King Louis XIV once had a fascinating conversation with the renowned 17th-century Roman Catholic philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. The king, intrigued, asked Pascal to present evidence of the supernatural. Pascal’s response was profound: “The Jews, Your Majesty, the Jews!”

This exchange, despite Pascal’s antisemitism, underscores the awe-inspiring nature of Jewish history, a history so miraculous that even non-Jews like Pascal have taken notice.

Though (and maybe because) Pascal was an antisemite, he recognized the awe-inspiring nature of Jewish history..

Over the next two weeks, we will, iy”H, examine five miraculous elements of Jewish history.

Our Survival

The Jewish people are among the few ancient peoples who continue to survive as a national entity. Though other ancient peoples have living descendants, they no longer identify with their ancestors; Jews continue to see themselves as part of a people that has existed for almost four thousand years.

Mark Twain described this characteristic and wondered how the Jewish people accomplished it (“The Complete Essays of Mark Twain,” p. 249):

The Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian, rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream stuff and passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed, made a vast noise, and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now or have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l (“Hamizrachi,” Vayechi 5783) astutely observed that many have eulogized us over the past four thousand years, yet we have outlived them all. “The first reference to Israel outside the Bible is engraved on the Merneptah stele, inscribed around 1225 BCE by Pharaoh Merneptah IV… It reads: ‘Israel is laid waste; her seed is no more.’ It was, in short, an obituary. The Jewish people have been written off many times by their enemies, but they remain, after almost four millennia, still young and strong.”

Despite Exile and Persecution

The circumstances of our survival make it even more impressive. We have spent most of our history as oppressed people. For almost two thousand years, we were scattered across the world — in over one hundred countries. Despite all this, we survived and continue to identify with our people and heritage.

Leo Tolstoy described it this way: “The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He whom neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he whom neither fire, nor sword, nor inquisition could wipe off the face of the earth… Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as eternity itself (Jewish World).”

We not only survive but even thrive in adversity. The Torah (Shemot 1:12) makes this point about the persecution in Egypt: “As they will persecute him (the Jewish people), so he will multiply and prosper.” The pasuk uses the future tense because our extraordinary growth, despite the Egyptian exile and persecution, was a model for similar successes during future exiles.

Rabbi Akiva Versus Wallsend

Judaism and the Torah are the only eternal things on Earth. Rabbi Yissocher Frand makes this point with a poignant story:

Wallsend is a town in Northern England that gets its name from the Hadrianic wall that ends there. Hadrian conquered England when he was the emperor of Rome. To prevent the Scots from attacking from the north, he built a protective wall in Northern England. Fittingly, the town where the wall ends is named Wallsend. Today, the wall is just a pile of moss-covered stones, but people go there to see the historically significant artifact of the Roman Empire.

A Jewish American journalist visited Wallsend to write a story about the town and its Roman remains. In the middle of the day, he realized that he had Yahrtzeit for his father. He asked around, “Is there any place I can find a minyan in the middle of nowhere?” He was told that a yeshiva existed in Gateshead, about ten miles from Wallsend, where he could find a minyan to say Kaddish.

He entered the Beit Medrash in Gateshead and saw, as is typical in a yeshiva, that the chavrutot were going at it with one another. One chavruta yelled, “Rabbi Akiva holds just the opposite!” Suddenly, it struck him: How did Rabbi Akiva die? He was put to death by the Romans. Which Romans? Hadrian! Hadrian was the Roman Emperor who killed Rabbi Akiva.

What is left of Hadrian? A pile of stones that is nothing today. They are covered with moss. And what about Rabbi Akiva, who Hadrian put to death? Two thousand years later, people are still studying Rabbi Akiva’s Torah and analyzing his every statement and opinion.

When the journalist returned to America, he wrote, “The mighty Hadrian, who led massive armies to great victories, has nothing remaining of all his triumphs and conquests other than a pile of stones that was once a wall. Conversely, the teachings of Rabbi Akiva, which Hadrian sought to eradicate, are being studied and debated almost two thousand years after Rabbi Akiva’s death (“As Much as We May Be Oppressed, We Will Never Be Eradicated,” Vayishlach 5782).”

The Divine Explanation

Mark Twain wondered what the secret of our immortality is. We, of course, know the answer. On the Seder Night, we exclaim that “B’chol dor va’dor omdin aleinu l’chaloteinu, v’Hakadosh Baruch Hu matzileinu mi’yadam — In every generation, our enemies try to annihilate us; it is Hashem who saves us from their hands.” There is no other rational way to explain how we manage to survive the perennial attacks of vicious genocidal enemies.

Many non-Jews have also attributed our survival to Hashem. Thomas Newton, the eighteenth-century Bishop of Bristol, is one example. He asserted that “the preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of divine Providence… and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved. Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies than in their preservation…

We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin.”

V’Hakadosh Baruch Hu matzileinu mi’yadam…

Our people’s miraculous survival should strengthen our faith in the One truly responsible for it. Rav Yaakov Emden wonders how heretics who deny Hashem’s control of the world are not embarrassed by the reality of the Jewish people’s survival (Siddur Rav Emden, Introduction):

“We are a sheep scattered [amongst wolves]. No nation is pursued like us; many enemies have done everything to destroy us but have failed. All the ancient nations have been forgotten while we and our Torah continue existing. How can the philosopher explain all this? Can it all be by chance? The miracles [of our survival] are greater than those Hashem performed in Egypt, the desert, and Eretz Yisrael. The longer the exile continues, the more this becomes clear.”

May the story of our survival strengthen our faith in Hashem and our future.

Rav Reuven Taragin is the dean of overseas students at Yeshivat Hakotel and the educational director of World Mizrachi and the RZA. His new book, Essentials of Judaism, can be purchased at rabbireuventaragin.com.