his life and where he was headed. At one point, he asked him whether he kept Shabbat. The young man lowered his eyes and answered, “No.” The officer then asked when he had last spoken to a rabbi and suggested that he reach out to one for emotional support. At the end of the conversation, the young man turned to the officer and said, “I think you should be a rabbi.”

The officer added another story. Once, while stationed on the road stopping cars for speeding, he pulled over a vehicle that had been traveling far above the speed limit. As he exited his patrol car and approached the driver, he noticed that the driver removed his kippah and slipped it into his pocket. When the driver handed over his license, the officer said, “I’m not interested in your license. I want to know why you took off your kippah.” The driver was taken aback, blushed, and began mumbling unclear responses.

Turning back to the students, the officer told them: Do not hide your kippah. On the contrary—be proud of your Judaism. It is the most important thing you have to offer.

When we do not “close” our eyes, and instead of focusing only on painful news we notice and appreciate the good that G-d does for us, then measure for measure, G-d will ensure that our eyes are not “closed” by the suffering of exile. Rather, we will see miracles and wonders every day—until the ultimate miracle: a true and complete redemption.