The Jewish faith accepts the possibility that there “could be a rational explanation while at the same time a manifestation of God’s beneficence,” and miracles need not necessarily be supernatural. “Daily life itself is a miracle from God.”
So writes Dr. Marc Siegel, physician and Fox News senior medical analyst, in his book The Miracles Among Us: How God’s Grace Plays a Role in Healing, released last month.
“Lessons can be drawn in different ways from the stories,” the author writes. “I’m not telling anyone how to interpret them.”
When Dr. Ellay Golan woke to the sound of missiles landing outside her home in Kfar Aza kibbutz near Gaza on Oct. 7, she didn’t know yet that by the end of the day, she would “be on the very ventilator she has been training to manage,” he writes.
The story of Golan, 34, an anesthesiologist and former Israel Defense Forces troop commander who survived the Oct. 7 attacks despite burns on 60% of her body and many other health complications, is one of several in the book.
Siegel wrote the book after seeing what he describes as healing that would be impossible with physician skill and resources alone. He believes that God’s hand guides the hands of skilled surgeons at times and wants to encourage medical professionals to draw upon their faith.
“I want doctors to understand that having faith and bringing it to bear in your practice is not a bad thing,” Siegel told JNS. “The vast majority of doctors have faith, but they don’t want to be seen that way, and I disagree with that.”
The author, who has studied Torah, said that all of the stories in his book “are imbued with my understanding of Torah.”
God “made the world to contain miracles, and humans are meant to discover them,” he told JNS.
“God implanted miracles in the world,” he said. “Those miracles surface not necessarily always when we want them to, but God gives us the miracles He wants us to have.”
Some of the stories in the book, all of which the author says are true, focus on people’s rational but remarkable efforts to save themselves and family members, after which teams of doctors and nurses took over, using their skills and technology.
Hamas terrorists tried to drive Golan, her husband, Ariel Golan, and their 18-month-old daughter, Yael, out of their safe room by setting the house on fire.
When that failed, the terrorists tried to burn them alive by tossing a tank of gasoline into their already-burning home. The couple jumped into the shower, wrapped themselves in wet clothing while trying to shield their daughter, and got kitchen knives and “prepared to fight Hamas to the death,” Siegel writes.
Unable to steal the family’s car, because they didn’t have the code to turn it on, the terrorists left, as Siegel tells it.
“Ellay and her family jump out of the living room window,” he writes. “It feels like a miracle that they kept Hamas out of the safe room, another miracle that they escape just as the house collapses.”
But the Golans’ ordeal was far from over. Siegel, who interviewed Ellay and her husband at length, details their flight through the kibbutz, hiding underneath and then atop a tractor and Ellay breastfeeding Yael, so the baby—30% of her tiny body burned—would not die.
Only after Ellay and her family were airlifted to the burn unit at Sheba Medical Center outside of Tel Aviv did she pass out from the pain. At the hospital, a team of critical care specialists, including Josef Haik, head of plastic and reconstructive surgery, and Dr. Yael Haviv-Yadid, head of the intensive care unit, made a series of decisions that saved the family.
Those decisions began with inducing comas in all three, because, according to Siegel, “burn wounds are too excruciating to treat otherwise.”
Her body covered in burns, some that had developed fungal infections from when she hid in dirt under the tractor, Ellay’s case was the most complicated. Siegel interviewed her doctors, including Haik, who said that “it’s a miracle she’s made it this far,” according to the author. (Ellay and all the others in the book gave doctors permission to talk to Siegel.)
Haik told Siegel that he was prepared to resign if he couldn’t save the young doctor, thinking that he “couldn’t let a miracle go to waste.”
In this case and others, doctors “are the hands of God” in using medical science, according to Siegel.
Some of the book’s stories reference both science and the supernatural.
Two of the early chapters retell stories of notable figures, whose miraculous survival grabbed recent headlines. Doctors acted quickly to save Damar Hamlin, 24, a Buffalo Bills safety who collapsed on the field during a Jan. 2, 2023, game against the Cincinnati Bengals after he was hit in the chest. And John Smith, 14, a Missouri boy who fell through an ice-covered lake in January 2015 and returned to life after 45 minutes without a pulse, was the subject of the 2019 movie “Breakthrough,” starring Chrissy Metz.
Siegel interviewed doctors and rescue workers, whose behind-the-scenes labor produced what appeared to be miracles—and who in several cases spoke to Siegel of the supernatural.
In Hamlin’s case, Siegel interviewed Dr. Leslie Bisson, chair of orthopedics at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and medical director of the Bills and the Buffalo Sabres hockey team, about his preparations for the possibility that a player could suffer sudden cardiac arrest.
“While some sports medicine experts might have thought Dr. Bisson’s preparation was an overreaction, he certainly looks prescient,” Siegel writes.
To tell the story of the boy who fell through the ice, Siegel spoke to Tommy Shine, a Wentzville, Mo., fire captain, who was the first on the scene to locate the boy, who had been under the ice for at least 10 minutes.
Shine heard “a familiar voice calling from the shore, directing him where to go,” Siegel writes. “When Shine looks to see who is calling him, no one is there.”
Shine found the boy and pulled him from the water. “Was the voice an angel?” Siegel said. “Who knows?”
Seigel also interviewed the ER doctor who treated the boy, Dr. Kent Sutterer, who said that he went to great lengths to revive Smith long after medical science would indicate there was no hope.
He told Siegel that he did so in part because “cold water can keep the organs viable longer,” and he also considered the boy’s age and his mother’s ardent prayers.
“Things change in the room,” Sutterer told Siegel. “There is a presence in the room you can feel.”
