Mark Twain, whose manuscripts are nearly illegible due to all the changes and revisions, once wrote, “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter, ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
For a word to be the lightning it does not need to be long. In this week’s Torah portion the Mei Hashiloah, the great Rabbi Mordecai Yosef of Izhbitza, focuses on two letters, the word “if,” which begins the portion: “If you walk in my ways.” (Leviticus 26:3) He explains that “if” signals the uncertainty that always attends the one who seeks to follow God’s ways, for “the will of God is very deep.”
The more we explore “if” the more lightning we find in the word. “If” in Hebrew is im: aleph and mem. “If” contains all possibility in it, just as the Mei Hashiloah leads us to understand. “If this had happened.” “If that had not happened.” “If I had said this.” “If I had not said that.” But the word im contains an even greater power in Jewish history.
Itturei Torah cites a remarkable teaching from the Mincha Belulah: In the liberation from Egypt, there was an im – an if. Aaron begins with an aleph and Moses with a mem. So too with Purim: Esther begins with an aleph and Mordecai with a mem.
It does not end there, however. Eliyahu, the herald of the end times, begins with an aleph and of course Moshiach, the Messiah, begins with a mem. The aleph and mem of im carry within them past and future redemption.
What are we to learn from this? “If” contains all of life’s regrets. But the greater power of the im is that it is a word of potentiality. It is the space of all possibilities. God says, “IF you walk in My ways.” We hold the im in our own hands.
One of the best loved poems in the English language, was written by Rudyard Kipling for his son. It is called “If.”
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son!”
Though we may differ with some pieces of advice that Kipling wrote more than a century ago, the inspirational “if” is a direct descendant of Bechukotai. “If” is in your power – you can change your life.
If we can listen to these words and shape our lives; if we can walk in God’s ways, then we will be worthy of the promised blessings.
The writer is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles. Twitter: @rabbiwolpe