There are times in life when we feel stuck. We may think to ourselves, how in the world can we accomplish this task? It’s impossible for us to do this! Yet somehow or another, we find the strength within us to be able to accomplish the task at hand. Does that ability come from within us or from some outside power? Perhaps a mixture of both? We find examples of this in our own life all the time. We are put to a challenge and we wonder if we are up to this task. Can I do this particular thing or is it too much for me to do? Yet we go ahead and just do it – because we were forced by circumstances, perhaps even against our will. From where do we get the strength? In this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, we learn that when G-d gave the Torah to the Jewish nation, we “heard the lightning and saw the thunder!” You read that correctly. Our senses were so in tune that we heard what we usually see and we saw what we usually hear. Well, that is at least the way Rabbi Akiva understood the verse. Rabbi Yishmael, however, understood the verse a bit differently and took the more practical, albeit less literal, interpretation, and said that they saw the lightning and heard the thunder. There are of course reasons for their disagreements, but what is interesting is that they do agree on one thing: G-d was creating a bond with the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. The question is, how was it done? Was G-d telling us that He works in wonderous ways? That it is He who runs this world, and therefore He performed a miracle that betrayed the laws of nature, so we could have “seen the thunder and heard the lightning?” Or was the message that the world is meant for us to live in, and to reveal G-dliness within the confines of this limited space? If so, the thunder was heard and the lightning was seen, in a very natural way. The truth is that the two rabbis are not arguing but teaching us an important lesson. We need to always remember that we should keep both perspectives alive in our outlook on life. Yes, we live in this physical, mundane world. We see and hear things through our limited perspectives. However, there are times when we have to, and have the ability to, see what is usually heard and to hear what is usually seen. How? When we connect to G-d. We can do that when we learn the Torah, and we connect to G-d. That is when we recognize that this world is G-d’s world. We are real, and G-d is real. We can make the impossible possible.
ב"ה