Doing the Impossible - Rabbi Tzvi Sytner

i heard an amazing story about itsec pearlman now isaac is a world famous violinist but unfortunately as a child he had polio and now he can only walk with braces on his legs and with crutches so before each concert he would slowly and painfully walk across the stage one step at a time until he would reach his chair but when he played it was magical now at this one concert in lincoln center in new york city something went very wrong in the middle of the performance one of the strings on his violin broke they say you could hear it snap across the room the orchestra immediately stopped playing and the audience was silent everybody was waiting for him to pick up his crutches and limp off the stage and go get another violin but he didn't instead he waited a moment he closed his eyes and then he signaled to the conductor to continue playing the orchestra began playing again exactly from where he left off he played with such passion and energy they had never heard anything like it before now apparently they say it's impossible to play symphonic peace with just three strings but that night it's a prominent refused to accept impossible you could see him modulating and changing and recomposing the peace in his head and what he played was magnificent and when he finished everybody stood up and he started cheering when things quieted he turned to the audience and he said you know an artist is someone who can make beautiful music from what he has you know we all prepare ourselves to make music on a violin of four strings but then in our lives we find ourselves having to play with only three maybe we can't support our family the way we plan maybe we have a medical diagnosis that that came as a shock maybe we're struggling with a family relationship but we can't give up we need to learn to make music with three strings and although it feels impossible when we keep on playing despite the challenges that music is even more beautiful and this is really the story of the jewish people right to never give up to keep on playing and to keep on praying to keep building and to keep hoping i heard this idea from rabbi jonathan saks that's how he explains that the difference between optimism and hope is that optimism is the belief that things will get better it's all going to be good but hope is the belief that together we can make things better [Music]