All Good
Blessing Time. TLDR? Scroll to the bottom
Preface
I don't know if there's any kind of divine karmic system.
I’m not capable of believing in superstitions so I would be very happy to say outright that I don't believe in such a system, except that I have been party to some downright miraculous things.
Two of which were caught on video.
Knowing that I myself would not be likely to agree that these matters were miraculous if I did not experience them myself and knowing the precise thinking ongoing in my head when that they occurred, I am hesitant to share the videos.
I am concerned that doing so might function as placing a stumbling block before the blind.
You may see, as I imagine I would, somebody whom you regard as rational offering his best videod evidence of the miraculous, and be unimpressed, and come away therefore with even less consideration for the possibility.
That would be fine, as the evidence is of course not conclusive, but it is larger than you may realize as a second-hand viewer. And considering the inportance of getting this sort of thing right, I would rather not contribute to someone getting it wrong through “damnation by faint praise”.
At the same time, I don't believe I have a right to hide what was caught on video with preemptive concern that you may misinterpret it.
For my own part, I agree with Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
From an internal perspective, these two videos captured extraordinary things which I myself would have regarded as equally extraordinary had they not been caught on video.
I.
Two years ago I climbed Mt. Sinai on Shavuos - the anniversary of the day that the Bible claims that all of Jacob's living descendants prophesied-in-tandem the first two of The 10 Utterances (usually mistranslated as Commandments).
On the way up, only hours before the setting of the sun, from right beyond Sharm el Sheikh, I observed a single altocumulus cloud in the Desert Sinai sky.
Off in the distance. Hovering right over The Mountain.
I was bemused by this עמוד ענן - pillar of cloud/smoke - leading the way to Mount Sinai and asked the driver if he’d ever seen clouds over Sinai before.
My own subsequent research indicates there at times there are indeed clouds over the Sinai Desert, but my driver had not ever seen any.
Nor could I find any claims of someone observing a single cloud over My. Sinai on an otherwise crystal pure azure sky.
My driver and I had been talking religion and, like me, he had come from a place of presumed belief coupled with a constitution inclined toward pure rationality. He had therefore independently arrived at a Maimonidean view of the Islam.
Such views are not unknown throughout Islamic history, just as Maimonidean views are not unknown throughout Jewish history. But they have always been rare and discouraged to the same levels of castigation and alienation as they are in all faiths. Rambam's books were of course burned. Today they are simply forbidden.
To escape the visage, I closed my eyes and thought through the cloud business with cold rationality.
I concluded that the most logical explanation for what I was looking at was that this location came to be considered Mt. Sinai because of some meteorological system that occasionally grants it a cloud over the top, even in the face of an otherwise stark blue sky.
I don't know deserts and don't need to guess the cause. But assuming that it was natural, and probably the very reason why this site came to be considered Mt. Sinai - or why it may actually have become the place that the bible refered to - made more sense than the alternative thesis so determined to stare me in the face at this very moment.
Heck, the recorded claim passed down by millions of the genetic and memetic ancestors of modern Jewry of having an experience at Sinai involving thunder and lightening could be nicely explained via such a meteorological phenomenon.
This wasn't a random thought that I’m retrofitting or cherry picking. This was the precise scrunch-eyed meticulously-cold thought process of that moment.
Having snapped back out of cosmic confusion to the satisfactory state of general doubt, learning heavily against evidence of Providence, I opened my eyes with the smug smirk of every man who has ever had the pleasure of outsmarting The Lord.
And Providence agreed. נצחוני בני - You have defeated me, my son! The Lord smiled upon my scientific method through the sudden disappearance of the hitherto unmoving cloud that had been set above the ever-more proximate mountain in the distance where it had been hovering for at least an hour.
I was genuinely pleased. There is no joy like resolving quantum doubt into a comprehensible state…
My open-mouthed mien in the following thumbnail displays my reaction to what occured right in front of me around 60 seconds after I had opened my eyes, found the stubborn cloud gone, and explaining the happy meaning(lessness) of it to my driver.
II.
The other miracle is too personal to explain and also doesn't necessitate an explanation.
If you only watch the clip you will hear a girl call my name. You will not hear The Bas Kol.
If you watch from the beginning you will hear God's perfectly timed approval via the ethereal sound of His daughter.
I repeate and stress, if you join me on the balcony before the pyramid for the complete reading of Rambam's legal codification of Torah Law as it relates to who each individual ought to be within modern society, You Will Hear The BAS KOL.
III.
I’m sharing all of the above just to say that that Gilad was saved from the dungeon in which he had been tortured for months on the Day of Freedom, The 15th of Nissan.
Did the day contribute to his salvation? Do I have some special merit on this day because I was the person who made it happen?
I don't know. Everything I shared above is intended to offer my honest, partial explanation for why I do not rule it out, or even consider it unlikely.
Therefore - if I am indeed tuned in to the Divine Frequency of Salvation that manifests on this day, I bestow what powers to bless with freedom I may have, upon those few uniquely special individuals who have shown me some support over the past number of months.
Andrew
Jack
Yisroel
Tzadok
Leah
Marilyn
Harvey
Steven
Stephen
Yeshayah