Shaarei Shamayim

VAYEYRA 5771

Miner Miracle

I begin with thanks to my teacher Rabbi Benjamin Blech who shared with me some of the thoughts I’m about to share with you. For several days last week the world was transfixed upon the drama of the rescue of 33 miners who were buried more than 2,000 feet underground for months. Practically every channel of the television and the front page of every newspaper covered the unfolding drama. Why was the rescue of these miners so important that the whole world stood still for 2 days to watch it?

Perhaps it was because it seemed like a victory in a universal struggle—as one miners put it: “I was with Gd and I was with the devil. They fought and Gd won!” Or perhaps, as Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said: “The miners were so happy [when they came to the surface] because they were experiencing a kind of rebirth.” And rebirth is a universal longing. If you think about it, that makeshift tube coming out of that small hole in the earth…kind of looked like an actual birth.

The Torah teaches that “from the dust of the earth you were taken and to the dust of the earth you shall return.” It was like a rebirth from mother earth—a rebirth of the preciousness of life and of the renewed hope that each life brings into this world. Chilean health Minister Jaime Manalich announced that: Each time a miner came out, a siren sounded, as if to herald the arrival of a moment as joyous as a baby’s entrance into the world. Each individual is precious and beloved, an incredible reflection of Gd.

Rabbi Shraga Simmons quotes Nachum of Horadna, in describing the level of joy a person should always feel: If Gd came to a dead man and said: ‘Rise from the grave and rejoice,’ imagine the colossal joy he would feel. Every moment with his family, every chirping bird, every breath is another gift! We should strive for that same feeling all the time. Every morning when we get out of bed, we should thank the Almighty and feel the spectacular joy of being alive!

Some of the miners actually felt that way while underground.

• Ariel Ticona Yanez, 29, watched his wife give birth to a baby girl via a video link that was lowered into the mine. Of his 3 children, this was the 1^st birth he was able to witness.
• Christina Nunez accepted a marriage proposal from miner Claudio Yanez whom she turned down 2 months earlier. Apparently, the ordeal of the miners made her appreciate how precious their love is.
• And then there was Jessica Ganiez who was dating miner Esteban Rojas for 25 years. He finally proposed during a 20-second conversation through a line in the mine. Apparently being trapped in a hot, sweaty mine shaft helped warm up Rojas’ long-term case of cold feet.

Symbolically this was a morality tale about every person facing mortality. To be buried is our fate. We come from the dust of the earth and to the earth we shall return. None of us can escape our eventual end. Like the miners, we will someday be interred.

Yet in this one instance death was defeated. While they still had breath within them they were aware of the struggle between this world and the other—between the here and the hereafter. And miraculously life won out. They didn’t simply survive. As every one of them put it, they now feel convinced they have been reborn.

To return from the grave to new life is a profoundly moving concept that speaks to our souls. The miracle of the miners offers a powerful metaphor of life after death, of rebirth after the grave—and in a message subconsciously understood by all of us who vicariously shared in the story—a vision of hope that death is not the end.

When the miners compared their rescue to rebirth they unwittingly connected with a remarkable parable based on the Midrash, by Y. M. Tuckachinsky. Let me read it to you:

            There were once twins in the womb of a mother about to be born. [Imagine that they had consciousness and were aware of their circumstances as much as they could hear, see and feel. Imagine that they could talk and that they were having a conversation. One was an optimist and one was a pessimist.] The pessimist says, “It looks like the end is coming soon for us, because I can feel movement, and we will probably be expelled from here soon. I don’t see how we can possibly survive.”

            The other twin responds, “Stop being a pessimist. There has to be some reason why we are here all 9 months. It would be absurd for us to be here all this time just to go to extinction.” 

            The pessimist says, “Sure, you and your religion. You are a fanatic. [You’re probably an orthodox rabbi.] You are an optimist, but we are doomed.”

            The optimistic brother responds, “I just have a feeling, a belief that there is a reason and a purpose and that we will go on.”

            The pessimist says, “All right, if you’re so smart, tell me how we can continue to exist. Here we are surrounded by this water, connected with the tube of life that is sustaining us, obviously without all this we will die. Can you describe life out of the confines of this palace that we live in? It is impossible.”

            The optimist responds, “I don’t know how, but I know that it will be.”

            Suddenly the water inside the womb bursts. There is a pushing and pounding. The twins realize that they are being forced from their home. The traumatic moment is here. As fate would have it, the optimist is expelled first. The pessimist inside is most anxious to hear what is going on the other side, and strains very closely to the walls of the womb and hears from without crying and screaming. He says, “Too bad for my brother, I guess I was right after all. Poor boy, he is gone.”

            While on the other side at the very same moment, happy mother and father are wishing each other mazal tov at the birth of a new child, who has gone from one kind of existence to another. While in the other kind of existence, no one would be able to describe, predict or imagine the other.”

The point of the parable is that even as there is one kind of existence leading to another in the birth of a baby as we enter this world, so too we believe that when our story is finished here and we hear the cry and the scream as we leave this world, someone in the World to Come is saying, “Mazal tov, welcome home, glad to have you back!”

This week’s Torah reading takes us from birth to death and back again. It opens with the story of the birth of Abraham’s son Isaac in his old age; it then moves to the destruction and death of Sodom and Gomorrah; then to the near death experience of Isaac on the altar; then to the birth to Abraham’s brother Nachor of children and grandchildren; and next week’s parsha opens with the death and burial of Sarah in the Cave of Machpeyla, which Kabbalah tells us symbolizes the long dark tunnel we all will ascend through to get to the world of the souls, to the other side, to heaven.

What appears like death when seen from the other side is merely a higher form of life. Elizabeth Kubler Ross put it beautifully when she said, “Death is breaking out of a cocoon and emerging as a butterfly.” Or as the poet Tagore expressed it, “Death is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

And this to my mind is why all of us feel such great affinity to the story of the miners being pulled almost literally from the grave to begin life anew. Their story in a way is our story. Our souls recognize it as a tale that we will replay after the final curtain descends on our days, followed by our interment. Just like the miners, we’ll feel the tug of war “between Gd and the devil.” Just like the miners, we too will come out to a great light so powerful that we’ll need time to adjust to its brilliance. Waiting for us will be all our loved ones who we feared we might never see again, embracing us with tears of joy and surrounding us with indescribable love.

And like the miners in Chile who know they have been reborn, we too will be overwhelmed by the return to our heavenly home, and exultantly proclaim: “Gd won!” Amen!

Rabbi Mark Hillel Kunis

10/23/10