The Permanent Record - Shabbat Shuvah 5774

A few years back, Google changed its account policies, and there was an opportunity to delete your search history before it became a part of your “permanent record.” So I went in and deleted all my history, but not before spending a few moments browsing back through pages and pages of search terms, going back to the month that I arrived at Temple Israel and set up a Google account.

This was quite a revealing trip down memory lane. It told many stories about who I am: I had searched for arcane pieces of information for sermons. I had searched for old friends, and of course I had Googled myself a few times, just to see what I was up to. I had searched for information on various medical subjects, new aches and pains. I had searched for song lyrics and famous quotes that I wanted to get right. I had searched for things to do with my kids on a Sunday afternoon and things to do with my wife on our anniversary.

What struck me was how much the Internet knew about me. Even if I had not voluntarily handed over all of my private emails to it, Google could paint a pretty good picture of me: my likes and dislikes, my medical history, my family situation, and so forth. And with a few keystrokes, it was gone.

You can’t do this any more. Whatever you search for, whatever is in your email or even on your screen is being watched, catalogued, and stored. On my relatively new Windows 8 machine, I can’t even use it without signing in to my Microsoft account, and so effectively every keystroke or screen swipe or article read is monitored by some algorithm, and contributes to the ever-increasing pile of Big Data. And, of course, if you own a cellular device of any kind, somewhere out there is a record of whom you have called, where you have been, and only God and the NSA know what else.

With some of the recent revelations regarding what various government agencies are doing with these data, not to mention all of the corporate entities that pay Google and Facebook and Verizon and Cablevision and AT&T for access to all of our 1s and 0s, it’s enough to creep me out.

But I’m not paranoid. Like most of us, I use these services, try to ignore all of the invading ads that are tailored just for me (I’m not sure why Google thinks I’m interested in getting an MBA, or that I need an anti-balding cream, or a Christian dating service… really?), and hope for the best.

However, the very idea of the collection of all of our digital residue is a particularly troubling reality at this juncture in the Jewish calendar. We are, after all, on Day 3 of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance. This is a time for reflection, for seeking forgiveness from God and from our friends and family, for cleansing, for teshuvah, returning to a state of purity and holiness. This is a time in which everybody who wants it gets a second chance, or a third or a thirtieth. This is the period in which we hope that our sins are pardoned, our screens are wiped clean, our souls purified. We aspire to a good decree for the coming year despite, as we chant so movingly at the conclusion of Avinu Malkeinu, “ki ein banu ma’asim,” we have no credit in good deeds with which to plead our case.

So here’s the irony: if we achieve teshuvah / return, if we achieve cleansing through requesting forgiveness from those we have wronged, if we achieve purity through tefillah / prayer and tzedaqah / charity and afflicting our souls through fasting and self-denial on Yom Kippur, then God forgives us, and our sins are lifted. There is no permanent record.  As we read in the Untaneh Toqef prayer, the central piece of the mahzor, “ve-ad yom moto tehakkeh lo, im yashuv miyyad teqabbelo.” God will wait for us even until our day of death, and if we return, we are immediately accepted.

The Qadosh Barukh Hu (i.e. God) will forever allow you to erase your search history, if you ask nicely. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et al will not.

This is our second year using the Conservative movement’s new mahzor (prayerbook for the High Holidays), Lev Shalem, and if you have not spent some time simply thumbing through it and reading the material in the margins, you really should. I stumbled across a wonderful interpretation courtesy of Martin Buber, one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the 20th century, who (as a sort of sidebar) collected Hasidic stories. This little nugget comes from the late 18th / early 19th c. Hasidic rebbe Simhah Bunam of Peshischa, who said that,

“On New Year’s Day the world begins anew; and before it begins anew, it comes to a close.”

We chanted here yesterday and the day before, “Hayom harat olam,” “Today the world is born.” It’s not just a new year, says the Hasidic rebbe, it’s not just a clean slate. It’s a new world. We enter 5774 with hopes and dreams for the coming year, which is fresh and pure as a newborn, as white as virgin snow. Don’t worry - we’ll soon trample through it with muddy feet, just as we did with 5773. But that world is coming to an end, and for the moment anyway, the world of 5774 is brand new.

So the cards are in our favor.

Here is the great news: you may not be able to delete your permanent digital record. But you get a clean slate for the New Year, and the New World, if you pursue teshuvah during these Ten Days of Teshuvah. To that end, I’m going to suggest the following:

1. Look deep inside yourself. This is not so easy. Like Shrek, the (very Jewish) ogre in the animated movie from 2001, we have all built up around us such a complex series of layers, like an onion, that getting to the honest, objective truth about ourselves is next to impossible. But I think that we all have an innate moral compass that allows us to know where we’ve missed the mark, even if we do not outwardly admit it. Look for those red flags: Do we work too many hours at the expense of our families?  Do we confuse our needs with our wants? Do we inadvertently send messages to our children that suggest that grades are more important than learning?

2. Find an opportunity to apologize. Honest apologies are really hard to come by, and for that reason they are that much more appreciated by the recipient. Of course, it’s not so easy to really, candidly apologize, let alone even look in the eye somebody whom we have seriously wronged. But this is the season to screw your courage up and do it. Perhaps we need to ask forgiveness of a co-worker or with whom we were impatient or rude. Have we been dismissive of our partner’s repeated pleas regarding household responsibilities?

3. Try to find a moment of honest prayer. That could be something that occurs in the siddur, during services here. Or it could be when you have a quiet moment alone somewhere else. Our lives are so filled with distractions; if there is a time of year when you should seek out a prayerful moment, this is it.  I know this is not easy - it takes intent and practice to learn how to gently push aside the noise in our head and to make space for love and truth, but doing so once in a while is invaluable to body and spirit.

4. Try to suspend, even if just for a moment, your doubts about the efficacy of prayer, the role of God in your life, the meaning of the Book of Life, and so forth. In Prager & Telushkin’s The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Question 1 is, “Can one doubt God’s existence and still be a good  Jew? You would not be a modern human being if you did not have doubts. Contemporary society dismisses religion as ancient hocus-pocus, and we are all swathed in many onion-layers of healthy skepticism and ironic distance. But every now and then, we have to just let the feeling of spiritual engagement rush through us, and now is the time. If the Yom Kippur crowd is too much of a distraction, then craft some holy time for yourself during the next week. Take a walk through the woods in King’s Point Park, or lock yourself in the quietest room in the house with no electronic gadgets for 20 minutes. Who knows? You may find enlightenment, or at least a path to teshuvah.

Through deep introspection, through apology, through prayer, and through suspending our doubts even for just a moment, we all can emerge from these Ten Days of Teshuvah with a spotless record and a clear conscience.

This season of teshuvah, of repentance, of return, might be the only time each year that many of us give in to the power to change ourselves that Judaism offers. Don’t let it pass you by! You may have a permanent record out there in cyberspace, but here in the synagogue, we can all benefit from the great reset, the cold boot. Get a fresh start: make this New Year of 5774 truly one of spiritual satisfaction.

Shabbat shalom, shanah tovah, and hatimah tovah. May we all be sealed for a wonderful year.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 9/7/2013.)

Shabbat Shuvah 5773: Kick It Up A Notch

This is always a nail-biter of a week.  Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of return, falls in the middle of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, bracketed by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  We have spent two days acclaiming God’s kingship and judgment, and every day in our tefillot we remind ourselves of “Sefer HaHayyim,” the Book of Life, and where our names may be inscribed and sealed.  We are supposed to be thinking about selihah, forgiveness, and teshuvah, repentance, and the whole range of human emotions surrounding those activities.  

And I hope that at least some of us are thinking about what will make this coming year, 5773, different from 5772.  If these Ten Days come and go without any deep consideration, then why go through the High Holy Day motions?  Why pray or fast or listen to the shofar?

Amidst all of this, we read this week Parashat Vayelekh, which rarely stands on its own, because it is usually coupled with Parashat Nitzavim.  It is not a particularly substantive chapter, being relatively short, but it does include this curious verse:

Deut. 31:19

וְעַתָּ֗ה כִּתְב֤וּ לָכֶם֙ אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את וְלַמְּדָ֥הּ אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל שִׂימָ֣הּ בְּפִיהֶ֑ם לְמַ֨עַן תִּֽהְיֶה־לִּ֜י הַשִּׁירָ֥ה הַזֹּ֛את לְעֵ֖ד בִּבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel.

Here in the Torah, God’s command is delivered in the plural imperative (“kitvu” = “you (pl.) shall write”).  It seems to be addressed to Moses and Joshua, who have been called into an executive session with God.  Some commentators understand this to refer to the “poem” that we read next Shabbat in Parashat Haazinu, following immediately in the Torah after what we read today.  But the verse is interpreted in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b) by the 4th century sage Rabbah as the mitzvah / commandment that we must each individually write our own personal copy of a sefer Torah.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (Nedarim 38a) the reason given that the whole Torah is required rather than just the Haazinu poem is that the latter is not a sufficient “witness against the people Israel,” as the verse suggests.  Only the entire Torah can fulfill that role.

Of course, the vast majority of us are unable to write our own sifrei Torah because of the intense training that it requires, so many of us fulfill this mitzvah through various other means, like contributing funds to help purchase a sefer Torah, or by filling in a letter in a new scroll with the help of a sofer / scribe.

 

What I love about this particular mitzvah, regardless of how we may fulfill it, is the implication that we should not be Jewish by proxy.  Judaism is a do-it-yourself tradition, or perhaps more accurately "do-it-yourself-in-the-context-of-your-community."  We build our own sukkot (actually, I’m building mine on Sunday; yes, I know it’s a little early, but we should never hesitate to fulfill a mitzvah), we lead our own Pesah sedarim, we atone for our own sins.

Ever seen those ads in Jewish newspapers about saying qaddish?  All you have to do is send a few bucks to some yeshivah in Israel or maybe Brooklyn, and a reliable, trustworthy, and frum yeshiva-bokhur will recite qaddish for your loved one on your behalf.

This practice is condoned by the Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 376:4, but really only as a last resort.  Rabbi Isaac Klein, in his standard Conservative compendium of halakhah / Jewish law, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, suggests that this should be “discouraged unless there is no alternative.”  The Conservative movement’s brand-new authoritative work on halakhah, The Observant Life (which all of you should own), recommends against this practice as follows:

In the end, saying Kaddish serves a deeply therapeutic function for the mourner.  Knowing that a good friend, either of the mourner or of the decedent, is saying Kaddish can serve that function only slightly.  Paying a stranger to say Kaddish for a parent cannot serve that function at all.

As much as is possible, ours is a tradition of personal action.  While there are some cases where it is customary or even mandatory for somebody else to fulfill a mitzvah on your behalf, the vast majority of mitzvot are meant to be performed by the obligated party.

My very first student pulpit, when I was in cantorial school, was at a smaller synagogue in Old Bridge, New Jersey.  Once a month I would stay with Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner and lead Shabbat services.  It was about a mile’s walk from his house to the synagogue, and I remember walking with him several times on Shabbat morning when we would be greeted by congregants who were driving to shul.  Occasionally, they would even drive slowly alongside us and chat.  Rabbi Lubliner pointed out to me, “They don’t feel the the need to walk to synagogue, but they think it’s very important that their rabbi does so.”

Now, I understand that not everybody can live the way the rabbi does, and our community does not expect that.  But I suppose that we could raise ourselves up as a community, that we could be an inspiration to one another and to other congregations like this one, if we were to aim higher.  Why not “kick it up a notch”?  Select a mitzvah that particularly speaks to you but that you have never taken on.  Can’t think of a mitzvah to tackle?  Come talk to me and we’ll find one that will inspire you.

Here is a suggestion for a New Year’s resolution.  Make your relationship with Judaism (and God) more active.  Here are some do-it-yourself ideas:

• Build your own sukkah (it's not too late!)
• Have some friends to Shabbat dinner
• Pick one day a week to come to morning minyan (we need people!  Wednesday we had to call three)
• Join us on Midnight Run as we go into the city to distribute food and clothing to needy people
• Learn to read Torah or lead a service
• Come to one of the new adult learning offerings to expand your Jewish horizons
• Make it a point to discuss a piece of Jewish text at your Shabbat table.  If you need material, you can use the weekly thought that Rabbi Stecker or I send out in the Thursday afternoon email from Temple Israel (Have you never opened that email? You should.)
• Go visit Israel (again, if you've already been)

But wait! You’ve all heard me say things like this before.  Here is something new:

Write your own Torah.  And by this I do not necessarily mean a sefer Torah.  I mean, metaphorically inscribe a piece of Torah on your soul.

The medieval halakhic authority known as the Rosh, Rabbeinu Asher ben Yehiel, a German halakhist of the 13th and early 14th centuries, actually interpreted the mitzvah of writing a sefer Torah differently from most other commentators.  He understood the verse quoted above not as referring to the scrolls that we use for reading, but the books that we use for study: the humash (printed Pentateuch) that you all followed along with this morning as we read the Torah, or the volumes of Mishnah or Talmud or all the other works of rabbinic literature.  The point, argues the Rosh, is that if the purpose of this mitzvah is to make sure that we learn the words of Torah, then producing a scroll that is used only for chanting in the synagogue will not fulfill that role.  But purchasing books that have been produced for study will fulfill the mitzvah.

And I’m going to take the Rosh’s suggestion a bit further.  Call it a New Year’s resolution if you will, but I would like to suggest the following:

1.  Spend a few moments over the remainder of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (or, failing that, let’s say you have until Hoshanah Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot, which is traditionally thought of as the last day to seek repentance for the past year) finding a Jewish text that resonates with you.  Going with the Rosh, t doesn't need to be from Torah itself.  (If you want suggestions, give me a call or send me an email.  I will gladly suggest something appropriate.)

2.  Write it down on a piece of paper (or if you’re good with computers, print it out) in Hebrew, English, or the language of your choosing.

3.  Stick it on the fridge, or tape it to your computer monitor at work, or put it on a sticky note and attach it to your favorite credit card, or take a picture of it with your smartphone and make it your background screen.  Then, whenever you see it, you will reinforce the text.

4.  Commit it to memory, and make it part of you.  Imprint it on your soul.

I’ve picked my text already.  It’s from the Prophet Micah, one of the season’s favorites, and is enshrined on a lovely print just to the left of the water fountain downstairs.  We read it in the haftarah for Parashat Balaq:

הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

[God] has told you, O man, what is good
And what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness
And to walk modestly with your God.

I think this is a sublime encapsulation of how we as Jews should go about life, and I would love to be able to refer back to it whenever I can.  So I’m going to make this verse a part of me for the coming year, in (partial) fulfillment of the Rosh’s understanding of the mitzvah from Parashat Vayelekh.

What’s your soul-text?  Find one.  Let me know if you need help.  Shabbat shalom, and gemar hatimah tovah.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, Sept. 22, 2012.)

Shabbat Shuvah 5771 - Returning to the Table

(Originally delivered on September 11, 2001.)

Today is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return, a name that captures the spirit of the Ten Days of Repentance, in Hebrew, Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, which can also be translated more literally as the Ten Days of Return. The name Shabbat Shuvah refers more directly to the first word of today’s haftarah, from the prophet Hoshea:

Shuvah yisrael ad adonai elohekha ki khashalta ba-avonekha.

Return O Israel, to the Lord your God; for you have stumbled in your iniquity.

This is, of course, consistent with the overarching theme of the Yamim Nora-im, the High Holidays - that we have missed the mark, and we should return to God and right living.

Now, we could parse that latter phrase, “for you have stumbled in your iniquity,” because it is something of a challenge. Is it possible to be iniquitous and not stumble? Is it the iniquity or the stumbling that we must return for?

It is, in fact, a problem. But leaving that aside, the more interesting problem of the language occurs a few verses later, in verse 5 (which includes two more uses of the same root for return, shin-vav-bet, the leitwort or thematic word of this passage):

Erpah meshuvatam ohavem nedava; ki shav api mimenu.

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger is turned away from him.

The first part of the verse refers to a plural group of backsliders (their backsliding; love them freely), but the latter half of the verse refers to the return of one person (My anger is turned away from him). If the backsliders that Hoshea is referring to are all of us, who is the “him” that gets credit for turning away God’s anger?

In the Talmud, Masekhet Yoma, which is the tractate dedicated to Yom Kippur, we read the following:

Rabbi Meir used to say: Great is teshuvah, repentance, since the whole world is pardoned on account of the individual who has repented, as it is stated: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger is turned away from him.” It is not stated, “from them,” but “from him.”

Rabbi Meir’s point is that we all get credit for the honest teshuvah of even one of us. That is how powerful teshuvah is. It is not so easy, of course. But it is powerful.

What we should be asking ourselves over the course of this week is this: how can I change my behavior so that I do not make the mistakes that I have made in the past? How can I make right what I have broken?

Now, of course I am preaching to the choir. Anybody who is here today, after two days of High Holiday introspection, is clearly up to speed on all of this. (It never hurts to flatter your audience!)

But I am going to take this discussion out of the realm of the personal and into the international. Let us consider the fresh round of Middle East peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have pledged to meet every two weeks, including the coming week.

I have stated this clearly before in this space, and I will say it again: the status quo in Israel and the territories is not sustainable, and everybody around the table knows it. The only real solution is the two-state solution, and we all know how painful this is going to be.

What will make or break these peace talks is, of course, teshuvah. That Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to return to the negotiating table is only the first stage of their return, their teshuvah. The next stage will be much more difficult.

Optimism is not available in abundance these days. Most of the pundits who have weighed in on this round have stated that it is unlikely that these talks will achieve anything new. Israel will not give up on building settlements, let alone consider withdrawing from them; the PA will not give up on the right of return of refugees to Israel. It’s dead in the water. As they say in Texas, that dog don’t hunt.

This is a hot topic on Ravnet. As you might expect, my colleagues in the Conservative rabbinate run the gamut of opinions about Israel. Some are bullish on the prospects of and peace, some think that the other side will never honor their agreements, so why should we bother negotiating?

And the professional pundits have gone the same way, although perhaps in a more subtle and reflective way.

There was one particularly optimistic column that I read in the Times, by Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, who wrote about how now is the most optimistic time in recent history, and the basis for peace is stronger than it has ever been.

Indyk makes the following four points:

1. Violence is down considerably, with the PA police force newly trained with American help and demonstrating its capability of preventing terrorist activity in the West Bank, and Hamas preventing the rockets from Gaza, perhaps out of fear. While 452 Israelis were killed at the height of the intifada in 2002, there have been only 6 this year. (Of course, that’s 6 too many, but the difference is dramatic and undeniable.)

Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren has been saying for some time now that the situation on the West Bank is better than it has ever been. Law and order has brought peace and quiet: there was a 9% growth rate in the territories last year, with skyscrapers going up in Ramallah and new subdivisions in Jenin and Nablus. A properly-trained police force produces economic growth, and jobs and security will, we all hope, help the Palestinians to understand that peace, even with what they used to call “the Zionist entity,” is a good thing.

2. Settlement building has been minimal for 10 months. This is key in having returned the Palestinians to the negotiating table, according to Ambassador Oren. It seems unlikely that Netanyahu will extend the moratorium, but there are other compromise options that Indyk suggests.

3. A majority of people on both sides now support the two-state solution. The public is tired of war, says Indyk. This is not necessarily true of those who vote Likud, Netanyahu’s party. In fact, there is a cover story in the current issue of Time magazine that suggests that Israelis have become complacent in their flourishing success, in spite of the untenable status quo. I am not going to attempt to debunk the article. Yes, a majority of people want peace, but there is, understandably, a generous helping of skepticism about peace talks in the Israeli public. I hope that such thinking does not obscure the long-term visionary goal, which is that everybody would benefit even more from peace.

On this point, it is nonetheless important for us in the Diaspora to respect Israel’s democratic process. We should remember that it is not just the leaders at the table and the hopes of American Jewry and the Obama administration that are in play here. The more formidable problem is this: Netanyahu’s own party and some of his coalition partners are not on board with him. If he makes what Likud sees as a rash decision (like, for example, extending the settlement moratorium), he’ll be out of a job.

And the same applies to Abbas and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad as well. Perhaps you saw the news blurb online (curiously, the New York Times missed this) that on Monday, a few days after leaving Washington, Mr. Abbas stated clearly, for the record, that the PA will never recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” He knows that doing so is political suicide (or perhaps even actual suicide); for some of his constituents, even meeting Netanyahu raises the spectre of treason.

But let us hope that the majority opinion and cooler heads on both sides will prevail.

4. There are not many outstanding issues that require negotiation. Many of the details required by the Oslo accords of 17 years ago (can it really be that long?!) have already been worked out. All we are facing now is the set of tricky issues that I have already identified.

The moment is now, says Indyk; all that remains is the willpower and courage of Abbas and Netanyahu to make the politically complicated decisions.

I was listening to the NPR News Quiz Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me last Sunday afternoon, and the host remarked sarcastically that the stakes for the first meeting in Washington were so low, that it was considered successful merely because the two sides agreed to meet again. This may be funny, or perhaps pathetic, but it is also true. They agreed to meet every two weeks until this thing is resolved.

Furthermore, in the wake of the first meeting, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu expressed optimism that the entire negotiation can be resolved within a year. It makes me wonder, if all they can do is agree to further meetings, what will be accomplished within that year?

Still, the next meeting is this coming week, during, as luck would have it, Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the aforementioned Ten Days of Return. And so, in what we hope is good faith, Abbas and particularly Netanyahu will return once again to the table. And let us hope that this time, they are willing to approach the task at hand with the same demeanor with which we approach God and each other during Aseret Yemei Teshuvah.

Let us hope that they hear the sound of the metaphorical shofar, calling them to return. Let us hope that they draw on the theme of purity that permeates these days, entering these negotiations with pure souls and honest intentions. Let us hope that they gesture to each other in the cantorial mode of selihah, the hopeful, prayerful, and yet slightly mournful chant that is omnipresent during this season, humble in spirit and forthright about the past, with the intention of doing better in 5771.

Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi, from 13th century Spain, said the following about teshuvah. “The repentant sinner should strive to do good with the same faculties with which he sinned. If, for instance, his tongue gave offence to others, he should study the Torah aloud. With whatever part of the body he sinned he should now engage in good deeds. If the feet had run to sin, let them now run to the performance of good. The mouth that had spoken falsehood should now be opened in wisdom. Violent hands should now open in charity. The haughty eye should now gaze downwards. The plotting heart should now meditate on the teachings of Torah. The trouble-maker should now become a peace-maker.”

And finally, as we commemorate on this day the horrible tragedy of nine years ago, we should remember that there are people in this world who will want to prevent through violence any form of forward movement. It is up to us to make sure that we do not negotiate with terrorists or embolden them in any way. And the only way to do this is to engage with the moderates. Then we can hope that if Israel reaches a peace deal with the leaders of Fatah, the West Bank PA authorities, the people of Gaza will see and understand the peace dividend and throw off the yoke of Hamas.

Call me naive, if you will. Call me a peacenik, if you want. I prefer to think that I am something of an optimist. But this is the week of return; now is the time to return to the table in good faith. Let us hope that the players who have returned do what is right.