Rabbi Rael Blumenthal

Last week as Shabbos ended, I mentioned to some of the Chevra in shul that I wasn’t going to be at minyan on Sunday morning. Instead, four of us were going to be davening on the other side of the Palm Beach Half Marathon finish line.

One of the guys turned to me with a mixture of frustration and defeat. “I guess running a half marathon is easy for you these days.” He was not entirely wrong, but far from correct.

The truth is that six years of running has made it possible for me to sign up for a race without the anxiety and trepidation that gripped me a few years back. But all measures, I am a better runner than I was when I started. But it doesn’t make the activity any easier for me or anyone else.

It’s a golden rule that I once learned from a coach: It never gets easier. You get better. When the fastest runners in the world run at their maximum effort, it will always feel like their maximum effort; it will never feel any easier.

This reality is not confined to exercise. It’s the deep truth of any human endeavor, from parenting and relationships, to building careers and learning skills.

Once, during my second year in Kerem B’Yavneh, I approached Rav Moshe Stav, and told him I wasn’t feeling up to learning that day. I was tired, unmotivated and thought maybe I needed a little time off. Rav Stav looked at me, empathized with the feeling; and then explained: “Sometimes, when I come to afternoon seder, I feel the same need to run from the Beis Medrash as I did when I was a teenager. It’s the same pull, the same lack of motivation. The only difference now, is that I can overcome it much quicker than when I was a Bachur. The challenge never disappears.”

But there is a dark side to our progress in life. The law of diminishing returns dictates that as time goes on, our maximum effort will yield smaller and smaller noticeable results. Sometimes, in some areas, we become content with our competence. We’re satisfied with our capacity, and no longer find ourselves pushing towards our maximum effort.

It’s at this point of satisfaction that we stop growing; “good enough” becomes the enemy of “great”.

Reading through Sefer Bereishis, we feel the pull towards the plateau of complacent tranquillity. Yaakov and his family have finally returned to Eretz Yisrael. The nascent Jewish nation has survived Yishmael, Lavan and Esav. From poverty and loneliness, Yaakov is returning home with a children, wealth and prominence, he is finally ready to settle.

Rashi (לז:א), quoting the Medrash, informs us that settling is never an option:

בִּקֵּשׁ יַעֲקֹב לֵישֵׁב בְּשַׁלְוָה, קָפַץ עָלָיו רָגְזוֹ שֶׁל יוֹסֵף – צַדִּיקִים מְבַקְּשִׁים לֵישֵׁב בְּשַׁלְוָה, אָמַר הַקָּבָּ”ה לֹא דַיָּן לַצַּדִּיקִים מַה שֶּׁמְּתֻקָּן לָהֶם לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא, אֶלָּא שֶׁמְּבַקְּשִׁים לֵישֵׁב בְּשַׁלְוָה בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה

Yaakov wished to live at ease, but this trouble in connection with Yosef suddenly came upon him. When the righteous wish to live at ease, Hashem says to them: “Are not the righteous satisfied with what is stored up for them in the world to come that they wish to live at ease in this world too!”

The depth of Rashi’s message here extends far beyond Yaakov’s circumstances. Our sages are teaching us that having a children is not the same as raising children.

Yes, of course Yaakov has much to be proud of. He had surpassed the familial achievements of his father Yitchak and grandfather Avraham. He is the very first father in all of Sefer Bereishis to create a family that will abandon idolatry. For the first time in human history, there is hope for a grassroots movement of spreading ethical monotheism. But the goal was never to simply “be Jewish”. There is always more to achieve, greater heights to ascend, and more to accomplish at the points of our maximum effort.

For Yaakov, as for us, there is always much more work to be done. It doesn’t get easier, we just get better at it.