Miracle Survivors - Rabbi Akiva Fox

continuing on their journey in faith and concepts of emunah and how we are presently discussing the different ways or some of the different ways that a person can learn to recognize the hand of a sham the hand of God in the world to see it to feel it and as we spoke previously to reveal it inside his heart the hidden faith the hidden belief that each person has inside of him another interesting way is by learning about how to be or how we became survivors is a very in thing now to have t-shirts I survived you know 911 I survived this I survived my wife's cooking there are many different different ways of expressing it there bumper stickers being a survivor there are survivor show is how you make it through the jungle or the desert or going to a shark tank and you survive surviving besides taking a lot of power strength and determination also many times has to be miraculous and in order to survive every sort of danger and every sort of threat and every form of annihilation the only answer is miraculous the only answer is that Hashem is the one that is doing the miracle that is helping you survive the Jewish people are the greatest miracle of all the Jewish people have survived everything is a poem that we've discussed before called my fellow jew and in the poem one of the stanzas is you have weathered all the storms they've all come in gone you are the unsung heroes of the world and you were made of ancient days and you'll go on and on I've seen miracles before but the greatest of them of them all is you the Jewish people and the fact that they're still alive still standing still producing is the greatest miracle that exists in the world there is no nation that has been through so much that has gone through so many difficulties so many threats to its very existence and has literally been on the brink of extinction and has survived all the Byzantine empires and the Syrians and the Assyrians and the Greeks and the Romans they've all come and gone they're not here anymore the Germans the Nazis the Spanish Inquisition they were here they were powerful they were strong they conquered the entire world but they're nothing their history their mentioned in history books without any any memory any commemoration there is nothing left of them of course yes there may be small pockets here and there but the Jewish people their greatest enemy that they wanted desired and almost brought to annihilation still exists and still stand strong this is the greatest miracle of all this is the hand of a Shem the Yad Hashem the will of God for this nation to stay to fortify this nation and to give it shelter against all the winds and all the raging storms that have come against it that itself is so miraculous it is clearly the hand of a sham so if a person wants to see God as the poem says if I would look into your heart I would see the face of God if you want to see God if you want to see a Shem if you want to see his miracles day to day and look at the Jewish people because they're still here and they're still strong there's no logic to it there's no way to explain this phenomenon just using facts evidence logic it just doesn't work throughout the generations there have been so many empires great empires whose only desire was to destroy completely the Jewish people and yet they're still here we've been through the Crusades we've been through the destruction of the base on Macduff the Crusades the Inquisition the Holocaust we are surrounded by I would say not so friendly fellows this little small country called Israel does not exactly have the nicest neighbors in the world I would say it's bordering on hostility excuse the expression but there's a lot of animosity putting it mildly for example surrounding that little country of Israel there happens to be one country called Syria they're not very friendly they're more fanatic Muslims a lot of Isis they're not very friendly towards Jews or Israel then there's uh Iraq Iran Iran's greatest desire they speak of it always is to wipe out the entire Jewish people send them into the sea and this has nothing to do with Zionism this has been around many many many generations before Zionism this is to destroy the Jewish people and yet somehow this little land called Israel is still here still strong fruitful prospering doing well even with such difficult neighbors my friends that's a miracle that is the hand of a Shem that is the hand of God that wants us to exist that helps us exist and that pushes us forward to exist so if you want to learn how to have faith they want to learn how to believe and how to come to understand that God is a part of our everyday life that God is not only an abstract concept but God exists he's here he's in front of us in a certain sense his existence and his power and his work in the world is very very clear and look at the Jewish people because we're still here and we're still strong and we defy everything that comes against us we defy all the laws of nature because it just doesn't make sense there's a famous article by Mark Twain about the Jews i wish i would have printed it but when you get to a certain age besides losing your hair you lose your memory also but Mark Twain speaks very profoundly about the fact that the Jew is still here and everyone else has come and gone but the Jew is still around this itself is a testimony to the hand of a Shem in the world today there is no way that we could be here without the hand of God there was no way that we could exist that we could prosper we could be fruitful that we could continue growing and producing so much in so little time six million Jews were destroyed in the Holocaust six million it's hard to imagine what that means we have no concept of what six million is you probably don't even know I don't how many zeros are in six million let alone six million people there's a person who wrote a book apparently I never saw it but with the word Jew written six million times we're talking about hundreds of papers six million you would think that that brought the Jewish people to the end but it didn't because the small core of Jews that survived that remained built and they didn't build with power they didn't build with money they didn't build with brilliance they built with Hashem they built with God and the only way that they have survived and the only way that they have turned the Jewish people into what it is today is not because of our political power it's not because of our money it's not because we're famous and we're demanding there's only one reason God Hashem miracles happen every day we are here because God wants us to be here if you want to see God then look at the Jew if you want to see a Shem and look at the year because we are here today because God is here with us you