How to make a miracle
This past Monday at Chabad, we watched a powerful story of a young boy who escaped the Nazi ghetto and miraculously defied death again and again. The climax of the story though, is after the war, when the boy is faced with an existential dilemma, whether to continue living as a Christian in the loving embrace of the kind family who adopted him, or to venture into the unknown in a Jewish orphanage to rejoin what was left of his battered people.
His dramatic decision to live as a Jew can be described as no less miraculous. He eventually moved to Israel, met his wife and raised children and grandchildren.
This story has a striking resemblance to the beginning of this week's Torah portion - Shemot. After Pharaoh turns on the Jews, and reduces their status to slaves, he goes on to condemn Jewish baby boys to death through drowning.
On first glance, Pharaoh's decree related to the death of the baby boys. A closer look, however, reveals his intention to influence the baby girls as well. V'chol habat techyun - you, Egyptians, must raise all the Jewish girls. Essentially stripping them of their Jewish education.
Pharaoh had a two-pronged approach to his 'solution' to the Jewish 'problem': Physically annihilating the boys and spiritually and morally corrupting the girls. This was perhaps no less important to his mission, because he recognized how critical Jewish education is to the Jewish future.
As one medieval Jewish sage put it: If we seek to witness miracles of biblical proportion, we need not look any further then the very existence of the Jewish people as a people.
By investing in our children's Jewish education and our future, you, along with G-d's help, are nothing short of a miracle worker!