The main investor of Beresheet, the Israeli spacecraft that launched in February to land on the moon, addressed 18,000 people at the AIPAC conference. “One day, I wasn’t feeling well, and paramedics checked my blood pressure. I told the paramedics, ‘I am putting a spaceship on the moon!’” The paramedics quizzically looked back at me (as if I was crazy) and said, “We’d better get you to a hospital!” And the investor smiled at the AIPAC attendees and said, “And now the miracle of Beresheet is happening.”
How many of us dream to the point of wanting to land on the moon? How many of our dreams do we label as unattainable, unreachable, pointless or unrealistic?
Yonatan Winetraub, a co-founder of SpaceIL, explains, “Kids always ask us if the craft is coming back and we say ‘No, it stays there with the time capsule and all kinds of interesting things inside. It’s your job to reach the Moon and bring it back.’”
What a beautiful, encouraging lesson: It is your job to reach the moon and bring it back. Meaning, it is your challenge, opportunity and gift to imagine the impossible and turn it into reality. At what point in life do we stop diminishing our self-worth and capabilities? Why is “dreaming big” a pursuit of the young and admonished as we mature?
Israel is about to land a spacecraft on the moon. Who would have ever thought that to be a possibility? It is nothing short of miraculous. A miracle taking place because the moon to a few people, never seemed out of reach.
Dream as if we have no bounds. Create as if the entire world is our canvass. Imagine what we can do when we refuse to let limitations hold us back.
That is why the spacecraft is called Beresheet. When you dream the impossible, it is only the beginning.
Shabbat Shalom
