I once read a National Geographic article about how young Chinese boys are trained in martial arts. They’re taken to a secluded place in the Hunlkijiu Mountains and put through rigorous training to stretch their control over mind and body. One of the exercises is to stand perfectly straight for five hours with a ceramic bowl on the head. They hang from ropes for two hours punch hot and cold water to stretch their resistance to heat and cold punch a stone wall to strengthen their fists and their pain tolerance and there are exercises to stretch concentration too.

The ultimate goal of all this training is for them to perfectly imitate a creature of the animal kingdom. To move using every limb and muscle exactly like a lion or like a cobra.

When I finished this article I thought That’s what it was all for? To imitate an animal?!

**** 

I recently accepted a job teaching English to five-year-olds from irreligious homes. A few of them are so smart I keep thinking Those brains need Torah! After repeating the ABCs three times they’ve got it down pat. We take out a little time to talk.

Last week I asked one of them who he’d want to be like.

“Ninja Turtle” he says.

“Ninja Turtle?”

“Yeah.” He’s sure.

“What’s so great about Ninja Turtle? Does he do good or bad?”

He sticks out his little fist and says “He fights against evil!”

“Does he help people?”

The boy thinks. He shrugs.

“Well” I say “if he fights against evil he must do good because he’s saving good people from bad.”

He thinks deeply. You can see him really stretching his brain because he’s probably not used to such questions or to going there to that part of the brain.

“Right” he agrees.

**** 

I attend a bas mitzvah of a lovely girl from a lovely family. All her classmates are singing “Eishes Chayil” like a heavenly angelic choir.

I sit awed watching the outcome of all the struggles and mesirus nefesh of the mothers in that room to raise these girls. How far some have come from homes without a word of Torah — to this.

The bas mitzvah girl stands up and starts to speak about that week’s parshah about Moshe Rabbeinu’s cries in the teivah — that they weren’t cries of despair but cries of tikvah hope. This is what drew Batyah to reach for his basket floating impossibly far off in the waters.

The bas mitzvah girl goes on to say that the reason Batyah was able to reach Moshe Rabbeinu was because of her good intention; because of that Hashem caused her arm to stretch.

Our job is not like those boys in the National Geographic to imitate nature but to stretch ourselves to go beyond it.

This new young woman’s dvar Torah made a deep impression on me — how if we have a good intention Hashem will stretch us beyond nature’s boundaries.

****

The same week there was to be a wedding in Bnei Brak the daughter of a dear friend.

In the twenty years we’ve lived in Eretz Yisrael I’ve been to Bnei Brak three times. It seems to me like the other side of the world impossible to reach.

But after hearing that dvar Torah about what a good intention can accomplish I intended to quietly make every ounce of effort to join my friend at this great simchah.

I planned the day as best I could to leave at four thirty.

At four thirty I re-planned to leave at eight.

But I’d set up a fail-safe mechanism. That morning I’d told my youngest daughter that we were going to a wedding in Bnei Brak.

When at four I started to wither she pushed on with cries of tikvah. “But Ima you promised!”

“I didn’t promise.… I don’t promise.” Still I do try as best I can to keep to whatever I say. “You know what? I’ll phone someone who lives in Bnei Brak and comes often to Jerusalem. Maybe they’re soon going back to Bnei Brak and we can join them.”

Not that I was plea-bargaining. But two buses locating a hall I’ve never been to — it all seemed too much.

I phone D. who lives in Bnei Brak.

“Are you possibly in Jerusalem?” I ask.

“No. I’m about to leave for Jerusalem. I need to pick something up there.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to go to Bnei Brak for a wedding.”

“Well my car’s broken so I was planning to take a taxi. But if you want to you can pick up what I need and I’ll pay for your taxi back and forth.”

“Okay!”

“But you have to leave immediately.”

We jump into action call a cab and we’re soon on our way to Bnei Brak.

The taxi pulls up exactly as the chuppah’s starting.

I never could have imagined in a million years that I’d make it like this.

And the whole way I was so happy beyond happy. Because I was seeing with my own eyes — that Stretch.