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    Nothing short of a miracle

    Parah AdumahThe Chukkat ritual is strange.

    What it says is: Sprinkle a mixture containing the ashes of a red heifer on a person who is ritually impure and it makes him pure, but at the same time the person who carries out the procedure becomes impure himself. A miracle, in fact two miracles.

    The Kotzker Rebbe said that whoever believes in miracles is a fool. At the same time he said that whoever does not believe in miracles is an atheist.

    How can both things be true?

    It’s only a question if the two things are mutually exclusive, if you can’t believe and disbelieve at one and the same time.

    But it doesn’t have to be like that. It’s a matter of attitude.

    God works miracles and if you don’t believe in them you’re an atheist.

    But you can still believe in God without the miracles, or rather without calling them miracles. If you believe in God’s power to do whatever He wants, then anything He does is normal for him and not a miracle at all. The so-called miracle thus becomes a perfectly natural event.

    So what, if to us human beings it looks highly unusual? Who says that our human standards are the true ones? Why not say that God’s are the authentic standards, and our human perception is limited and faulty?

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