Passengers on a plane are waiting for flight 767 to leave. The entrance opens, and two men walk up the aisle, dressed in pilot uniforms. Both are wearing dark glasses. One is holding on to a seeing-eye dog, and the other is tapping his way up the aisle with a cane.
Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin, but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start.
The passengers begin glancing nervously, searching for some sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming.
The plane moves faster and faster down the runway, and people at the windows realize that they're headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport.
As it begins to look as though the plane will never take off, that it will plow into the water, screams of panic fill the cabin. But at that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air.
Up in the cockpit, the co-pilot turns to the pilot and says, "You know, Bob, one of these days, they're going to scream too late, and we're all going to die."
Each of the Jewish holidays gives another ingredient to life; it adds another spice, another dimension to Jewish existence. In this week's Torah portion Beshalach tells the story of the splitting of the sea. It describes that dramatic moment in the Torah when at the brink of being captured by the mighty Egyptian forces, the Red Sea parted before the Jewish people. The newly born nation of Israel crossed to the other side and embarked on its journey to freedom.
This event occurred exactly 3,333 years ago, on the seventh day after the Exodus of Egypt, which took place on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nissan and is celebrated to this very day as the "Seventh of Passover."
What meaning does this miracle have for our lives? What was it about the splitting of the sea that turned it into such a central event in Jewish consciousness? Why must we recall it twice a day? And why do we have a special holiday celebrating it?
What is more, the Talmud states, "To match couples together is as difficult as the splitting of the sea." What is the meaning behind these words? Everybody knows that the process of finding a life partner and maintaining a potent and inspiring relationship may at times be excruciatingly difficult. But why, from all extraordinary miracles described in the Bible, does the Talmud choose specifically the miracle of the splitting of the sea to depict marriage?
In the sporting world will always be remembered the man who broke the 4-minute mile – a test of speed and endurance that still stands as one of the defining sporting achievements of the 20th century.
For decades, athletes sought to break the four-minute mile. Sportswriters wrote off this potential feat, claiming that human athletic prowess had reached its zenith. To run a mile must take a minimum of four minutes or a bit more.
Then along came an Englishman, Roger Bannister, and propelled human potential to new heights.
This historic event took place on 6 May 1954, during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford, watched by about 3,000 spectators. With winds up to 25 miles per hour before the event, and rain falling down, Bannister had said twice that he favored not running; he would try again at another meet. However, the winds dropped just before the race was scheduled to begin, and Bannister did run.
When the announcer, Norris McWhirter, declared "The time was three...", the roar of the crowd drowned out the rest of the announcement. Bannister's time was 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. He had not only trimmed two seconds off the world record (the previous record was 4 minutes and 1 second) but changed the perception of the world on man’s capacity to run.
In 2005, Forbes magazine chose Bannister's Four-Minute Mile as the Greatest Athletic Achievement in modern times.
What happened? How did he do it?
In Bannister’s own memoir, The First Four Minutes, he remembers thinking, “Even then people were talking about whether it would ever be possible for someone to run a mile in 4 minutes.
“But there was no logic in my mind that if you can run a mile in 4:1.25, you can't run it in 3:59. ...
“I knew enough medicine and physiology to know it wasn't a physical barrier, but I think it had become a psychological barrier."
The reason we can’t is that we believe it is impossible; once our minds are given permission to rule over our bodies, we turn the “can’t” into the “can”, the undoable into the done.
Once the four-minute mile was achieved, a feat until then firmly considered impossible, it was repeated by others.
Currently, the mile record is held by Hicham El Guerrouj, who set a time of 3 minutes 43.13 seconds in Rome in 1999.
So now, it went down by 17 seconds! Go figure.
What suddenly happened to alter the ability of runners to break through the four-minute wall of resistance? The problem was a psychological barrier, not a physical one. As long as it was mentally undoable it remained physically un-attemptable.
You see, barriers and boundaries of achievement, be they of mind or body, are often self-fulfilling prophecies. To the extent that we believe something is possible, this sets our self-imposed limits. If we do not believe in success at the exam, interview, problem-solving, we will invariably live up to these negative beliefs. The result is stunted growth.
Many of us contain negative echoes of the past, the unkind words said and the insults hurled when we were small and defenseless. Some of us have been mistreated or even abused. And the pain lingers on for decades, often impeding our relationships, our ability to celebrate life, our ability to run a successful business…
To confront these fears, we must discover our inner soul. Each of us has a soul, a spark of G-d, a light of the Divine, a reflection of infinity, which allows us to set ourselves free. No person can ever take that away from you, because no person ever gave it to you, not your parents, not your teachers, not your customers. Only G-d Himself. And so you are invincible just as G-d is.
A major impediment to growth is our feeling that we are stuck as we are, and we cannot change. If only we realized what untold powers lay within our soul, we would know that there is so much more we could be achieving in our lives if only we faced our fears and took on our challenges. With all our failings and all our weaknesses, we have a soul that is pure royalty, a divine spark that towers over and above all the challenges that life brings.
By choosing to believe in our infinite potential -- the capacity to achieve more, and succeed further -- our boundaries are pushed outwards, and the sky is the limit.
In the Kovno ghetto in the early 1940s, an extraordinary scene took place in the makeshift synagogue. The worshippers already knew the fate in store for them. One morning the leader of prayers stopped in the middle of the service and said, “How can I thank G-d for my freedom when I am a prisoner facing death? Only a madman could say this prayer now.”
The rabbi replied softly, “Heaven forbid that we should not say the blessing. Our enemies wish to make us slaves. But though they control our bodies, they do not own our souls. By making this blessing we show that even here we refuse to be defeated. We are free men, temporarily in captivity. That is how we shall live. That, if necessary, is how we shall die.”
We all have imaginary, or even real, walls of resistance, our personal “four-minute mile” mental limits, which we set for ourselves.
They can take many forms.
I can't possibly start keeping kosher… it’s just impossible.
I can't possibly silence my anger and forgive people who hurt me.
I can't possibly create a happy marriage. I am just always angry, upset, and frustrated with my spouse.
I can’t possibly exercise daily; it is not who I am.
I can’t be a happy person, I can’t be successful. I can’t be content. I can’t…
That is why the “splitting of the sea” is so relevant. As we celebrate the great miracle at the sea, we don’t only commemorate a miraculous feat of G-d splitting the ocean. The real miracle which we commemorate is that our forefather was able to break the ‘four-minute mile’ and forge forward into the ocean, breaking their own psychological barriers and limitations, and forge forward despite the challenges surrounding them on all sides. G-d told them to move forward, but there was a sea… How can they? Yet they forged ahead, and then they discovered that the sea split before them.
G-d propels each of us to move forward; to live an amazing, happy, wholesome, inspired, meaningful life, filled with light, goodness, hope, and spirit. G-d wants you to have the most incredible marriage, the most amazing relationships, and the greatest success.
But I see water on all sides. If I move away from the status quo, I will drown…
This is especially true in marriage and relationships. People become so fixed in how they view their wives or husbands that they place them in a certain box, and for decades they just relate to them from that space.
So the Talmud says, that the secret to relationships is the splitting of the sea. What seems like so absolute and inflexible, as much as water not standing up as a wall, is only due to your inability to appreciate how confined our vision often becomes, and our failure to appreciate the infinite potential of all reality. Move forward, work on yourself, challenge your conventions, habits, dogmas, perspectives, attitudes, paradigms, insecurities, fears, don’t be afraid of the sea, and you will see it can split!
As a wise man once said: Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!
A teacher once asked her students to write down on a paper what they want to be when they get older. One little girl wrote: Possible.
The teacher asked her what she meant by this?
She said: My mother always tells me, I am impossible… So when I get older I want to become “possible.”
So this morning we need to ask ourselves: What is our ‘four-minute mile’?
What is the achievement you wish you could accomplish in life but consider physically or emotionally impossible?
And ask yourself: are you mistaking a self-imposed barrier for a real obstacle?
Ask yourself what beliefs you’ve developed that are preventing you from achieving, and change them. You can do more, you can be remarkable. Just split your sea.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Jason Bennett wrote...