Four writers share stories of modern-day miracles

Chanukah is a time to celebrate miracles — those that shaped our nation in days of old, and those that lift the veil of our current galus.

Daily Miracle

Shoshana Itzkowitz

“I’m driving to court on the day we’re evicted from our rental. The music is on, the song on repeat: V’afilu b’hastarah sheb’soch hastarah, b’vadai gam sham nimtza Hashem Yisbarach…. This is the story of my life.

“I don’t understand Hashem’s ways, and there are times I can’t see Him even though I know He’s there, hiding. And then a sliver of sun peeks through the clouds, and bam, there He is. He always makes things work in the end.

“I have a lot of brachah in my life, but the brachah of parnassah is not one of them. Heaven knows we do as much hishtadlus as we possibly can so that it shouldn’t be this way, but He wills it and so it is. He has put us in the position we find ourselves in, and if He wanted things to be different for us, He would arrange it as such. I know I am exactly where Hashem wants me to be.”

These are the words of my friend Miri.* Uber-normal soccer mom, cute, trendy dresser, meanest baker on the block, geshikt to an extreme. Nothing about Miri screams rebbetzin, tzaddeikes, or Chovos Halevavos lecturer, yet she lives in an alternate reality from the rest of us.

“I hear people saying, ‘I wish I knew what Hashem wants from me!’ I don’t have that issue — I know exactly. He wants me to make a kiddush Hashem through what He hands me. And I’ll keep trying to do that until He changes my mazel….”

Remember learning about Rabi Shimon bar Yochai living in a cave with a date tree and a stream keeping him alive, and your teacher taught you that in our day and age people don’t live on nissim like that, but Rabi Shimon did?

Well, your teacher didn’t know Miri.

Miri lives on nissim, with Hashem sitting, kiveyachol, front-row-center in her life. She knows it, too, and is well aware that most people don’t live like that. We talk about it often, and we muse: Do these things happen to her because she believes so strongly that they will, or do we all really merit these open nissim but don’t tap in and recognize them, so they fly right over us?

I’m convinced they only happen to Miri.

I’m on the phone with Miri and she mentions that her Bosch mixer died. It’s died before, and her husband was able to successfully resuscitate the thing on several occasions, but this time, it seems, it’s breathed its last and there is no techiyas hameisim in sight. A new mixer costs over $500 and is obviously not in the picture.

“I still have tons of challah in my freezer,” Miri says. “I make challah every week and we only use about half a batch every Shabbos, so I have plenty, but after that we’ll have to start buying. I’m not starting to make challah by hand.”

The next week, however, on Sunday or Monday, we’re schmoozing again, and I clearly hear a mixer in the background. Hand beaters, I assume.

“Don’t tell me,” I tease my friend. “You got started on shalach manos baking, because it’s already December….”

“Challah,” she says. “Oh wait — did I tell you the story about the mixer?”

“That it broke? Yeah….”

“Well, yeah, but Hashem gave me a new one.”