As Pesach is coming to a close, we are preparing to celebrate and commemorate, on the seventh and last day, one of the famous miracles in history: the splitting of the sea. However, the word “miracle” itself, lately, has been strangely mistreated and often scorned to the point where it has become something of a trigger. Understanding what is at stake gives us a good entry point into the schism of Israeli society.

A couple of weeks ago, following an Iranian missile strike on Arad, standing in the middle of rubble in a destroyed kindergarten, the mayor pointed to the pictures of the prime minister and the Baba Sali that were still standing and spoke of a “miracle.” The anti-government media and their cohort, irate and contemptuous, lashed out immediately at the utterance, denouncing what they called primitiveness, naiveté, even stupidity. How could such a word be uttered in the face of destruction, injury, and fear?

The same scornful reaction appeared when similar statements were made in retrospect about October 7th, when some public figures dared to evoke the idea of miracle and were met with outrage. In a way, this reaction is understandable. Taken out of context, to describe events marked by death, chaos and suffering as miraculous can sound like a moral failure: a form of blindness, a way of minimizing tragedy, of evading reality and responsibility. The word has thus become heavily charged. It divides. Those who use it are immediately typecasted by those who reject it as messianic – another loaded term – fanatics.

At first sight, this division seems almost familiar: the old opposition between those who see the glass as half full and those who see it as half empty, between optimism and pessimism, even between faith and unbelief. The optimist perceives what remains, what holds, what did not collapse, convinced it is part of a greater, better plan. The pessimist insists on what failed, on what must be repaired, on what cannot be whitewashed. In a certain way, both are necessary. The pessimist, precisely because he refuses consolation, leaves space for tikkun (repair.) Indeed, if everything is already seen as good, what urgency remains to mend what is broken?

And yet, there is another posture, increasingly visible and increasingly vocal, which does not belong to this balanced opposition: cynicism. The paragon of this posture appears, in Jewish tradition, immediately after the Exodus in the figure of Amalek. Amalek embodies a radical version of it, at the frontier between cynicism and nihilism, whose defining characteristic lies in its desire to “cool” the fervor and enthusiasm felt by the Jewish people after witnessing divine intervention. This posture is not merely doubt. In Proverbs, attributed to King Solomon, the “scoffer” is more dangerous than the ignorant or even the unbeliever, because he is not interested in truth but in ridiculing it. It is this spirit that Amalek embodies. When Amalek attacks, it is not only a physical assault. It is an assault on meaning itself, an attempt to reduce extraordinary events to something ordinary, to erase their transformative significance. By attacking the weakened Israelites and mocking their joy and passion, Amalek seeks to dissolve their sense of purpose.

Cynicism presents itself as lucidity. It claims to be the voice of intelligence, of those who “see things as they are.” It often speaks in the name of facts, of realism, of sobriety. But very often, it carries with it something else: a reflex of dismissal, a tendency to ridicule, a form of contempt toward those it labels as naïve, as believers. In this sense, cynicism is not simply pessimism. It is of another nature. Where the pessimist is troubled by what he sees, the cynic looks at the material surface of the world (what can be seen, measured, touched) and almost stops there. He carries a form of ultra-realism that, by its nature, leaves little room for anything beneath or beyond what is immediately visible. In that sense, it is not merely a philosophical posture. It is almost the opposite of Jewish sanctification.

And perhaps this is why, at a time like Passover, it resonates so strongly. The Exodus is not only the story of liberation. It is also the foundation of a certain understanding of the world: that it is not left to run on its own after creation, but that it remains open to intervention, to meaning. The very first commandment defines God not as the one who created the world, but as the One who took the people out of Egypt: present, responsive, engaged.

To speak of miracle, in that sense, is not necessarily to deny reality. It is to refuse to reduce reality to its most immediate and visible layer. There is something in contemporary cynicism that echoes Amalek. Not in events, but in posture. The reflex to reduce, to flatten, to strip events of any dimension beyond the material. It is a powerful posture, because it is easy and contagious, especially in a climate marked by deep distrust in institutions and motives. The first tendency of human beings is to see the world from the outside, through what is visible and tangible. To go further and ask what lies beneath, to explore meaning, requires effort. It requires intellectual work. And cynicism short-circuits that effort. It replaces inquiry with sarcasm, reflection with dismissal, not necessarily denying meaning altogether but ridiculing and deconstructing it.

Paradoxically, this stands in tension with one of the deepest traits of Jewish thought. Jewish tradition has never advocated blind faith. On the contrary, it places a profound emphasis on understanding, on questioning, on dialectic. The study of Torah is not an escape from rationality; it is built upon it. It demands rigor, interpretation, argument, the willingness to go beyond the surface. To reduce reality to what is immediately visible is, in that sense, not an expression of intellectual strength, but a renunciation of it.

David Ben-Gurion once remarked that “in Israel, in order to be a realist, one needs to believe in miracles.” This paradox captures something essential: that realism, in the Israeli experience, has never been limited to what is immediately probable. In a different register, Golda Meir warned against pessimism, calling it “a luxury that the Jewish people can never allow itself.”

To use the word miracle is not to deny catastrophe, nor to ignore destruction or suffering. It is to point, rather, to the narrow line between what occurred and what might have been far worse. The optimist sees preservation and resilience. This inclination toward optimism, while not formulated as a formal commandment, runs deep within Jewish thought. It is perhaps most fully articulated in Hassidism, which places joy and confidence at the center of life – not as passive dispositions, but as forces that must be coupled with action. The pessimist sees failure. The cynic sees only the surface. We must learn as a society, even if beholden with pessimism at times, not to fall into a cynicism that would question our foundation – like our enemies do.

But perhaps the deeper challenge, especially on Passover, lies elsewhere. Not only in how we describe events, but in how we hear them, and how we listen to ourselves. Because Amalek is not only an external force. It can also take the form of an inner voice: one that cools, that doubts, that diminishes, that makes sarcasm easier than recognition. To leave Egypt is not only to exit a place. It is also to free oneself from that voice, to accept the possibility that something in history exceeds what is immediately visible, and that this recognition itself calls for responsibility and action. It is in that fragile but strong space, beyond catastrophe and wonder, between what is seen and what is possible, that Israel’s reality continues to unfold – a miracle to witness.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)