One day in 1962, something terrible happened to Dick and Judy Hoyt. After nine months of joyful anticipation of the birth of their first child, something went terribly wrong. During the delivery, the umbilical cord coiled around the baby's neck, cutting off oxygen to his brain. The baby was born brain-damaged and quadriplegic, coupled with cerebral palsy. The doctors said that the child would be a vegetable all his life, and recommended putting him into an institution.
Dick and Judy refused. They brought their son Rick home, determined to make the best of the situation. Six years later, when the local public school refused Rick as a student, Dick and Judy themselves taught him the alphabet.
Although Rick could neither talk nor move, Dick and Judy were convinced that he comprehended what was going on around him and that he was as intelligent as his two younger brothers. Rick was 11 years old when his parents raised $5,000 and approached computer engineers at Tufts University to build a computer that would allow Rick to communicate using the only motion he controlled, slight lateral head movements. The engineers refused, saying that the boy had nothing to communicate because nothing was happening inside his brain.
"It's not true," Dick insisted. "Tell him a joke." One engineer told a joke, and Rick laughed heartily. A few months later, the computer arrived at the Hoyt household in Holland, Massachusetts. By pressing a switch at the side of his head, Rick typed out the words, "Go Bruins."
At the age of 13, Rick was finally admitted to public school. Two years later a lacrosse player in the school suffered an accident that left him paralyzed. The school arranged a five-mile run to benefit him, and Rick wrote on his computer, "I want to do that."
"When I'm running, I feel like my disability disappears."
Although Dick Hoyt, an ex-Marine who served in the Air National Guard, was out of shape, he agreed to push his son's wheelchair in the race. When they crossed the finish line, Rick was grinning from ear to ear. At home he wrote on his computer, "When I'm running, I feel like my disability disappears."
That was all Dick Hoyt needed to hear. In the three decades since then, Dick has pushed his son's wheelchair through 65 marathons (including 25 Boston Marathons) and 224 triathlons, including 6 Ironman competitions. For the bicycling segments, Rick sits in a seat in front of his father's bike; for the swimming segments, Rick lies in a life raft tied by a rope to his father's waist. None of this came easily to Dick. Before the first triathlon, he had to learn how to swim. "I sank like a stone at first," Dick recalls, "and I hadn't been on a bike since I was six years old." In 1992, the father and son duo, called "Team Hoyt," biked and ran across the USA—a 3,735 mile journey that took them 45 days.
In 1992, Dick founded the Hoyt Foundation, "to enhance the lives and mobility of people with disabilities, and to integrate the physically challenged into everyday life."
The video on youtube shows a middle-aged Dick Hoyt, his tattooed arms stretching forward in the water, swimming as he pulls a raft in which lies his immobile, grinning 35-year-old son. At the dock, Dick bends and, with visible difficulty, lifts Rick out of the raft. As he carries his son in his arms some 20 meters to a waiting wheelchair, the several dozen people lining the pier give Dick Hoyt a standing ovation.
Every time I watch the video, I am overcome by twin responses. First I cry at the sheer greatness of this man. Then I wonder if he would ever have become so great if his life had not been stricken -- and galvanized -- by misfortune.
BECOMING WORTHY
On Passover we celebrate that God redeemed our ancestors from slavery in Egypt 3320 years ago. The sages asked the obvious question: If God is the sole power in the universe, is God not also responsible for inflicting them with slavery in the first place?
Free will means that human beings, such as Pharaoh, can choose to do evil, but whether they succeed in their nefarious schemes is up to God.
In fact, the question is sharpened by reading the 15th chapter of Genesis with the classical commentaries. When God promises Abraham that his descendents will inherit the Land of Israel, Abraham, who is used to covenants of mutuality, questions how this unilateral promise can be fulfilled if his descendents are not worthy. God, in an apparent non sequitur, replies that Abraham's offspring will be slaves in a foreign land and will suffer oppression for 400 years.
The classical commentators explain that the tribulations of slavery would make Abraham's descendents worthy of inheriting the land.
We are predisposed to thinking of suffering as punishment. This passage, in which God's decision to enslave Abraham's descendents clearly predates any wrongdoing on their part, offers a new paradigm: suffering as a galvanizer to growth and greatness.
What quality did the Jewish people need to acquire that could be won only through the experience of slavery?
The Talmud asserts that the defining characteristic of Jewish people is rachamim -- compassion. The Talmud goes so far as to say that if you meet a Jew who lacks compassion, you can legitimately doubt that he is a Jew.
Jewish compassion no doubt accounts for Jews being at the forefront of every social movement dedicated to alleviating the suffering of the downtrodden. This compassion was forged during the formative stage of the emergence of the Jewish nation -- in the crucible of slavery.
Passover celebrates not only our redemption, but also the suffering that led to it.
Thus the Seder table is laden with symbols of suffering: the bitter herbs, the salt water symbolic of tears, the choroses to remind us of mortar, even the matzah, called both "the bread of freedom" and "the bread of affliction." Can you imagine a celebration of American Independence Day full of emblems of British oppression: Tory uniforms? The muskets used in the Boston Massacre? The preponderance of symbols of suffering at the Seder suggests that Passover celebrates not only our redemption, but also the suffering that led to it.
One of the four Biblical mitzvot of the Seder is to eat the bitter herbs. We are commanded not only to gaze at what is bitter or to remember it, but to actually imbibe it. Only by "swallowing" the suffering served to us do we attain redemption.
BAD=PAINFUL?
Judaism does not glorify suffering. In fact, in the High Holiday liturgy, we ask for atonement, "but not through harsh illnesses." We should never ask to be tested. Yet Judaism understands that the purpose of life is individual and collective redemption (breaking out of our limitations, fixing our shortcomings, and achieving our full spiritual potential), and that the process of redemption often involves hardship, pain, and difficulty.
One of the most pervasive illusions is that the well-lived life is characterized by ease and pleasure. Therefore, anything that intrudes on our ease and pleasure (such as illness, the birth of a handicapped child, financial loss, or the death of a loved one) is by definition "bad." For many, the very question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" presupposes the definition of "bad" as equivalent to "painful."
In the Jewish concept, the well-lived life is characterized by inner growth that creates a person of depth and compassion. Acquiring these qualities usually requires passing through challenges and hardships.
Is freedom escape from pain or embracing our challenges and using them as a catapult for inner growth?
The "ease and pleasure" model produces superficial people. The "inner growth through hardship" model produces people like Dick Hoyt. The crux of the issue is: how do you define freedom? This is the unspoken question behind the Seder. Is freedom lying on the beach for a year? Escape from all pain? Or rather embracing challenges and using them as a catapult for inner growth?
The very word "Passover" [in Hebrew Pesach] alludes to "leaping over." Thus, Passover is the time to replace the paradigm of "hardship as punishment" with the paradigm of "hardship as opportunity to catapult forward."
This is not to say that suffering necessarily produces spiritual greatness. An indispensable component of the formula is how we respond to the hardships that are put in our path. Here are the possibilities:
HARDSHIP + AVOIDANCE = SPIRITUAL MEDIOCRITY
HARDSHIP + REJECTION = BITTERNESS
HARDSHIP + ACCEPTANCE = SPIRITUAL GROWTH
USING HARDSHIP AS A SPRINGBOARD = SPIRITUAL GREATNESS
THE SPRINGBOARD
Last summer, a family from Manchester, England came to Jerusalem. The father, Leon Phillips, was a successful solicitor in his early forties when he was stricken with a nearly fatal brain tumor. Five years and three major surgeries later, Leon is in a wheelchair, his once thriving legal practice defunct, the family's financial resources strained due to their huge medical costs, and their faith and optimism foundering. Sitting with them in the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel, I felt powerless to encourage them. After all, what did I know of such cataclysmic hardships?
With difficulty, Lucille Phillips situated her husband in a taxi, put the wheelchair in the trunk, and off we went. The elevator Dr. Melamed-Cohen had installed during the early stages of his disease carried Mr. Phillips in his wheelchair up to the Melamed-Cohens' second-floor apartment.
Then there they were, facing each other: two wheelchair-bound men whose lives had been stricken with devastating illness. In a subsequent letter, Lucille Phillips described the visit as "totally awesome":
We felt so privileged to meet [Dr. Melamed-Cohen] and have a glimpse into the way he is able to conduct his life with such faith, joy, and determination despite his paralysis. We felt honoured to have managed to converse with him and felt so welcome there… We really felt absolutely in awe of him and his family!
Dr. Melamed-Cohen has called the years since his total paralysis, "the best years of my life." When questioned how that could be, since his prior life was filled with professional accomplishments and family joy, he explained that his illness caused him to meet challenges over which he had never thought he could be victorious. He has thus attained totally unexpected levels of depth and compassion.
His life with Lou Gehrig's disease has been neither easy nor pleasurable, but it is redolent with redemption.
(23) Mati, December 1, 2013 11:02 AM
Thank you Rick, Dick and Judy
You have changed my whole opinion of the souls and lives of those we think are not like us.
(22) chaya, November 4, 2010 10:40 AM
meaning of life
This is a great article! One thing that I must protest: the video says: if you've been searching for the meaning of life, you can stop, it is here. If they mean HERE as in ON AISH.com, they are right...but as inspiring as this is, the meaning of life can't lie in sports. It shows us that someone can overcome obstacles, but it needs to be with a worthwhile goal for the rest of us!
(21) Sharon, November 4, 2010 10:40 AM
Thanks for these inspiring stories and your message
We desperately need to hear about inspiring stories like that of the Hoyt family and Dr. Melamed Cohen. Obviously the important thing in life is not so much what happens to us but what we do with it. At a time when the media is filled with stories of evil people (like the Austrian monster) we need to focus on the great people and try to emulate their attitudes. Hopefully we will never encounter hardships as great as theirs, but it's nice to know that great people exist out there who know how to give in a godly manner and inspire us all. It should make us more philosophical about our own difficulties and help us gain perspective.
(20) Esty, November 4, 2010 10:39 AM
Thanx so much for this article it was very inspieri ng I have been wndering about this subject and you explained it well. Thanx. and I'll be using this as a d'var Torah at the seder
(19) Laya, November 4, 2010 10:39 AM
BRILLIANT!!!!!!!
Thank you for the inspiration and insights. Well done and well received.
(18) Anonymous, November 4, 2010 10:39 AM
Dear Mrs. Rigler,
Our family reads your articles at the dinner table. You are a source of wisdom and inspiration. Might I suggest you put together a haggadah? I would love to read your words at Passover time.
(17) Anonymous, November 4, 2010 10:38 AM
WOW!!!!!
Mrs. Rigler, thank you so much for your beautiful & inspiring article!!! It's so true!
(16) Yvonne Michele Anderson, November 4, 2010 10:38 AM
The Hoyt Family
And the Hoyt family. What a lovely story - They are definitely full of love and courage.
(15) Yvonne Michele Anderson, November 4, 2010 10:37 AM
Courage...
Other than asking G-d to realize justice for us on this earth or to demonstrate the meaning of one's suffering, imperfect human beings may pursue justice on this earth via very limited means: in writing by voicing their opinion, in a political forum by working for causes which they believe in, in the private sector by creating non-profit entities, in court and within the corrective system by stating their complaint and requesting that wrongdoers be held accountable for their acts before society and requesting to be made whole again, and via just war in respect of the laws of self defense (based on principles mirroring G-d's own teachings)... To dare to take to take the place of G-d in pursuit of justice - to teach someone a lesson about suffering by our own authority by causing them to suffer, is, indeed, demonstrative of a true lack of humility before G-d... The meaning and purpose of suffering is a lesson that only G-d can teach. True understanding of justice and the administration thereof is G-d's and G-d's alone...
(14) Yvonne Michele Anderson, November 4, 2010 10:36 AM
Courage...
What a beautiful article about love of G-d, about depth and compassion, about family, about redemption, and about understanding the meaning of suffering. Courage is the key for me...courage is the key to leaping from hardship to spiritual greatness. To maintain depth and compassion in a difficult situation requires courage. Whether one knows of the suffering that is to befall them, or whether such suffering befalls one unexpectedly, courage is key... It is not for human beings to go out of their way to create difficulty in life for themselves or for others with the purpose of "teaching a lesson" about suffering, however. To "take matters into our own hands", to delve out "punishment" (other than in the discipline of our children) in order to encourage another person to grow, truly falls under G-d's own authority, for we do not have the ability to understand an individual's experience completely, to know what life lessons G-d has already taught or has in store for them, unbeknownst to the limited vision of our own eyes... Assuming that we do not have the power to see and understand things unseen to human eyes (unfortunately, people may lie, for example...the truth may evade human eyes), to behave as if we see with the understanding of G-d's own eyes, is hubris, and the personal administration of justice based thereon is not justice or a just lesson at all, but a human aberration thereof simply based on pride and the human ego...
(13) Cyndee Malowitz, March 22, 2010 4:17 AM
Thank you for this truly inspiring article. It's important to be reminded that people with far more significant problems than our own are able to overcome them. Just the act of getting through the day is an accomplishment for so many people.
(12) Anonymous, March 19, 2010 12:20 PM
incredible
This article moved me to tears. As a mother of a child with autism, I know too well the hardships involved with raising a child with a disability. To put it in the framework of spiritual growth, and then connect it to Pesach, made that whole aspect of the Haggadah so much more meaningful. This was so beautiful and well written. I also must say how I appreciated Orrin Korn's comment as well...sometimes just making it through a really hard test, without any inspiring stories to tell over, just getting by day by day, is still greatness. Thank you for appreciating that.
(11) Ruth, March 19, 2010 10:08 AM
so inspiring!
Wow! Mr. Hoyt is the walking definition of love. What an example of what it looks like to love someone with all your heart and might. Really breath-taking.Thank you Sara for this very inspiring article.
(10) Anonymous, March 19, 2010 4:07 AM
Another awesome Insightful Article.
Ms. Rigler's article is simple amazing. I cannot help but compare her incisive deeply empathetic narrative to that of a privileged British Well Known Medical Professional, who has authoritatively, and repeatedly advised that 'disabled children should be aborted,' or a variation of this perspective. I can but ascertain that this Renown, Erudite, and scientifically accomplished medical professional is living in a universe, all of his own, where Jewish Tradition and Spiritual values have no place. Thank you so very much, Ms Rigler, I always look forwards to reading you. Ahavah
(9) tova wald, April 16, 2008 8:44 AM
As a response to Orrin Kom I know several disabled people on a personal level. They live amongst us--and so we are aware of their diffculties. You, as a worker, possess a higher sensitivity and closely involved in their lives. What Dick and Rick Hoyt have amzingly achieved is firstly their own personal reward and glory. Disabled individuals, their families and workers "need to have heroes" as an example! There's that popular song--I just know a little bit:
"To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe
To strive with your last ounce of
courage.....I just remembered a little more
"This is my quest to follow that star
No matter how hopeless no matter how
far.....
(8) Orrin Kom, April 15, 2008 5:15 PM
Compassion for the Less Heroic
In my work I have met many disabled children and many formerly-able adults dealing with ALS, Parkinson's, stroke, and various other conditions.
I have seen some of these people or their families deal with such problems like the Hoyts, only to divorce after 12 years of struggle....or like Dr. Melamed-Cohen, except for less than 5 years because survival more than 5 years after diagnosis is rare.
My point is that we should show compassion for "average" (and "below-average") people, who don't have as much education, money, or family support, in their "less heroic" reactions to misfortune.
Not everyone in a wheelchair can be Rick Hansen. Let's show humanity to all the disabled and their families, not imply that some of them are less worthy than the "heroes" inspirational articles are written about.
(7) tova wald, April 14, 2008 9:24 AM
The "Catapult" article relates a tremendous, incredible accomplisment above and beyond the realm of achievement. "Where there's a will there's a way" is expressed in no greater terms that here.
(6) Annette Edwards, April 13, 2008 10:59 PM
Life is a blessing
This is an awesome story of overcoming challenges. We able bodied people have some soul-searching to do. We take life for granted, until we read stories such as this. There is so much for us to be thankful for.
(5) Kathy Coenen, April 13, 2008 7:18 PM
It was not a particularly good year for one of my children, this wonderful article and YouTubewill be part of our Seder and maybe it will put things in perspective for all of us.
(4) Tova Saul, April 13, 2008 7:18 PM
Thanks
I just decided to try to find an article about Pesach to send out to about 10 Jewish friends who know very little about Judaism, in the hopes that they might find unexpected inspiring relevance. I figured that the search would take awhile, to find an article that was emotionally-gripping, intellectually stimulationg, and spiritually inspiring. Luckily, this is the first article I read, and it will do just fine!
(3) Ruth Housman, April 13, 2008 4:50 PM
the learning curve that is LIFE
Thank you for your very deep and meaningful article. These are among the deepest questions we have in life, namely what is freedom, what is determinism in our lives, what is the intersection of fate and destiny? Are they synonymous? What is God's role in our lives? If we are so totally free in terms of God's non intervention, then what is the meaning of prayer, which requires intervention and so often movement, unwitting movement, of others.
There are deep unremitting and often troubling paradoxes within all pieces and we can only attend to so much in our writing each time. Since I am leading a life of visible, astonishing synchronicity, I am in a place of having to examine these questions. I do pride myself in my ability to reflect and to act responsibly and morally in all that I do. On the other hand, the press of my life is showing me another story and that is, God is running this symphony, because what I am doing, using heart and soul, places me into another astonishing visible coincidence, meaning ALL my actions feel determined in some inchoate way. This is paradox but not different from the questions inherent in this very deep, often painful, often uplifting article. We do know the phoenix rises from the ashes, and we do know life is a mine field and we have apparent opportunity everywhere to perform acts of tikkun olam . Life is a "mine" field in all respects and in language itself, in its deconstructions is contained a deep and mystic truth about universe itself. I do believe this collective story is about LOVE and that there is a massive learning curve for us all, that is pointed in this direction. Paradox is the name of the problem and we will go to Jerusalem all the time, to that Wailing Wall, asking, why are these things happening and what is the role of a loving God in our lives, so filled with pain and suffering. The only tenable answer is to keep moving towards the light.
(2) Gary Maynor, April 13, 2008 3:58 PM
Awesome !
Shalom! How powerful and moving. This story is a true testimony of never giving up in life no matter what comes your way. I very impressed !
Go Bruins !
(1) Yael Hershberg, April 13, 2008 3:15 PM
thank you
This is a beautiful article and reveals a most amazing truth about this world and the real source of joy.