The Eleventh Plague | The Silence After The Siren
The air in Tel Aviv still tasted of concrete dust and fear. Sirens, a daily liturgy of dread, had wailed an hour ago, and the acrid tang of the Iron Dome interception lingered like a ghost over the city. In a modest apartment, its windows still rattling from the distant thunder, the Cohen family gathered around a table that seemed too large for the meager offering upon it.
There was a single loaf of challah, its braid a defiant symbol of peace in a time of war. A small bowl of olive oil. A block of salty cheese. And four potatoes, roasted in their skins, their humble earthiness a stark contrast to the high-tech warfare raging outside.
Micha, the father, his face etched with the exhaustion of a reservist too old for the front lines but too young in spirit to surrender, placed his hands on the table. His knuckles were white. His wife, Shoshana, held the hands of their two children—Leah, who was nine and had forgotten what a full night’s sleep sounded like without sirens, and little Avi, who at five, jumped at the sound of a slamming door.
The world outside was a tapestry of scarcity. Supermarket shelves held more dust than goods. The price of a single chicken could make a grown man weep. Famine was not just a biblical specter from the time of Pharaoh; it was a headline, a whispered fear in the queues for bread, a hollow feeling in the stomachs of children.
“Children,” Micha’s voice was a low rumble, a forced calm. He looked at the pitiful feast. This wasn’t the lavish Shabbat table of his childhood, laden with gefilte fish, chicken soup, and kugel. This was sustenance, stripped bare. It was manna in the wilderness, the widow’s last handful of flour.
He closed his eyes, and the words that came out were not a rote prayer. They were a raw, guttural cry, a weapon forged in the furnace of their collective need.
“Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech ha-olam, ha-motzi lechem min ha’aretz.”
(Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.)
The traditional words felt different tonight. They felt like a miracle. Bringing forth bread from the earth when the earth was torn by craters and sown with shrapnel. It was an act of supreme faith.
As they broke the challah, tearing off small pieces to make it last, Micha began to speak, his eyes fixed on the flickering candle flame, a tiny beacon against the encroaching darkness.
“Do you remember the story of Elijah?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “During a terrible famine, God told him, ‘Go at once to Zarephath… I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.’”
Leah nodded, her eyes wide. Avi just stared at his piece of bread.
“He found her,” Micha continued, “gathering a few sticks to cook a final meal for herself and her son. She said, ‘I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug… we will eat it and then we will die.’”
Shoshana squeezed Avi’s hand, her own eyes glistening. The story was their story.
“But Elijah told her, ‘Do not be afraid… For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’’”
He paused, letting the ancient promise hang in the air, a challenge to the empty cupboards and the distant booms. “And it was so. The God of Israel does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
They ate in silence, each bite a deliberate act of defiance. The roasted potato was not just a potato; it was a testament. The cheese was a declaration. They were participating in a mystery as old as their people—the mystery of provision in the desert, of sustenance in the storm.
After the simple meal, Micha opened a worn, leather-bound Tanakh. His fingers, stained with engine grease from his work repairing emergency generators, traced the words of the Prophet Isaiah. “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
The words were a fire in the cold room. They were insane. They were glorious. They were the very heart of their faith.
Later, as Shoshana put the children to bed, Micha stood on the small balcony, looking out at the city, a constellation of blackout curtains and emergency lights. The weight of it all pressed down on him—the fear, the uncertainty, the sheer, exhausting effort of believing. He thought of the words of their Messiah, Yeshua, from the Gospel of Matthew. He whispered them into the night, a prayer for his family, for his city, for his people.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
The logic of heaven, crashing against the brutal arithmetic of war. Are you not much more valuable? The question hung in the air, unanswered.
He went back inside, the apartment silent now except for the soft breathing of his children. He checked the lock on the door, a habitual, futile gesture against the threats of the world. As he passed the kitchen, something made him stop.
The challah loaf. They had broken it, each taking a piece. He had wrapped the remainder in a cloth and placed it on the counter. It should have been half gone.
But it wasn't.
It was whole.
The braids were perfectly intact, golden-brown and gleaming in the dim light, as if it had never been touched. As if it had just been brought forth, fresh and complete, from the earth.
Micha’s breath caught in his throat. He reached out a trembling hand, his mind racing, trying to rationalize it. Had Shoshana baked another? No, there was no flour. Had he dreamt the entire meal? He looked at the table. The crumbs from their meal were still there. The empty oil dish was still smudged.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of holy terror. He stumbled to the pantry and pulled open the door. The glass bottle of olive oil, which Shoshana had shown him was barely a finger’s-width deep this morning, now stood full, glinting amber in the shadows, its surface smooth and unbroken, filled to the very brim.
A tremor ran through him, a shockwave of the impossible. This was not a coincidence. This was a sign. A terrifying, glorious, and direct intervention. The stories of Elijah, of the widow, of the manna—they were not just history. They were a blueprint, and the Architect was at work in his own kitchen.
He fell to his knees, the words of the prophet and the Messiah crashing together in his soul. The jar of flour would not be used up. The jug of oil would not run dry. Your heavenly Father knows what you need.
But this miracle, this undeniable, physical breach in the natural order, brought with it a chilling and electrifying question, a mystery that swallowed the mundane fears of war and scarcity whole. It was a question he whispered into the silent, charged air, a question that would change everything…
If God is performing miracles again, what, exactly, is He about to ask us to do?
