A physics
student entered the lecture hall to take his exam, picked up the test, and read
the first problem: "Describe how to determine the height of a
skyscraper using a barometer."
The student wrote: "Tie a long piece of string
to the barometer, lower it from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The
length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of
the building."
His exam was returned three days later and this
problem was marked wrong. The student went to see the professor, who explained
that the answer was wrong because it did not entail using the barometer as an
instrument to measure air pressure. “The problem didn’t require that the
barometer be used that way,” the student replied.
The professor conceded that this was true and
asked, “Your answer did not demonstrate a knowledge of physics. Do you know
what answer I was looking for?”
“Certainly,” the student said. “You could use the
barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the
ground, and convert the difference into a height of air. But your question
didn’t require that I demonstrate a knowledge of how a barometer is designed to
be used.”
“So you have other answers?” the professor ventured.
“Absolutely, plenty of them,” the student replied.
And he began:
“First, take the barometer up to the roof and drop
it off the side. Time how long it takes to reach the ground, and from this
calculate the height of the building.
“Or, if the sun is out, measure the length of the
barometer and, setting it on its end, the length of the shadow it casts. Then
measure the length of the shadow cast by the building. By similar triangles,
you can calculate the height of the building.
"Then again, you could tie a short piece of
string to the barometer and swing it as a pendulum, first at ground level, then
on the roof of the skyscraper. The difference in the pendulum’s period can be
used to calculate the height of the building.
“Is that all?” asked the professor.
“No,” replied the student. “You could enter the
stairwell and climb to the top using the stairs, marking off the height in
barometer lengths. But probably the easiest and quickest would be to knock on
the door of the janitor and say: ‘I have this nice, new, valuable barometer.
I’ll give it to you if you tell me the height of this building.’”
Since all the students’ responses were legitimate,
the professor gave him full credit for his initial answer.
Parshat
Shelach-lekha (in Numbers 14) records that the Israelites’ forty-year
ordeal in the wilderness is punishment
for succumbing to fear and disregarding the favorable report brought by Joshua
and Caleb.
Your
carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, while your children roam the
wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of
your carcasses is down in the wilderness. You shall bear your punishment for
forty years, corresponding to the number of days -- forty days -- that you
scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to
thwart Me. (Numbers 14:32-34)
Here in parshat
Ekev, however, we find a second tradition explaining the four-decade
sojourn in the Sinai Wilderness: the Israelites are being tested:
Remember
the long way that the Lord your God has made you travel in the wilderness these
past forty years, that He might test you
by hardships to learn what was in your hearts; whether you would keep His
commandments or not. (Deuteronomy 8:2)
This is the not the only occasion that God tests people.
Genesis chapter 22 describes the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac) as a test of
Abraham. God demands that Abraham offer his beloved son Isaac as a sacrifice.
What kind of test is this? It sounds cruel, doesn’t it?
I want to propose that both Akedat Yitzhak (the Binding of Isaac) and the forty years in the
wilderness are indeed tests, but not in the way we generally think of tests.
Four decades in the wilderness, facing trials and
tribulations, teaches the Israelites what they are made of. It teaches them their
strengths and weaknesses. It reveals their fears and priorities. To enter the
land and claim their inheritance, they must know themselves. There’s nothing
like adversity to do that.
Similarly, God could not be testing Abraham to see if he
will truly slaughter his son. That would be a reprehensible thing to do
regardless of whether Abraham believes it to be God’s will or not. My
colleague, Rabbi Howard Apothaker, makes a brilliant and innovative argument
for another viewpoint: The test is whether Abraham has come far enough in his
relationship with God to trust that God
will stop him. Abraham’s test is to
learn about himself: how deeply does he trust God?
It is a truism that “life is a test.” If forty years in the
wilderness is a test -- enough time for one generation to die and another to be
born -- then all of life is a test. Every challenge thrust into our laps
reveals our true selves -- to us. Every decision we make illuminates for us, in
the dazzlingly bright light of reality, who we are and what we are made of.
Thinking about life as a test has served me well at the most
difficult and painful times of life, when I think the well is empty and I have
no more reserves, or when my patience or good will is worn to a thread. I try
to remind myself that this is a test: what am I truly capable of? That thought
brings a new perspective, a measure of objectivity, and sometimes enough
distraction to rally. God administers the test because that is the nature of
life in this universe, all of which is contained in God. You know the bumper
sticker: It happens. As people say, “Life is a deck of cards, and you have to
play the hand you are dealt.” This is not to say that the world is random and
without meaning. We control far less than we think and hope; a great deal of
life is good fortune or a lack of it. When it’s the latter, it helps to frame
the situation (at least in part) as a test for me to learn what I am truly made of and what I am truly capable of.
It means that God is present and potent. At the most difficult
times, facing the most difficult decisions, we can call on God, who is the
source of existence itself, the animating force of life, for patience,
strength, and courage. There is more of each in each of us -- embedded in the
divine spark that vitalizes each of us. When we call on God, we call on the
best in ourselves and might be surprised to learn that the well is far from
empty.
When we took tests in school, there was almost always “the
right answer” and everything else was wrong. But life tests are nothing like school
tests. In life, there are often multiple legitimate answers -- as the clever
student demonstrated to the physics professor in the joke I began with. It
helps to keep that in mind. A “right” answer is one that preserves human dignity
and avoids causing pain and suffering. This is a much harder test than the
worst physics exams we took in school, but for this, you can leave your #2
pencil at home because there are no circles to bubble in.
© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
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