Some of you may know
this quote from the internet or, perhaps, from your Rabbi’s office wall. It’s been a standard
feature of any office I have occupied.
It serves as a reminder to experiment, to think out of the box from time
to time, to try just about anything, and to see the glass as partially full even
if others might believe it's mostly empty.
That quote also
encourages us to view an impending and imposing challenge from the perspective
of what might make it doable rather than identifying the obstacles in the way
as reasons not to try.
A decade
ago, Freakonomics,
a book by authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, quickly became a
bestseller due to its unusual take
on how to solve a wide range of societal problems around the world. Their newest book, Think Like
a Freak,
attempts to teach the reader about their thought process through examples of
how ordinary people were successful by looking at a
problem or situation from a new angle.
One of the best stories in the book is about eating. In this case, it was about a
Japanese college student who needed to make more money to pay the rent and
other expenses. Kobi, the
champion-to-be, was signed up for an eating competition by his girlfriend
Kumi. He is 5’8’’ and
has a slight build, but had always cleaned his plate and sometimes his sisters’ plates
at home when he was growing up. To
prepare for the contest, Kobi began to study how people won these gastronomic
competitions. He explored how they
consumed what was in front of them in such a large quantity and so quickly. He
won his first competition by eating just enough to move from the first round to
the next. That way, he had enough
energy and stomach capacity for the final round to win. After his first triumph, Kobi set his
sights on a well-known international event: Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July
International Hot Dog Eating Contest, held every year at Coney Island. The rules: eat as many hot dogs and hot dog buns
as you can in 12 minutes. There
were no restrictions on how to accomplish the feat in order to win. The record had been 25 ½ hot dogs
and buns until Kobi entered the contest in 2001. As a first timer at the
competition, he won by eating not 26, not 30, not 40, but 50 hot dogs and
buns. This intrigued author Steven
Levitt. He interviewed Kobi to ask
how he had eaten so much in so little time. Normally, a contestant would try to eat the hot dog in the
bun whole. Kobi asked himself a
number of questions to arrive at his strategy in terms of eating more in the
alloted time. He wondered: What
would happen if he broke the hot dog and bun in half before eating? What would happen if he ate the bun
separately from the hot dog?
And, knowing that he would be given a cup of water, could he use the cup
of water to moisten the bun to make it easier to consume? Asking these questions was the
key to his success. And even more
than that, he wasn’t thinking about how many hot dogs he had eaten
while he was taking part in the contest. He also found that if he did a little
dance or shake while eating, he was able to eat more hot dogs. Kobi won by breaking down the
task at hand into all of its possible components and asking probing
questions. He let go of all
of the preconceived notions about such a contest and created a new paradigm
that is now emulated by current participants in the contest. 
We likely think of the
Jewish heritage as a source of ingenuity, creativity, and an ability to adapt
when survival requires it.
That is how we moved from a religion centered on animal sacrifices at
the Temple in Jerusalem to a community that gathers at synagogues in
prayer. Long before that
change 1900 years ago, the Israelites were forming their community in the
wilderness of Sinai.
In the Torah reading for this week, the Israelites were treated to a
report from the 12 scouts who went into the land of Canaan to see what it was
like. Moses had asked the scouts
to answer these questions: “Are the people who dwell in the land strong or
weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns open or fortified? Is the
soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or
not?” And Moses asked for a sample
of the fruit of the land.
The scouts did bring back a large cluster of grapes on a carrying frame
carried by two members of their reconnaissance team. 10 of them said that they found the land to be a good land,
with rich soil and woods, but they were afraid of the people and the fortified cities
that they saw there. In verse 32 of Chapter 13 of the
book of Numbers, they told the people that the land “devours anyone who lives
there.” In verse 33, this majority
report noted that the people were not only tall, they were giants. They concluded, “we looked like
grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” They spread their discouraging
words throughout the people. Two scouts, Caleb and Joshua, believed in their
people’s
ability to overcome any challenge before them, including this one, and succeed,
with the help of God and their own faith.
The majority of the scouts
failed to do what Kobi did – to take a step back and consider the situation
from more than one viewpoint.
Seeing themselves as "grasshoppers" revealed internal fear and
distress which they were unable to relinquish. They communicated that image of feeling small to everyone
around them, infecting the entire people with pessimism. That defeatist approach was a
result of their own preconceived notions about their power that came from their
life as powerless slaves in Egypt.
It was as if they had forgotten that they had witnessed God's miraculous
help and assistance in Egypt that enabled them to be freed from slavery, to
escape the approaching Egyptian army at the Sea of Reeds, and to sustain
themselves with manna that was provided along their journey. These
experiences should have bolstered their spirits enough for them to be
encouraging and hopeful.
Unfortunately, the Israelites still needed guarantees to overcome their
sense of being small and powerless, as if that looming pillar of cloud and fire
accompanying them wasn’t enough. Rather than seeing success around the corner, they
could only imagine failure. The Torah noted that this generation was not allowed to
enter the land, other than the minority report scouts, Joshua and Caleb, who
emerged with their faith and optimism intact. They alone demonstrated their potential to step forward into
the unknown with confidence and determination.
In this tale, the
reference to the scouts’ sense that they seemed like grasshoppers overshadowed
the hopefulness represented by the cluster of grapes. It is almost ironic that the scene of two scouts
carrying the cluster of grapes is the logo for the Israeli ministry of
tourism. If viewed through
the lens of the majority of the scouts, the grapes presented a symbol of a land
that was beyond the reach of a downtrodden people that had just been
redeemed. It signified an instance
of failure without even trying.
But two of the scouts saw the grapes for what they were and could be - a
result of someone planting a seed based in optimism. Caleb and Joshua realized that their people could be
the ones to plant seeds that would grow clusters of grapes if they could only
view themselves as human beings with a potential for power and creativity,
rather than believing that they were only grasshoppers with no future. That is why some of the people asked to
go back to Egypt, even though it was a place where they only knew cruelty and
suffering. They had been
rendered afraid to try.
Today, we have
the opportunity to try and fail, and eventually succeed, and to do so with the
bright-eyed enthusiasm of Caleb and Joshua. They recognized that it was crucial for them to share
their positive perspective so that it would plant a seed of optimism that would
blossom in the next generation.
So let us apply our spirit and our hope to the possibilities of strengthening
our own congregation through dialogue, fellowship and true companionship; of building a community that is based
on people focusing on their common interests rather than obsessing on the
divisions that keep them far apart; and of creating a nation and a world that
will move people to act with honesty, with consideration, and with a
willingness to try to combat inequality and hatred, knowing that our failures
will eventually lead us to the promised land of significant achievement. May we always welcome new
perspectives and unusual angles that will build upon past failures and
frustrations and lead us to future satisfaction and success. 
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