Do you know what a skyhook is? It’s a metaphor for trusting in something with no rational basis whatsoever. Picture Moses saying “Go that way!” pointing to the Red Sea with the elite forces of the Egyptian army closing in fast on the newly liberated Hebrew slaves.

For the vast majority, this instruction was a non-starter. It’s wet, it’s deep, it’s huge, I can’t swim, there are babies here … total non-starter. But for Nachshon ben Aminadav, Moses’ command was a marching order, and march he did. Right up to his nose. And then, surprisingly, the sea split.

Torah is timeless. Somewhere deep inside, we all have an inner Nachshon ready to take a leap of faith when the time is ripe.

I had a kind of a Nachshon moment one Friday morning, back in the early 2000s, while lecturing to a hundred University of Toronto undergraduates on the subject of “The Self and Its Brain.” The course was called Faith and Science and the attendees spanned a wide diversity of races, religions, nationalities and backgrounds.

I had taught this course for years, but this time I thought to add a wrinkle in my lesson plan. I’d start the class by using my unwitting students to demonstrate a phenomenon in neuropsychology that was featured in a discourse of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.

Here’s what happened.

“I’d like to preface my talk with two questions. Don’t take notes and no devices for this part,” I said. Then I asked for four volunteers from the lecture hall and had them come up for instructions.

I sent one to each quadrant of the lecture hall—back left, back right, front left and front right—with one simple request: For each question I ask, observe whether the students in your quadrant tend to look upwards or downwards while deciding their answer.

Once the volunteers were positioned, I asked my first question:

“This past Tuesday, what did you have for lunch and where were you when you ate it?” While glancing around the room, I noticed the occasional student off task, one whispering to a neighbor, another rummaging in a purse, but most were reflective, and to me at least, most seemed to be looking up.

After 30 seconds, I asked my second question. “What is the answer to 17 x 17? Remember no writing and no devices. Take your time.” I heard a few audible groans, but I did need a hard one (although hopefully not too hard). A few gave up right away, but most gave it the old college try. To my mind, it seemed clear that most inclined their heads downward as they concentrated on the problem.

After another 30 seconds, I called my volunteers up to the front to report. For the memory question, all four said that in general, people looked up. For the concentration question, all four said the majority looked down. I shared their findings with the class and then told them the following:

“About a hundred years ago, a saintly rabbi in Russia was breaking bread with friends and family when one of the guests described a new scientific discovery—that there is a blood vessel in the brain that plays a role in both memory and concentration.

“After dinner, the rabbi excused himself for a few moments and returned with a slender volume authored by his great-grandfather some hundred years earlier. In it, this ancestor describes the same blood vessel in detail, adding that it moves depending on its vapor pressure, and can stimulate either the prefrontal cortex for memory or the cerebellum for concentration. He then goes on to say that the proof of its function is that we tend to look upward to remember and tilt our heads downward to concentrate.

“The guest was astounded, suggesting that the author must have also been a great medical professor, but the rabbi refuted that categorically, stating that this blood vessel exists in the spiritual template of humankind in the supernal realms, and therefore it also exists in the physical brain down here in the physical world.”

And, with this story, recorded in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s talks,1 I introduced my lecture on The Self and Its Brain.

* * *

Introducing the talk in this way was somewhat of a “Nachshon moment” for me because I needed to suspend my natural scientific skepticism and wholeheartedly embrace the notion that the above story described a fact of life, a verifiable natural phenomenon.2

Truth be told, although it was a little scary at the time, I have known for years that believing in Torah and the Rebbe’s teachings is actually more reasonable than doubting them. That’s because they have been proven true so many times and in so many different ways, but that’s a story for another time.

* * *

The above story was told by the Seventh Rebbe of Chabad, the rabbi in the story was the Fifth Rebbe, and the author of the text he cited was the Second Rebbe.

It’s a perfect Chabad story. Chabad is a Hebrew acronym referring to chochmah, bina and daat (wisdom, understanding and knowledge)—the three intellectual faculties of the soul that happen to be featured in the story: wisdom and understanding reside in the prefrontal cortex (associated with memory), and knowledge resides in the cerebellum (associated with concentration).

Those soul powers are in turn derived from the three intellectual dimensions of the Ten Sefirot, which comprise the spiritual infrastructure of the cosmos—the attributes through which the Almighty continuously creates and manages the world and relates to us both collectively and individually.

So let’s look up and stimulate our prefrontal cortices to help us remember all the Divine wisdom and understanding we have been blessed with, and lower our heads to stimulate our cerebellum to help us concentrate on those blessings as we thank the One Above for them.