Passover & Boast Shots
On Friday afternoons I play in a squash clinic where we work on improving, among other things, our placement of the ball. Recently we were instructed to practice the boast shot, which first entails hitting the ball directly against the side wall nearest to your body. Then, the ball ideally moves diagonally across the court to the front wall, then the opposing side wall, then finally the floor for its first bounce. I hope you followed that–I barely can myself.
A boast comes in handy when you are in trouble. Very likely, if you are hitting a boast the ball has gone past you and your priority is to survive in the point. A boast slows down the game: It places the ball in an unexpected location while forcing your opponent to run forward and return a shot that has lost enough pace by then that you might actually win the point. A boast is a defensive shot that, amazingly, can turn into a winner. It can magically transform your situation from one of danger and imminent failure to that of an unexpected victory.
To execute this shot, however, you have to suspend your disbelief. You’re literally turning your body diagonally away from the front wall so that you cannot look at your shot’s destination directly and see where you are hitting. Your entire body needs to commit to the concept that by turning in the opposite direction from the area you want to reach, you’re actually going to place the ball there. Additionally, you’re hitting that shot against what feels like a random spot on the side wall. It seems insane to a beginner’s eyes that this spot will serve as the launchpad for a winning shot.
Multiple squash pros have advised me to fully commit to the mechanics of the boast shot. These people are experts in their field and they can see the larger picture, whereas I cannot. I trust them completely and I would be crazy not to take their advice. The boast works–and yet I still doubt my teachers and their advice.
The first time my coach told me to try this shot, I replied, “Are you sure?” It’s kind of a chutzpadik thing to say, since I had around a C-average in high school physics and my squash ranking is nothing special. He gave me a look, and then I had to apologize, and it was a whole thing. It would have been better to believe him, trust his words, and suspend my disbelief. And I’ve started to do that. Since learning the boast shot, I have won more than a few points by using it. It’s just hard to totally turn away physically from the direction I think I should be going and hit a shot with only an idea in my mind of its destination. As I told my coach, the boast is a real gesture of faith.
Growing up as a tennis player, I was constantly hearing about topspin. It was becoming tennis doctrine at the time. Topspin is achieved by hitting “up” on the side of the ball in order to force it to spin forwards. As a child I didn’t know about squash boasts, so the concept of topspin had not yet been supplanted as the dumbest, craziest idea I’d ever heard. When I didn’t grasp it, coaches would literally put their hands over mine in order to imitate the topspin motion with me. They were trying to “prove” to me that this method worked. I never believed that topspin is real–that it makes sense, and that I will be successful if I use it. I couldn’t let go and trust the idea: I couldn’t suspend my disbelief.
Passover begins in a few days. It is a story full of improbable happenings, solutions that humans could never dream up themselves, and surprising successes with plot twists that are designed to make a point. The extended family that will become the Jewish people were once powerful in Egypt but as the Passover story opens, their fortunes have changed and they have been plunged into back-breaking labor and slavery. God remembers them in their moment of pain, and the divine plan for their rescue involves events and characters that arise seemingly out of left field.
Solutions that originate from a divine source–both in the Torah and, I believe, in real life–always seem really different from the ones we would have chosen for ourselves. Sometimes these solutions also feel as if they run counter to our goals; they can at least initially move us in the opposite direction of where we were originally trying to go.
Moses, the human protagonist of the Passover story, is called upon to lead the Jewish people out of slavery. Despite outrageously direct signs and instances of divine communication, Moses still questions God’s decisions, as well as his own abilities and fitness for the job. It is relatable human behavior. Moses asks God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:18). Even in the presence of a literal burning bush that magically doesn’t incinerate itself–and in the very presence of God–Moses is struggling to suspend his disbelief. It is understandable: This world sometimes makes it very hard to believe in miracles.
Moses was believed by many Jewish commentators to have suffered from a speech impediment–probably something like a stutter. So his divinely mandated task will force him to go against the grain of his life’s direction up until this point. He will have to directly confront what he has been previously avoiding. It’s like a boast shot: Moses will have to turn the opposite way of where he instinctively moves. He will have to suspend his disbelief that this time, he can get positive results.
We suspend our disbelief all of the time about lots of things–our relationships with the significant people in our lives, our ideals, our problems. We interpret events, from large to small, in ways that allow us to keep alive the stories that we need to feel true.
Even when I’m getting the best advice in the world from people I love, it’s really hard to turn in a new direction. I don’t always believe that doing things in an unexpected way will help me achieve my goals. It feels sad at times to stop looking at the things I once wanted and to proceed with a different strategy. Unexpected moves bring amazing victories, however, ones that leave more powerful adversaries scratching their heads in wonderment.
Happy Passover, and happy final months of the competitive squash season. Wish me luck in the quarterfinals of my club championship.