It's Only a Mountain

We learned this text today from "אבות דרבי נתן, פרק ו" or "The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, Chapter 6." Rabbi Akiva didn't know a thing about Torah until he was 40 years old. Then one day he came to a well with dented stone and asked "Who made the stone hollow?." Someone told him "The waters fall on it everyday and wears away at the stone...Haven't you heard that water wears away at stones?" Then Akiva realized "If what is soft wear down the hard, words of Torah that are hard as iron can all the more so hollow out my flesh and blood." This experience unleashed his drive to learn, starting from the basics until he had learned the whole Torah.

The he came to Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua and asked to learn the sense of the Mishna. They began to teach him and he asked simple yet essential questions. "Why is aleph written here? Why is bet here? Why was this said?"

Akiva stumped his teachers.

Then Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar equates Akiva's path to a parable: "There was a stonecutter cutting away in the mountains.

One time he went and sat on a mountain and began chopping tiny pebbles.

Some men came by and asked "What are you doing?"

He said to them "I am uprooting this mountain so I can put it in the Jordan River."

They said to him, "You can't uproot the whole mountain."

The stonecutter continued until he got to a big rock. He got under it, loosened it, uprooted it, and threw it into the Jordan River. He said to it "Your place is not here, it's there."

Rabbi Tarfon told Akiva, "This verse applies to you, 'מבכי נהרות חבש, ותעלמה יצא אור'

(In English, Please!) 'He binds the streams so they don't trickle, and what is hidden becomes illuminated.' "

Did you ever look at a mountain of work and think "How am I going to do this?"

When I first arrived in Israel, ten months seemed like eternity. I uprooted my life with this decision. How was I going to make it in this country of yelling cab drivers, pushy fruit vendors, and intense joy and tragedy? AND stay sane?

But sometimes it is good to uproot and be uprooted.

It makes me think of Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah. She was 60 years old when she moved to Palestine in 1920. New life, new language, no family. And it all happened in her "retirement years."

What I have learned from the stories of Akiva and Henrietta is this: If you have passion, do not let it be outweighed by fear. Allow yourself to uproot and be uprooted.

Even if the work seems lifetimes bigger than you, relax! It's only a mountain.