By Meira Kolatch, JNS
Even a hardened secularist would struggle to deny that we are witnessing events that defy politics and refuse to be explained away by diplomacy.
It has long been fashionable in the Western world to treat faith with a kind of embarrassed condescension. A relic of a more primitive time.
Useful, perhaps, for inspiring great art or comforting the bereaved, but not to be mentioned in serious company and certainly not in the company of generals or heads of state. At some point, the modern mind decided that invoking God was unsophisticated. That prayer belonged to children and televangelists. That miracles were metaphors.
But then something extraordinary happened. Over the past few days, even the most hardened secularist would struggle to deny it: We are witnessing events that defy politics. That refuse to be explained away by diplomacy or realpolitik. That feels (and I say this with care) biblical.
U.S. President Donald Trump, in a bold military operation, neutralized what has been called the “nuclear heart” of Iran. In a matter of hours, one of the greatest threats to the Jewish people since 1945 was disabled. Not only without American casualties, but with surgical, almost divine, precision. It was, by every metric, a miracle.
And then the images: Trump at the Western Wall. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is speaking openly about divine guidance. U.S Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee invoking God without apology. These are not accidental optics. These are men—flawed, yes, like all leaders—who seem acutely aware that they are part of something far larger than themselves. That history is being moved by a hand not their own.
For decades, Western liberalism has tried to sanitize God out of the public square. Faith was reduced to a personal hobby. “Keep it to yourself,” we were told, as if belief in God was no different than a fondness for birdwatching. But the Jewish people, and indeed the State of Israel, do not exist because of realism or probability. They exist because of a covenant. Because of a promise. Because of miracles.
What we are seeing now is not merely a geopolitical shift. It is something more profound: a return to the language of faith. A restoration of the moral imagination. A world in which we can again say, without embarrassment, that Pharaoh hardens his heart. That evil exists.
Trump, for all his many eccentricities, is beginning to look like one of them. As is Netanyahu. Not because they are perfect. But because, at this moment in history, they are standing in the gap and holding the line. Saving a nation that was once again on the brink.
The Jewish instinct, shaped by exile and pogrom, has been to retreat from overt expressions of faith in public. To play by the rules of a secular world that tolerates menorahs as decoration but not as declarations. But this is no longer tenable. Faith is no longer optional. It is the lens through which reality must now be understood.
Iran is not just a threat because of uranium. It is a threat because of ideology, one rooted in a theocratic belief that the Jewish people must be destroyed. To fight such hatred without the language of God is to enter battle half-armed. The enemy is spiritual—and so must be the response.
Christians in America have long understood this. They walk boldly with their Bibles. They vote with their values. They build movements with prayer at the center. And they are not ashamed. It is time for the Jewish people, especially those in positions of influence, to do the same. To stop whispering the name of God like it’s a liability. To say it as they once did, with trembling and pride.
There is a reason the Western Wall in Jerusalem still stands. A reason it has become the backdrop of this war, a war not just for land or security, but for truth, light and faith itself.
So yes, let us say it plainly: God is back. The sooner we welcome Him into our headlines, our policies and our souls, the sooner we’ll understand what’s really happening. Not just in Israel. Not just in Iran. But in the very heart of history. Let’s make faith great again.
