My children plan to be American Ninja Warriors when they grow up. American Ninja Warrior is a show where people from around the country compete on increasingly challenging obstacles in hopes of conquering the nearly impossible final obstacle course. In the ten year history of this show only two athletes have “won”. But this does not deter my children’s hopes and dreams. They plan, with great confidence and enthusiasm, the obstacles they hope to build in the backyard, and devise training programs to prepare for their chance to compete (sometime after they turn nineteen). They approach other challenges in similar ways, with the assumption that they’ll be able to do it because they want to. They know it might take work, but they don’t see things as impossible. In the meantime, though I would never have imagined that I’d have ninja warrior children, they do climb the walls with impressive skill.
Moses, in the first parsha of the book of Shemot, Exodus, has several stunning and miraculous moments of strength, luck, or power. As a, presumably unaware, baby, he survives a death sentence by fearlessly floating down the nile river into the outstretched arms of Pharaoh’s daughter who takes him as her own, conveniently allowing his mother to act as his nurse. As a young adult, he ventures out of the palace to see what is happening among the people and, without a thought of the danger this might put him in, confronts a task-master for his cruelty, ultimately killing him. Moses brings this sense of justice, unencumbered by worries of negative consequences, to an exchange with a pair slaves he finds fighting each other the next day. Running away into the desert, he chances upon a group of seven sisters being harassed by male shepherds at their local well. With the same confidence and sense of justice, Moses drives off the mean shepherds and helps the sisters water their flock.
But by this week’s parsha, Va’era, years later, we find Moses protesting God’s instruction to go back to Egypt to help free the Israelites from slavery. By now, Moses is filled with self doubt. He protests that he is not a good speaker, that Pharaoh will not listen to him, that the Israelites will not believe in him. What has happened to Moses to change his attitude so greatly?
Like the rest of us, Moses’ adult life probably did not turn out quite the way he had imagined it in childhood. He has a good life as a shepherd in midian with a wife, a couple of kids, and even a father-in-law he gets along with and looks up to. Life is good, but decidedly different that his childhood. While we, having read beyond this chapter before, know that Moses is perfectly able to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, for Moses himself, in this moment, his childhood confidence may seem naive. At this point in his life, Moses needs convincing that he is capable of the greatness that just came to him, that he took for granted, in his youth. As we will read over the course of the book of Shemot, Moses will need repeated confidence boosters and pep talks to keep him on track, from God, from his siblings, from his father-in-law. But he will turn out to be no less capable, no less committed to justice than he was in his youth. In fact he will prove himself, stronger, wiser and more capable than ever.
I love watching American Ninja Warrior with my children, seeing the amazing feats that the athletes achieve and the support they give each other, and especially the stories of the ninjas who would never have believed they could do the things they are now capable of. I love most, though, watching my kids’ excitement, and anticipation of their turn. I was never destined to be a ninja warrior, but they could be. The challenge will be to help them maintain the ability to imagine that with commitment, the extremely difficult is nonetheless possible. They will need to maintain this attitude long enough for their capabilities to catch up to their confidence, before the confidence wanes. Somehow as their parent, I have the job of nurturing that confidence and drive, so that even when the naivety of childhood gives way to a more mature realism, they will find the strength, with support from those who love them, to pursue their passions and what they believe is right.
May we all be blessed to find that strength within ourselves, and to teach it to our children.
Shabbat Shalom!