digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Cultivate "lev" (heart), meaning total focus of heart, mind, and determination, because intense directed focus can make the seemingly impossible achievable. The Rabbi illustrates this with Yaakov lifting the stone off the well and with a women's group whose focused, dedicated prayer is presented as the source of a miracle.
Key Points
- The Rabbi cites the Levush's commentary on the rain blessing, discussing Yaakov's lifting of the well stone, and notes the Torah's use of the word "lev" (heart) to show his strength came from dedicating his heart and fully focusing, not physical power alone.
- Rashi compares Yaakov lifting the heavy stone to lifting it "as if it were a cork," which the Rabbi uses to show how focus can make normally impossible tasks possible.
- Knowing one's virtues (middot), not only one's faults, is presented as essential for understanding what one can accomplish, a teaching attributed to the wife of the Chozeh of Lublin, who is buried in Brooklyn.
- The Al Shlomo women's group recited Tehillim together and, after visiting the Ohel (the Chofetz Chaim's gravesite) and reciting Psalm 23 at several graves, Lori Martin called out that her daughter Rachel, who had collapsed in Miami and been declared brain dead, had come out of the coma, which the doctor could not explain medically.
- Rabbi Krohn links "nes" (miracle), "nes" (a flag on a high pole), and "nisayon" (a test), arguing that passing a test of dedication lifts a person to a higher level where they can see the miracle.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions:
- Study Sefer Mussar, which the Rabbi describes as a wonderful and elevating text, ideally with someone who can give a shiur (class).
- Work on directed focus by dedicating your whole heart and mind to a goal with determination.
- Identify your virtues (middot) as well as your faults, so you know what you can accomplish.
- Start a group in your own community that meets regularly to recite Tehillim, as the Al Shlomo women did, noting that people of any age can keep growing.
- The Al Shlomo group, started by Lori Martin about ten years earlier in memory of her daughter Sarah Chaya, has grown to fifty to seventy women in the Five Towns and Far Rockaway.
- The women made their visit to the Ohel on a very hot Thursday morning, visiting the graves of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, Rav Aharon Kotler, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, and the Chofetz Chaim.
- The doctor, a pulmonologist with twenty-one years of experience, reportedly could offer no medical explanation for the recovery. This is reported as the speaker's account, not medical advice.
Bottom Line
Directed, wholehearted focus, combined with a clear sense of one's own virtues and sustained commitment, is presented as the path to achieving goals that look impossible.
