Klal Yisroel has been in galus for most of our existence. 210 years in Mitzrayim, 70 years in Bavel, and now nearly 2000 years in galus from the time of the Second Beis HaMikdosh. This is something that history has never seen before. This is nothing less than a revealed miracle. Hashem has scattered us to the four corners of the globe and a miraculous thing happened: Klal Yisroel survived as a nation. This is a tremendous testimony to Divine Providence guiding the fate of His Chosen People.
Rav Ya’akov Emden writes in the introduction to his Siddur, “Will any philosopher be able to argue that this (the preservation of Jewish identity in exile throughout history) is just a natural occurrence? This surpasses in my mind all the miracles and wonders Hashem did for our ancestors in Mitzrayim. The longer the exile continues, the greater the miracle becomes.”
Rav Yechezkel Levenstein (the mashgiach ruchani of the Mir Yeshiva in Poland, Shanghai, and America, and later with the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak) makes a truly mind-boggling statement. He says the miracle of the salvation of the Mir Yeshiva is greater than the miracle of Purim. In spite of the fact that all the factors that went into the salvation of the Jewish people in the days of Mordechai and Esther were clearly Divine Providence, the nes of the hatzalah [salvation] of the Mir Yeshiva was greater. If one reads all those chapters about the miracles that went on in Shanghai:
How so many times they thought that “this was it” and how time after time they were miraculously saved. How the Russians let them take the train across Siberia and how they thought the KGB were going to kill them at any time. How they escaped from Kobe to Shanghai and how they had to travel on this rickety unseaworthy old boat which had to make three trips across a wide body of water to transport the entire Yeshiva (the boat sank on the return trip after dropping off the last load of Yeshiva students).
It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the Hand of G-d was visibly present throughout their miraculous escape from the horrors of the Holocaust. Towards the end of the war, when Shanghai was bombed, none of the Yeshiva students were killed. It was all miraculous!
This is exactly what Rav Ya’akov Emden wrote: The existence of Klal Yisroel in the golus is a bigger nes than Yetzias Mitzrayim. It is an open miracle.
It must be acknowledged that survival in the face of such a torturous exile is clear testimony to the Hand of G-d that miraculously guarantees the survival of the Jewish people against all odds.
R’ Yisroel Brog (Rosh Yeshiva of Tiferes Avigdor, Cleveland) related the following incident. “I was once in a shul in Cleveland Heights which at the time was empty. An older person was wandering around and he looked like he didn't know what he was doing there. So, I went over to him and said sholom aleichem. What’s your name?” “My name is Jeck.” “Excuse me?” “I said my name is Jeck.” “I said, “Jeck? What's Jeck? Jack?” “Yeah, Jack.” “You don't look like any Jack.” So I realized I had to try Yiddish. “Vos iz zein numen?” He said, “Yaakov.” “What did your mother call you?” “Yankele.” Ay yai yai. From a Yankele came a Jack.
“What are you doing these days?” He said, “I live not far from here. I saw the building so I decided to come in and check it out.” “So where are you holding with Yiddishkeit.”
“Oh. Don't get me started,” he said. “I was five years in the camps. I was in the worst of the worst. I was together with the Satmar Rav, Reb Yoilish. I was together with the Klauzenberger Rebbe.” And he gave me a whole list of names. He was in the barracks with them.
Then he said, “I'm finished with this. I don't do it anymore. I have too many kashes [questions].”
“Kashes? On who?”
“On the Ribbono Shel Olam! Who else? It doesn't make any sense. He wasn't there.”
So, I said, “Yankele. You’re not talking like you’re supposed to be talking. You have kashes. I have terutzim [answers].”
“Oh! You have terutzim? I've already asked Reb Yoilish the kashe. He didn’t have an answer. What are you going to tell me? You’re going to tell me the Medrash says that because of these sins little children die? You’re going to tell me the Rashi in Chumash that when the Satan goes out to destroy, he doesn't differentiate between the good ones and the bad ones. What are you going to tell me? That the Gemara says because of the aveira of nedorim little children die? What are you going to tell me?”
He started quoting me Chazal’s, Gemara’s, Midrashim, Rishonim. They were just rolling off of his tongue. I got blown away. “Yankele, I have a better terutz than all the terutzim you heard. I’m willing to explain it to you. But you have to want the answer. It could be you just want the question. If that's the case gei gezunt aheit. But if you want the answer, I'm going to give you the answer.”
“Which camps were you in?”
“I wasn’t in any camps. I was in a dream during the War. I was born after the war in the US.” All this in Yiddish. “Where do you come from, Galicia?” “No, we're Litvaks.” “What? You're a Litzvak? You don't talk like a Litvak.” “No I'm a Litvak. But with you, I'm talking your language.”
“So you have a terutz for me?”
“Yes, I have a terutz for you. But I’m not telling you tonight. You come back here tomorrow night at the same time, and I'll meet you and we'll talk.”
And he came back. I was blown away. I was sure I would never see him again.
We started shmoozing and he told me all about his family, his mother, his father. His father knew how to learn. He said that his father used to learn with him. “The last thing I learned with my father was the Gemara Pesachim, Perek Kol Sha.” Then he told me that he was the black sheep in the family. “All my brothers learned good, and all my brothers learned Kabbolah. But my father told me, ‘You, that's not for you. You're not learning Kabbolah. You're not ready for it.’ And he remembered things he learned from his father, I was very impressed. “I was the black sheep and they were all tzaddikim. But they all died and I lived. Is there a Hashem?”
