“And G-d took us out of Egypt, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with great awe-inspiring deeds, and with signs and wonders.” [Deut. 26:8]

We read in the Haggadah: “And G-d took us out of Egypt” — not by way of an Angel, not by way of a Seraph, and not by way of an emissary, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, Himself by His Own Majesty.

After the Exodus from Egypt, Moshe’s father-in-law Yisro comes to him and says, “now I know that HaShem is greater than all the gods.” Rashi, Rav Shlomo Yitzchaki, explains that Yisro was saying: “I recognized this before, but now much more.” What was the difference between the miracles of the Exodus, the miracles which we commemorate on Pesach, and other miracles? What is it that Yisro was able to perceive only after the Exodus? Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, Mashgiach [Dean for Spiritual Affairs] of the great Mirrer Yeshiva, analyzed this question.

In general, what we call miracles are merely extraordinary combinations of natural events. The miracle is hidden, and is part of the natural world.

In Jerusalem just several weeks ago, a Chassidic man saw an Arab throw a knapsack into the garbage. He went over to the garbage bin, opened the knapsack and found a bomb connected to a cell phone. So he disconnected the cell phone and prevented the bomb from going off.

Was this a miracle? Of course it was. Normally these devices can be set off by detaching their trigger, be that clock or phone, and he should have lost his life. This was a hidden miracle — even though all of the events were apparently natural, it just doesn’t add up. G-d was watching the Chasid.

Similarly, just weeks before that, a car bomb exploded in Jerusalem’s Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon. To say that this is a crowded neighborhood is an understatement, and the road should have been filled with people — and casualties. One person was lightly wounded where a dozen should have perished. When residents recognized what had happened, they literally danced in the streets. Again, all of the events were apparently natural, but it was a hidden miracle.

The same was true during the 1991 Gulf War, when 39 Scud missiles were fired at Israel. Hospitals were preparing for hundreds of casualties from these deadly weapons, yet only one person was killed. The individual stories are incredible — everyone ran to the old bomb shelter instead of the new one, and the new one was entirely destroyed; a building collapsed on a man such that only his head was showing, yet he was not wounded at all; a man helped an old woman from one building to another, the missle hit while they were in the alley, seriously damaging both of their apartments — and leaving them unscathed. All completely natural events — unless we are willing to look beyond the face of nature.

The commentator Ibn Ezra writes that the ministering angels cannot change their path, cannot violate the rules laid out for them by G-d. If G-d decrees that a city should be flooded, washing away the buildings and their inhabitants, it will happen. If a prophet were to come to the city, and tell the people to repent, and they did so, how could they be saved? They could be so inspired by their repentance that they took a retreat into the hills, away from their business affairs, for three days of introspection. Along comes the flood, but they are all saved because they are in the hills. Again the miracle is obvious, but the events, natural.

This was not true of the miracles of the Exodus. The laws of nature were violated, repeatedly, by He who established those laws. This is what Yisro saw — the greatness of G-d, revealed. G-d did what only He could do — bring the Jews out of Egypt “not by way of an Angel, not by way of a Seraph, and not by way of an emissary,” but with open miracles.

This, says R’ Yerucham Levovitz, is why the Exodus is the bedrock of Jewish belief and faith in G-d. The Revelation of His Great Name was specifically at that time, at the Exodus. All the miracles which have ever occurred are nothing compared to the Exodus; the Exodus is the heart, the enabler of all miracles.

As we read the Haggadah, we should consider: how would we have reacted if we had seen all these miracles? For this is the obligation placed upon us by the Haggadah itself: “In every generation, a person is obligated to look at himself or herself as if he or she had left Egypt.” What would we have done to commemorate the story? How would we have transmitted it to our children?

Then we will recognize that this is how our forefathers commemorated the holiday, and transmitted it to us — and we will be able to transmit it to ourselves, our friends, our loved ones, and the next generation: “and you shall tell the story to your child on this day, saying ‘because of all that G-d did for me when I left Egypt'” [Exodus 13:8]