I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me.
- BARUCH SPINOZA
"I am Rabbi Esther Olza of Delphyne. If you are of the faithful, show me a miracle." That was his examiner's opening move after a long staring silence.
"I am Rabbi Eben Abih Estel of Gammu. I live," replied the Rabbi. Here the match begins, he thought.
"For decades I have trodden the soil of this world without ever encountering a manifestation of the Lord," continued Rabbi Olza. The small room chosen for their meeting was damp and badly lit. The silence inside the room was staggering.
"The Lord is," replied Rabbi Estel, "where you let Him in."
"Why, Rabbi Estel? Why have we not recorded any new miracle in the thousands of years we have spent in hiding? What if our bet is wrong?" replied Olza.
"What bet?"
"That all this comes from the Lord! What happened to miracles?"
"Dew at sunrise. Motherly love. Our continued survival. How are these not miracles?" was the Rabbi Estel's rebuke.
"Indeed they are," replied Rabbi Olza. "But, try and split the Red Sea in two with your motherly love!"
She has a point, he thought.
"As a contemporary believer with knowledge of life and science, I rationalize what our ancestors called miracles," she continued. "Did they really happen? Would the revelation be less worthy if they didn't? If they really did happen, were they caused by natural laws especially prepared by God? Should we instead observe the small miracles that plague our everyday life? Does their size make them any less miraculous?"
"You sound like a skeptic, Rabbi Olza."
"Of all the countless planets in the universe, and trillion people therein, you still think only us, numbering in the mere millions, are the chosen ones?"
"Yes," replied Rabbi Estel. "And the proof of it is in front of your eyes: our diaspora, millions of observant souls, surviving against all odds; enduring strength supported by the faith and the community, and our unviolated secrecy."
"Is survival proof enough? Or simply natural selection?"
"Isn't it a marvelous and improbable thing though? Improbable, without an invisible and divine hand guiding us forward? Natural selection, but what pushed us to evolve? Answer me, Rabbi Olza."
"Doubts? Of course I have them! You know Jacob fought with Him, and Abraham contested His decisions; who are we to submit blindly to ancient words without noticing the silence of the last thousands of years? Maybe He exists and chose somebody else!"
"Rabbi Olza, permit me to not to answer your question with another question. The exegesis of the Holy words, the debate about interpretation is the lifeblood of our congregation. A simple life, it was on Old Terra, with horizons only a few miles wide, a people of farmers and shepherds, and yet minds whose visionary jumps have opened doors for people's lives for millennia. Even the language the Scriptures were written in has faded from everyday use. Yet you point out a great truth. If all miracles to us are just nes nistar - the small, hidden ones - then should we still believe the grandiose acts described in our books? To that, the scholars provide many answers: that He used to act directly, but now uses individuals of a more mature humanity; that it is foolish to expect big miracles if we are not the ones preparing the conditions for the miracle to arise; that caring about the magnitude of the miracle is delusional, because the Lord tweaks human existence in response to prayer and need, sometimes invisibly to the eyes, and in some small cases visibly; others assert that in a infinite universe, cosmic miracles happen all the time, but humans - and particularly, non-believers - may not be so perceptive to identify them. Who are we to only look only at instances of nes galui - the dramatic miracle that subverts nature - for a reason to believe? Faith is rooted in reason and our history with Him. We need no special effects. There was wind, and earthquake and fire, but the Lord came as a gentle whisper."
"And yet, Rabbi Estel, other scholars simply state that there is no reason to believe in miracles at all, least of all the ones violating physical laws," continued Rabbi Olza.
"Why is it hard for you to believe in nature-subverting miracles? They are in front of you: interstellar travel, navigation devices finding safe paths through space-time, drugs from alien planets making ancestral memories emerge... what about splitting the Red Sea so subversive, Rabbi Olza?"
"Ah, but that's exactly my point, Rabbi Estel. What if He has delegated to us the power to subvert nature, to make changes happen? The maturity of humanity?"
"Do you think humanity commonly performs miracles?"
"I do. Faithful and gentiles alike."
"A novel viewpoint, Rabbi Olza. Some commentators of old would say that just you believing this, and still keeping the faith, is a miracle in itself."
"It may be so, Rabbi Estel."
They stood in silence, half in the darkness, half in the light.
"I have to ask, then..." ventured Rabbi Estel.
"Yes?" replied Rabbi Olza with feigned surprise.
"The problem of the Tyrant."
"Must we go through the multitude of opinions our scholars have given throughout the centuries?"
"It is a most intractable problem."
"It is the Kwisatch Haderach problem, not the Tyrant problem, Rabbi Estel."
"The prophecy was ours."
"Indeed."
"The Messiah we were waiting for was not the Atreides."
"Imposters we have met many times in our history, Rabbi Estel."
"The Tyrant suppressed all religions but his. He stylized himself as God."
"An apostate. That is unanimous."
"An apostate with miraculous powers, Rabbi Olza."
"Some say that, some say devilish powers."
"His prescience did shed light into every dark corner of the universe."
"This has been historically documented. The subject of debate is the scope and limits of his prescience, and the presumed divine source of it."
"The melange is not divine. He suppressed all religion, yet Israel perpetuated itself and emerged unscathed, Rabbi Olza."
"He even met one of us."
That took the Rabbi by surprise."What?"
"It was Rabbi Ekmet Tushallo. You did not know? He was brought before Emperor Leto himself!"
"Brought before him... to die?" asked Rabbi Estel.
"The Fish Speakers discovered and rounded up our Chapter on Dan back in those days."
"Certainly it was a courageous thing, to face the apostate, Rabbi Olza."
"To face and survive, even more so."
"Leto II spared a man who deliberately told him he was no god?"
"Yes."
"I am in disbelief."
"I will lend you his chronicles then, and you will see for yourself, Rabbi Estel."
"What does it say?"
"For four hours Rabbi Tushallo conversed with the Emperor. He describes the details the apostate's throne room. And the monstrous shape of the emperor. Their dialogue was most interesting."
"How so?"
"As it turns out, the Emperor was quite fond of chatting, Rabbi Estel."
"Chatting? Is that why the Tyrant spared Rabbi Tushallo's life?"
"So Rabbu Tushallo said. He writes that he was spared because he spoke truth to power. He told Leto that he was the new ice age - a time for lethargy. He also used another metaphor: the shepherd turning humanity to sheep."
"Why didn't Leto kill him on the spot, like countless other priests and preachers, Rabbi Olza?"
"Rabbi Tushallo doesn't say."
"That's it?"
"Oh, he (the emperor) also exhibited his powers in an irrefutable way."
"Did he demonstrate his oracular faculties?"
"He named every single Secret Israel community and Rabbi in the Imperium at the time, including ones the Rabbi himself did not know, but was able to verify later."
"He verified later?"
"Do you doubt the thoroughness of an interpreter of the Torah? But the Rabbi risked more."
"How so?"
"He threw the gauntlet of a Talmudic challenge at the Emperor!"
"The risk!"
"Oh yes. More than he thought. It turns out, the Emperor could be quite a strong commentator of the Law."
"The Emperor himself? Impossible."
"The Rabbi reports he talked directly to the Emperor's memory of Rabbi Hillel."
Rabbi Estel was jolted in his seat.
"The power!" he murmured. "Did he win?"
"The emperor? The emperor lost."
"That's comforting."
"Rabbi Tushallo asked Hillel to deliberate on the propriety of his awareness surfacing in the mind of a non-believer, centuries after his own death. He retreated from the emperor's mind."
"Pride?" Rabbi Estel was disconcerted .
"Who would know? So, what is your assessment of the Tyrant, Rabbi Estel?"
"He came and went, and yet we survived."
"No, he came and went, and let the People survive. Knowingly."
"That does not make him a prophet, nor a good soul."
"A miracle-doer, Rabbi Estel."
"A mortal soul, Rabbi Olza."
"An angel of death."
"A victim of melange, Rabbi Olza."
"The very same melange I heard you are offering to us from your spaceship, Rabbi Estel."
He bit his lip.
"See, Rabbi from the Million Worlds? Our worldview has evolved in the Seeking, layering more and more facets along the way. Modernity continues to happen to us and around us. Yet to the tolerant mind, this awareness is growing around the seed of the Revelation like a beautiful diamond. I welcome you to our Secret Chapter in Lat. I do hope you will be able to join us in the synagogue in three days' time."
"I am honored, Rabbi Olza. Dialectics aside, what is your exact position on miracles, and the Tyrant?"
"I can hold paradoxes in my head, Rabbi Estel. But at the end of my life, I still have made just one bet: that the voices I have heard and the signs I have seen all came from the Almighty."