The Power of Impossible Thinking Eruvin 19

The whole month of Elul has been set aside for us to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It’s a time to contemplate what kind of person we aspire to be in order to actualize our aspirations in the New Year 5781. Our tradition believes that we can change and grow. “The capacity to respond to new and greater demands is shown in various ways. One way which is interesting is that athletic records have been broken remarkably in recent years.” (Rabbi Mordechai Waxman quoted in Moments of Transcendence: Inspirational Readings for Rosh Hashanah, edited by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, page 101) For the longest time people thought that running a four-minute mile was impossible. But Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier on May 6, 1954. Since then a sub-four-minute miles have become relatively commonplace. Over 500 American men alone have broken the four-minute mark, according to Track & Field News. That includes 21 who have run miles under four minutes since the beginning of 2018. In fact 10 high schoolers have broken the barrier as well!

 “… two Wharton School professors have analyzed the lessons for business of the four-minute mile. In their book, The Power of Impossible Thinking, Yoram Wind and Colin Crook they devote an entire chapter to an assessment of Bannister’s feat, and emphasize the mindset behind it rather than the physical achievement. How is it, they wonder, that so many runners smashed the four-minute barrier after Bannister became the first to do it? “Was there a sudden growth spurt in human evolution? Was there a genetic engineering experiment that created a new race of super runners? No. What changed was the mental model. The runners of the past had been held back by a mindset that said they could not surpass the four-minute mile. When that limit was broken, the others saw that they could do something they had previously thought impossible.” (https://hbr.org/2018/03/what-breaking-the-4-minute-mile-taught-us-about-the-limits-of-conventional-thinking)

Today’s daf Eruvin 19 teaches us what is true in the sports world is also true in our spiritual lives. Our potential to grow and change is metaphorically compared to a pomegranate. “If the golden altar in the Temple, which was only covered by gold the thickness of a golden dinar, stood for many years and the fire did not burn it, for its gold did not melt, so too the sinners of the Jewish people, who are filled with good deeds like a pomegranate, as it is stated: “Your temples [rakatekh] are like a split pomegranate behind your veil” (Song of Songs 6:7), will not be affected by the fire of Gehenna. And Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said about this: Do not read: Your temples [rakatekh], but rather: Your empty ones [reikateikh], meaning that even the sinners among you are full of mitzvot like a pomegranate; how much more so should the fire of Gehenna have no power over them.” Each of us have the built-in potential to live a life of mitzvot and good deeds. All we have to do from now until the High Holidays is change our mental model. What we thought was impossible now becomes the possible. We can become the people we aspire to be.