The Molokai Channel ~ Paddling for your Life!
Each year a group of seasoned lifeguards and hard-core surfers assemble at Cherry Cove on Catalina Island for the 32 mile adventure culminating at the Manhattan Beach Pier. This is considered be the finale to a summer of competetive events that tests body and perseverence.
Yet there is another event representing a geometrical increase in human stamina, nearly boarding on mind over matter. The Molokai Channel event is hardly that. It is the Mt. Everest of acquatic challenges. There are usually no takers for this one- if you decide to take up the challenge of one of the most difficult and dangerous channel passages in the world, well, you're on your own!
It is over 40 miles of treacherous currents, huge swells and white-caps that, if they knock you off your board, you may well be permanently separated from it.
For all this, there is one rule: train as though your life depended on it! It is a survival training reminiscent of the old days at Camp Pendleton. For what one endures now and sacrifices for the short run, will pay dividends in the final analysis: survival! In contrast, anything short of shear determination on a daily basis will no doubt be easier in the short run, but will ultimately bring tragedy.
So it is with our weekly Torah portion, "Reeh" ( "See!"). We are given a choice: survival, with its rigors and tests, or the easier way, a more 'kick-back' regimen with its ultimate consequence.
Somewhere, a lonely surfer is paddling- hungry, lips parched from the saltwater, nearly delirious after 10 hours of combat with open-ocean swells. He lifts his chin momentarily to see the most welcome sight ever in his life: it's the Diamond Head crater, signaling the finish line of his odyssey for survival. "See", the Ohr Ha Haim tells us, that only by visual proof of long-term benefits, will ultimate survival be comprehensible. This "blessing" of survival in the future is comensurate to our "training" now.
Shabbat Shalom to all!
Nachum
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