There’s a Midrash that tells the story of a man who wished to test the legendary wisdom of the children of Jerusalem. One of the tests was to give a Jerusalem child a few small coins and asked him to come back having purchased something he can eat for many meals. Now, that’s a challenge. Even before the days of increased food costs, a few coins couldn’t buy something that would last for many meals!
The Jerusalem boy brought back salt.
It was a clever use of the few small coins. And salt doesn’t go bad, and it can certainly last for many meals. But what’s the message here about Salt as proof of Jerusalem Wisdom?
There’s a lot of angles we can go with this, and we put a bunch of life-messages on the spoof label we made for salt-shakers as a giveaway this year. But in introducing our Israeli guests this Shabbat, let’s go with this: Salt has an outsized impact. A little salt goes a very long way.
Israel is like that. It’s a small country, a sliver of land you can miss on a map without zooming in. Like they say, it’s a whole country that’s the size of NJ. Yet it has a disproportionate impact. Somehow it snatches world headlines all the time, it is a leading economy, and it is one of the greatest technology hubs in the world. Some of the greatest breakthroughs in technology and medicine happens in Israel. The world is obsessed with Israel, for better and for worse. To paraphrase “The Little Engine that Could” – Israel is the little country that could, overcoming tremendous adversity and challenges, making the most of a little, maximizing its limited resources and going beyond any expectations.
This is a lesson for us, too. Sometimes we may feel small in our eyes. Or maybe people make us feel small. We don’t think we have what it takes. Maybe we feel overwhelmed, maybe we feel inadequate, maybe we feel limited. Israel reminds us to think of ourselves as salt – we may be small but we are potent, we are packed with potential, we can have an outsized impact!