Names, Miracles, and a Bat Mitzvah Girl Named "My Miracle"

We had another magnificent bat mitzvah in school yesterday. Slater, our bat mitzvah girl, read from the first portion of a new book- Shemot, the Book of Exodus. This book is filled with names and miracles. And, it happens to be that Slater's Hebrew name is "my miracle," Nisi. So, I wrote this speech to share tonight in honor of her at her family's synagogue, the Staton Street Shul in lower Manhattan. At the risk of anyone who will be at shul reading it in advance and knowing the punch line, I'd like to share it with you. It's just too good a set of coincidences to go to waste.

This week, we begin Sefer Shemot—the Book of Exodus. But in Hebrew, we don't call it "Exodus." We call it Shemot—Names. This sefer tells the story of our people truly becoming a people through the Exodus from Egypt. Yet it begins not with dramatic action, but with a list: the names of the Israelites who came down to Egypt. Names matter in our tradition. They matter so much that we named an entire book of Torah after them. Parashat Shemot is filled with fascinating names and meanings, but I want to focus on one name in particular as we celebrate Nisi's bat mitzvah, because it connects so beautifully to hers.

When Pharaoh's daughter pulled that baby from the Nile, she named him Moshe. The Torah tells us: "She called his name Moses, for she said, 'I drew him out of the water'" (Exodus 2:10). Moshe—from the Hebrew root meaning "to draw out." It's a name based on how he came into the world—a description of his being pulled out of the water. But it also reflects his role, his purpose. Moses would pull his people out of the water, too—figuratively, from drowning in a state of slavery, and literally, through the splitting of the Red Sea.

According to the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 1:3, Shemot Rabbah 1:26), Moses actually had ten names, given to him by different people, but God chose to call him only by one: Moshe, the name given by Pharaoh's daughter. Why? As a reward for her righteousness, her chesed, her radical kindness. Even God called him by the name that came from an act of love and courage.

Nisi also has a name that describes how her parents perceive her origin. Her Hebrew name is Nisi—"our miracle." But this name doesn't just reflect her origin. It might also reflect her purpose. So what could it mean that one's purpose is miracles? To make them? Name them? Appreciate them? To explore this question, let's do a super surface overview of Jewish intellectual history as it relates to the concept of miracle!

The common definition of a "miracle" is something that violates the natural order—something supernatural, impossible, outside the laws of physics. But in Judaism, we use the word nes. In the Torah, nes means "sign" or "banner"—something that happens as a proclamation of God's power, God's care for Israel, perhaps even a mark of the covenant. In the Torah, everything is miraculous. Creation itself. The Flood. The Exodus—the plagues, the splitting of the Sea. Revelation at Sinai. In fact, there's no Hebrew word for "nature" in the Torah. Nothing is framed as a "violation of natural order" because there's no separate category called "natural." It's all God's will, all God's world.

Einstein captured this beautifully: "There are two ways to live: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle." The Torah lives in that second space—everything is miraculous.

Then came the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, who thought about miracles differently. They taught that all miracles were predetermined at twilight on the sixth day of Creation. Miracles were "built into" the natural order from the beginning. They also said that "vain prayers" cannot undo what's already determined (Mishnah Berakhot 9:3). And miracles were generally not used to prove legal rulings. In the famous story of Tanur shel Achnai, Rabbi Eliezer performed miraculous signs to prove his legal position, and the other rabbis rejected them, saying, "The Torah is not in heaven"—meaning miracles don't determine Jewish law.

The Middle Ages brought an incredible philosophical debate. The Rambam, the great rationalist, argued that miracles were preprogrammed into nature at Creation. God never violates natural law. "The world follows its normal course." Angels are metaphors for natural laws. Many biblical miracles can be reinterpreted as natural events or prophetic visions. Miracles commemorate God's power and teach moral lessons, but they don't prove creation philosophically. The Ramban, the mystic, completely disagreed. He wrote: "One has no portion in the Torah of Moses our teacher unless one believes that all our matters and occurrences are miracles." Everything is miraculous divine intervention. Nothing is truly "natural." Miracles demonstrate God's ongoing governance of the world. Memory of the Exodus miracles is an essential commandment.

This debate continues today. Modern Jewish perspectives span a wide spectrum. But there's one concept that resonates deeply—even though, in full disclosure, the primary source proved elusive when preparing this dvar Torah. It's attributed to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch: "Jewish survival itself is the greatest miracle." What makes this idea so powerful is this: Being part of the Jewish people means believing that things that seem outside the natural order—whether they truly are or not is a philosophical debate—are possible. Because they've happened. We've survived the impossible. So if it's happened before, why can't it happen again? And if one believes that—how can one choose anything but optimism?

Slater's Hebrew name is Nisi, "our miracle." It may be descriptive from your parents' point of view. My brachah is that it also be proscriptive. Find your way to bring miracles, to recognize miracles, to explain them, to appreciate them. Whatever form that takes. And no matter what, remember: It's happened before. It can happen again. We've been saved from the darkest places as a people—from the river, from the sea, in every generation. We work for it. We pray for it. We believe in it. We appreciate it. And we let it inspire ongoing optimism.

This is Jewish optimism. Not naive optimism that ignores darkness. But the deep, resilient optimism that says: We've survived worse. We've seen miracles. We can survive this, too. We can create the miracles we need. This is a time when we need miracles—in our world, in our country, in our community.

As we watch you and all your friends grow into Jewish adults, we are optimistic about the possibility of miracles. You have the capacity to steward these miracles forward. To notice them, like Moshe at the burning bush. To create them, like Moshe at the Red Sea. To believe in them, even when they seem impossible.

Slater's parents, like Batya, were wise in naming her.