Parshat Beshallach
February 11, 2017—15 Shevat 5777
Ten Yards at a Time
by Rabbi Wesley Gardenswartz
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Do you remember the moment, Sunday night, Super Bowl 51, when hopelessness, against
all odds, gave way to hope? When that pit in our stomach that the Patriots were going to lose
gave way to the unlikely possibility that they might win after all? There was the fumble. Down
by 7. The Falcon drive. Down by 14. The interception, the pic six, down by 21. All we could
muster was 3 points. Down 21 to 3, and then Lady Gaga and the half time show. And then, the
Falcons score again. It is 28 to 3. It is late in the third quarter. The clock is ticking. Nothing is
working. Not our night.
It all felt hopeless. How did the Patriots turn it around in the face of all that adversity,
and what does it mean for us? The Super Bowl drama is over. But the problem of being 25
points behind late in the third quarter, the problem of running out of hope and running out of
time, is our problem, too.
Our physical fitness is not what we want it to be.
Our spiritual serenity is not what we want it to be. We don’t have peace of mind. We
have worries that keep us up at night. Worries about problems that we cannot seem to solve.
Equanimity might never be ours.
Our family life is not what we want it to be. We are all so busy, running in different
directions, who has time to connect with the people we love most? We love so much. We
connect so little.
It’s 28 to 3, late in the third quarter, physically, spiritually, in terms of our family life, and
we don’t have endless time. How do we make it right with the time that we still have left?
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Bill Belichik and Tom Brady probably did not consult the Torah on the sidelines Sunday
night late in the third quarter, but they could have. The Torah offers two contrasting visions for
finding hope when you have run out of hope.
The first is in our reading today, and that is the sensational miracle, the unrepeatable
miracle, that suddenly and dramatically makes it all right. The Israelites have run out of hope.
Pursued by the Egyptians, the Israelites have nowhere to turn. Stay where they are and get
massacred by the Egyptians. Or walk into the sea and drown. Of course when they walk into the
sea they don’t drown. God performs this amazing miracle. The sea parts, a wall of water to their
left, a wall of water to their right, they pass through on dry land, they get to the other side, they
turn around, and now, safe and sound, they see the water drown their Egyptian tormentors.
How do we assess this splitting of the sea moment? Is it something we might think about
when we are stuck and losing hope?
It does have some upside. Rashi tells us that the salvation was so powerful that an
ordinary Israelite experiencing this extraordinary salvation had a sense of God that was more
alive, more on fire, than the biblical prophets.
If we have ever been blessed to experience a modern miracle—the joy of brides and
grooms under their chuppah, the birth of a child, unexpected recovery from illness, seeing Israel
for the first time, hiking a gorgeous mountain range on splendid summer day—we have a sense
of how powerful it is to experience God’s amazing grace.
But the splitting of the sea moment also has some downsides. For one thing, such
moments hard to come by. Many people can live their whole life without ever experiencing such
a moment. And even if we do experience it, we learn from these Israelites that it doesn’t last.
Yes, in the initial afterglow of the miracle, the Israelites believed in God and in his servant
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Moses. But a mere three days later, they complain again about lack of water, lack of food, why
did you take us out of Egypt so that we could die in the wilderness.
The irony of this special Shabbat Shira is that the Torah itself is highly skeptical about
splitting of the sea type miracles. When you are running out of hope, you can’t count on them,
and they don’t last. We need another move.
Which brings us back to the Patriots when they were down 28 to 3 late in the third
quarter. There are some dramatic football moves for when your team is far behind and you are
running out of time. There is throwing the deep pass, the hail mary. The onside kick. The trick
play. The Patriots were desperate enough that they tried these football equivalents of a miracle.
Brady threw some long passes downfield. They tried an onside kick. Brady threw to a receiver
who threw to another receiver. But, with the notable exception of the miraculous Julius Edelman
grab in the midst of three defenders, none of the rest of this worked.
What did work was very simple. Ten yards at a time. Brady threw modest passes for
modest yardage, and his receivers kept catching the ball, over and over again. How did Brady
march the team down the field 90 yards in the last few minutes to tie the game? Ten yards at a
time. In overtime, how did Brady march the team down the field again 75 yards to win the
game? Ten yards at a time. No hail Mary’s. No tricks. How did he finish with 466 passing
yards—the most ever in a super bowl? Ten yards at a time. Chip, chip, chip.
Now ten yards at a time, when we do it, not on the world stage, but in our own quiet
lives, is not fancy. It is not glorious. It is most often not dramatic. But it is something we can do.
It is something we can count on. And it is something that lasts.
Which is why the Torah, after giving us the sexy but suspect splitting of the sea, gives us
another model that is the opposite of sexy, but is extremely reliable.
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Eish tamid tukad al hamizbeach, loh tichbeh. A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on
the altar, never to go out. Nice. A perpetual fire. Every synagogue has an echo of this ideal with
the neir tamid. How did the Israelites do it? Ten yards at a time. Every morning the priest had
to remove the ashes from the previous night’s fire and put in fresh logs for that day’s fire. Every
evening the priest had to remove the ashes from that day’s fire and put in fresh logs for that
evening’s fire. Every morning, clean up the ashes, put in the new wood. Repeat. Forever. All of
these daily and nightly quotidian exertions add up to something incredibly lofty and beautiful: a
fire that never goes out.
In a deep sense, the Torah is telling us that our lives are less about the unrepeatable
splitting of the sea miracle, and more about our daily patterns. Ten yards at a time until 28 to 3
becomes 28 to 9 becomes 28 to 12 becomes 28 to 20 becomes 28 to 28 becomes 28 to 34. We
win our lives in small increments.
We want to be healthier. How do we get there? One run at a time. One workout at a time.
One healthy choice at a time.
We want to connect more deeply with our loved ones. A whole week can go by and we
hardly see them. How do we get there? One Shabbat dinner at a time.
We want to learn more. One course, one book at a time.
We want to give more. One tzedakah, one worthy cause, at a time.
We want to affirm life more. And sometimes affirming life feels iffy. When you lose
somebody you love, you sometimes think you can never be happy again. After losing his son
Aaron, Rabbi Harold Kushner invoked Kahlil Gibran, who said he would turn his back on the
sun, and for him the sun would be nothing more than the caster of shadows. You can’t change
that in one dramatic move. But you can chip, chip, chip away at that one Kaddish at a time, one
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shacharit, mincha, maariv at a time, one life-affirming move at a time, until one day the
psalmist’s words are realized, that in the evening tears dwell, but in the morning, we feel joy
again.
When our team wants to win a Super Bowl that feels lost, it’s ten yards at a time.
When we want to keep the perpetual fire burning, it’s ten yards at a time.
When all hope feels lost, when we wonder whether we will feel hope and joy again, it’s
ten yards at a time. Which brings us back to an emotional moment of Super Bowl 51 involving
Tom Brady’s mother Galynn. As has been widely reported, his mother had most
uncharacteristically had not been able to attend any of his games all year long because she has
been receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatments. She made, the family made, a big push
that she could be there in person for the Super Bowl. At last she was able to be there. Brady
dedicated the game to his mother, and when asked who his hero was, answered his father,
because of the way they have soldiered through treatments, one day, one week, at a time, until
she was well enough to attend her first game of the year at the Super Bowl. If they could
persevere through chemotherapy, he could persevere on the field.
When it’s 28 to 3, and we’re running out of time, and no single miracle can set us free,
how do we find hope? Ten yards at a time. Shabbat shalom.
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