If someone would tell you to go outside and count the stars, unless you had a particular interest in astronomy and the like, you would simply not bother. Obviously, you cannot count the stars in the sky. Yet, Chazal tell us that Avraham actually started to count them! This is symbolic, says R’ Meir Shapiro zt"l, of one of the characteristics that would be a feature of Klal Yisroel, Avraham’s descendants: when something looks impossible, beyond the reach of human ability, a Jew will try to do it anyway. We think that many of the challenges and trials with which we are faced are beyond us, yet once we put in our own effort, we are given help from above to complete the task.

   A certain blind Jew once came to a Rav and handed him two volumes of Chiddushei Torah (novellae) he had written before he became blind. The blind man told him to turn to a certain page where he will find the very last insight he had written before he became blind. The Rav asked him what he meant by his “last insight,” and the man replied that he had been working on these volumes for years until he finished this particular insight and said to himself, “I’ve been working on this for too long. I’m too old, it’s time for a break.” Within a very short time, his eyes totally dimmed and he became blind. He went to a doctor, who examined him and said, “You should have been blind ten years ago! Your eyes are terrible! I cannot understand how this didn’t happen sooner.” While it may have baffled the doctor, R’ Meir Shapiro explained that as long as this Yid wrote down his thoughts, Hashem gave him the gift of vision for another day. When he said, “Enough is enough,” he lost this strength.

   Counting the stars is symbolic of the power that Avraham’s descendants would have, to take the initiative even where it seems impossible. As the Navi writes: “He gives strength to the weary, and abundant might to the weak ... but those whose hope is in Hashem will have renewed strength” (Yeshaya 40:31).