Anything is Possible: The Lesson of 300 Tons of Garbage

“Hasidic volunteers search 300 tons of garbage for lost tefillin, come up empty”

That was the headline last month describing a search of immense – and stinky – proportions.

A Williamsburg man placed his fully loaded bag containing his tallit and two pairs of tefillin (some people – especially Chasidim – wear a second pair in accordance with the view of Rabbeinu Tam) into a storage cubby at his synagogue.  The bag went missing.  Then someone had the bright idea to check thesurveillance video.

The video shows the man stuffing his bag into an already crowded portion of the storage unit.  Protruding the way it was from the cubby, it was only a matter of time before the laws of gravity took over, and the bag fell out of the cubby, landing directly in an adjacent trash can, without anyone noticing.  Now, the challenge is: how to get the tefillin back…

The New York City Department of Sanitation and Councilman Stephen Levin both got involved.  It was determined that the bag was in one of 32 containers that were shipped to Waste Management’s Fairport landfill, located southeast of Rochester.  By Monday morning a group of 30 volunteers from Brooklyn had traveled more than 300 miles to Rochester and were ready to start searching through an ocean of garbage, aided by 40 temporary workers.  Officials at Waste Management pulled all 32 container loads that had arrived from the area and gave the group a location where they could search through the trash, one container load at a time.  By Tuesday night the group had searched through 16 containers of refuse without finding the missing tallit bag.  The search continued through Thursday, but, alas, the tefillin were not found.

The search generated a lot of teamwork, determination, and positive feelings and attracted national attention.  One official noted: “We’ve had folks from the local community reaching out and offering their help.  We have also had people from other religious communities offering to do whatever they can, people offering hospitality and hotels offering accommodations.  We have even had people walking in and asking if they can help search.  There have been a lot of people who are willing to chip in.  We are all very inspired by the dedication and to see how many people are coming through for them.”

We can use more collaboration and common purpose these days.

What is your reaction to this story?

My wife Naama’s reaction was: That's a really silly place to put a garbage can...Someone should just buy the guy a new set of tefilin.  Both very true observations.

I found myself thinking:  How could they think there was even the slightest chance they would find the tefillin?  It is impossible!

Well, maybe we can achieve the impossible when we tell ourselves it is possible.

Like our patriarch, Jacob.

When Jacob arrived at Charan, he encountered some shepherds and their flocks of sheep near the well.  The opening of the well was sealed with a giant boulder.  Jacob asked why the shepherds were just sitting around and waiting.  Why not remove the boulder and give water to the flocks?  The shepherds responded that they needed to wait for everyone to assemble.  Just then, Rachel showed up.  Upon seeing her, Jacob rolled the boulder off the well himself and gave water to her sheep.  (Bereishit 29:7-10)

The obvious question is how was Jacob able to roll off the rock that was too heavy to be moved without all the shepherds present and helping?

One answer is that Jacob was much stronger than the other shepherds.  Another answer is that Jacob was seized with passion, and the adrenaline rush gave him the additional strength to do what could normally not be done.

Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (the Sefat Emet) asks a very fundamental question.  Didn’t Jacob realize that the boulder was too heavy to be moved by one man or even by several?  If it could be done, wouldn’t the other shepherds roll the boulder off the well?  Jacob was successful because he tried.  He tried, and he did.

Believing something is possible is the first step in accomplishing the impossible.  Fundamental to success is the belief that success is possible.  Psychologists call this the “self-efficacy theory.”

I am not sure those Jews searching through the trash knew this theory, but they were strongly committed to finding that tefillin bag. 

There are plenty of things which seem way beyond our grasp: peace in the Middle East, compromise between the Right and the Left, or a compromise regarding the Western Wall.  If we wait until everyone is ready to solve a problem, we’ll be waiting forever.  We need to begin by telling ourselves that the impossible is truly possible.  Even if we don’t succeed – or find the tefillin, the quest to move forward will leave us better than before.