The imposter called the impossible

Our tradition teaches that the Torah was not given to the ministering angels; it was given to us and for us. One important implication is that nothing in the Torah lies beyond our reach. The Torah makes heavy demands, yet it rests on a promise that nothing it asks of us will ever be too much.

That means that when the feeling arrives that a mitzvah or a change of heart is more than we can manage, it does not come from Torah but from within us. That whisper, the one that says we cannot do it, that there is no point trying because we are bound to fail, is the authentic voice of the yetzer harah, the evil inclination trying to discourage us. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we are asked to replace that naysayer with the sound of optimism and confidence.

That is one of the messages of the shofar, whose blast is a sound of victory telling us that we can and we will overcome. Rosh Hashanah is the moment to walk into the new year with our head up, knowing there is no limit to the spiritual heights we can reach.

We all have a spiritual life. Many of us quietly yearn to grow, to perform more mitzvot, to pray more deeply, to learn more Torah. Yet many feel they lack the capacity to make it possible. To all of that the Torah answers ‘lo bashamayim hi’, it is not in heaven. Nothing is beyond us, neither the choice nor the power to act on it.

We shouldn’t call a thing impossible when in truth it is only very, very hard. The temptation to declare something is impossible is so potent because it releases us from all responsibility to try. In halachic terms we think we are patur, discharged of our obligation, the moment we decide we are doomed to fail. The concept of the impossible is the enemy of the difficult but worthwhile, and we cannot let it win.