Recognizing mistakes and acting to change them

It is nearly 20 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I lost about eight seconds of my life and almost died.

I had been kept late with a group of students I was teaching, some of whom were struggling with some deep issues, and by the time I got in my car to head home it was nearly 4 am. I was an idiot; I should have stayed over in the dormitory with my students, but I guess I thought I was invincible. I had a cup of coffee with me and assumed that would be enough to get me home; I was wrong.

I must have fallen asleep at the wheel as I have no recall of driving off the road and slamming full force into an electric pole on the side of the road. I had broken almost all of my ribs, ruptured my spleen and was bleeding internally, but these were things I did not yet know. What I did know was that I could not move my arms or legs, so my first thought was that the accident had paralyzed me and I was now a quadriplegic.

In the movies, when they want you to know that a wounded character is going to die, they have blood trickle out of his mouth. Well, in addition to everything else, I was bleeding severely from my mouth, as the force of the accident had caused me to bite my tongue (wearing a seatbelt most definitely saved my life but I later required over 30 stitches in my tongue) so I was absolutely sure I was going to die, and the most intense wave of sadness I have ever experienced overtook me, as I started to think of all the things I would never do.

It was 4 am, there was no one on the roads and I was bleeding to death, so it was over. But Hashem had other plans and sent an angel, most likely on his way back from a pub from what I remember of his breath, who found me and got help and the next thing I knew I was in a hospital emergency room.

When I managed to ask (with my ripped tongue and all the pain, communicating was no simple task) whether I would live, the nurses would not answer me. I later found out it would be a number of hours before they stabilized me enough to be able to answer that question. And through it all I still remember the low point of the ordeal: they had to stick a massive tube (called a zonda) down my throat and I was supposed to somehow keep it down without any anesthesia (they apparently could not give me anesthesia for a good number of hours so as not to mask my symptoms).

I kept telling myself I would suffer through this and if I need to keep this thing in for an hour or two I will somehow make it, until I managed to ask them how many hours I would have to keep this tube in. The nurse said probably two or three days, and that’s when I totally lost it; I could not imagine it was even remotely possible that I could do that.

Sometimes, we need to believe in the impossible. This week’s portion Va’era, provides a case in point.

The journey to redeem the Jews from Egypt has begun, and Moshe begins his epic battle to force Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go.

Seven of the ten plagues that will befall the Egyptians occur in this week’s portion. Before the plaughe of hail, there is a rather strange exchange. When Moshe appears before Pharaoh to warn him, the hail is described as a unique mixture of fire and ice that will destroy the Egyptian crops, but not fall where the Jews live; then Moshe then adds something not found with any other plague:

“Now, send and gather your cattle and all that you have in your fields, [for] any man or beast found in the field who has not been gathered indoors, the hail will fall upon them and kill them.

The one who fears the word of G-d from among the servants of Pharaoh will make his servants and their cattle flee to their houses. And the one who puts no stock in the word of G-d will leave his servants and his flocks in the field.” (Ex. 9:19-21)

G-d gives the Egyptians a way out — all they have to do is bring the cattle into the barns and stay indoors! But the continuation of the story (verse 25) makes it clear the hail did indeed strike at least some humans and cattle, so obviously not everyone took heed.

Clearly, even after six devastating plagues, not everyone was willing to act in accordance with the fear of G-d, least of all Pharaoh himself.

But most interesting is Pharaoh’s subsequent response to this plague. Unlike the rest of the plagues, where Pharaoh expresses irritation, anger or even fear, here, in the plague of hail, he says to Moshe: “I have sinned this time. G-d is the righteous one and I and my people are the wicked ones.” (9:28)

In a moment of clarity, Pharaoh realizes he made a mistake! G-d gave him a way out, and he should have grabbed it. He was perhaps given a chance to accept that G-d runs the world, and he had missed the opportunity. Or had he? The truth is, it was precisely when he recognized that he had missed an opportunity that he was being given an opportunity!

Maimonides in his Hilchot Teshuva (Laws of Repentance, chap. 1) suggests that there are three stages whereby a person can change everything:

First comes hakarat hachet — recognizing we have made a mistake.

Second, charata — regret.

And third, kaballa le’atid — making a decision that the future will absolutely be different, and then living up to that decision.

If a person does not recognize there is anything wrong with a mistaken form of behavior, he cannot change it. But sometimes, a person recognizes he is making a mistake, it just does not bother his enough to change it. Like a smoker who knows it’s stupid to smoke, but does not regret it enough to make a stand and change.

Pharaoh actually recognizes here that he has made a mistake, and he even regrets it! He is so close — all he has to do, to change everything, is decide to make a change and the future will be a whole new world. But he cannot make that change and, failing to capitalize on the opportunity, once the hail has been removed, falls back into his old ways, and the rest is history.

But why does this strange opportunity appear specifically in the plague of hail, bringing it to a new level?

All of the plagues until now are miraculous in that they are predicted and do indeed occur, that they come and go exactly as promised and even that they effect a change in the natural order. But there is nothing that is visibly and clearly inherently impossible in them. The rivers become blood, but if you happened across a stream of blood pouring down a gulley you would not necessarily assume it was miraculous, unless you understood the circumstances. (In fact the Talmud, in describing the fall of Beitar in the Bar Kochba rebellion and subsequent Roman massacre of its Jewish citizens, describes just such a river of blood.) And a herd of wild animals or a multitude of frogs might be pretty intense but would not necessarily clearly be miraculous.

But in the plague of hail, something is happening that is simply impossible: ice and fire cannot mix; one must extinguish the other, and yet they co-exist as the will of G-d, to destroy Egypt and allow the Jewish people to come one step closer to freedom.

Why is it that so often we know we are making mistakes in our lives and we even regret them but we do not seem able to change the script and change what we do? Why do we seem to fall right back into the patterns that we know are mistaken again and again?

Perhaps it is because deep down we do not believe it is really possible to change. We just do not believe we will be able to lose and keep that weight off, or stop smoking for good, or decide not to get angry and actually succeed….

Hidden in the plague of hail, where Hashem shows that the impossible is indeed possible, is the challenge we all have of learning to grab those opportunities.

To this day, every time I get behind the wheel of a car to set out on a drive I try to go back to that moment, that horrible zonda, and make a decision that this drive, today, will be different because of that moment. And ever since that car accident, when I get a little tired behind the wheel, I do something really radical: I pull over to the side of the road and close my eyes….

May we all be blessed to recognize the mistakes we inevitably make and grab hold of the opportunities to change them while those windows of opportunity remain open.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com