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Almighty.” G-d then sends a whirlwind, couldn’t walk, talk, read, write, or even and prescribes a pill. That is a technical
shaking mountains and shattering rocks, recall the details of her life. But she was problem.
but G-d was not in the wind. Then G-d very unusual in one respect. She was a
sends an earthquake, but G-d was not in Harvard neuroscientist. As a result, she The second kind is where we ourselves
are the problem. We go to the doctor who
the earthquake. Then G-d sends fire, but was able to realize precisely what had listens carefully, does various tests, and
G-d was not in the fire. Then G-d speaks happened to her. then says: “I can prescribe a pill, but in
in a kol demamah dakah, a still small voice. For eight years she worked every day, the long-term, it is not going to help. You
He asks Eliyahu the same question again,
“What are you doing here, Eliyahu?” and together with her mother, to exercise her are overweight, under-exercised and over-
stressed. If you don’t change your lifestyle,
brain. By the end, she had recovered all
Eliyahu replies in exactly the same words her faculties, using her right hemisphere all the pills in the world will not help.”
as he had done before: “I have been very to develop the skills normally exercised That is an adaptive problem.
zealous for Hashem, G-d Almighty.” At by the left brain. You can read her story
that point G-d tells Eliyahu to appoint Adaptive problems call for teshuva, and
Elisha as his successor (Melachim I 19). in her book, My Stroke of Insight, or see her teshuva itself is premised on the propo-
deliver a TED lecture on the subject. Taylor
Eliyahu has not changed. He has not is only the most dramatic example of what sition that we can change. All too often
we tell ourselves we can’t. We are too old,
understood that G-d now wants him to is becoming clearer each year: that by an too set in our ways. It’s too much trouble.
exercise a different kind of leadership, effort of will, we can change not just our When we do that, we deprive ourselves
defending Israel, not criticizing it (Rashi). behavior, not just our emotions, nor even of G-d’s greatest gift to us: the ability to
He is asking Eliyahu to make a similar just our character, but the very structure
transformation to the one Pinchas made and architecture of our brain. Rarely was change. This was one of Judaism’s greatest
gifts to Western civilization.
when he became a man of peace, but there a more dramatic scientific vindica-
Eliyahu, unlike Pinchas, did not change. tion of the great Jewish insight, that we It is also G-d’s call to us on Yom Kippur.
Even his words do not change, despite can change. This is the time when we ask ourselves
the momentous vision. He had become where have we gone wrong? Where have
too holy for this world, so G-d took him That is the challenge of teshuva. we failed? When we tell ourselves the
to heaven in a chariot of fire. There are two kinds of problems in life: answer, that is when we need the courage
technical and adaptive. When you face to change. If we believe we can’t, we won’t.
It was Judaism, through the concept of
teshuva, that brought into the world the the first, you go to an expert for the If we believe we can, we may.
solution. You are feeling
idea that we can change. We are not pre- ill, you go to the The great question Yom Kippur poses to
destined to continue to be what we are. us is: Will we grow in our Judaism, our
Even today, this remains a radical idea. doctor who emotional maturity, our knowledge,
diagnoses
Many biologists and neuroscientists our sensitivity, or will we stay what we
believe that our character and actions the illness, were? Never believe we can’t be different,
are wholly determined by our genes, our greater, more confident, more generous,
DNA. Choice, character change, and free more understanding and forgiving than
will, are – they say – illusions. we were. May this year be the start of a
new life for each of us. Let us have the
They are wrong. One of the great discov- courage to grow.
eries of recent years has been the scien-
tific demonstration of the plasticity of
the brain. The most dramatic example of
this is the case of Jill Bolte Taylor. In 1996,
aged 37, she suffered a massive stroke that
completely destroyed the functioning of
the left hemisphere of her brain. She

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