Get on the Torah Train!

When I first entered cantorial school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, ostensibly there to learn how to lead services properly and chant our traditional nusah and melodies, I was struck by something odd: the use of a very familiar Hebrew word that I had never heard used in that way before. Rabbinical students were using this word all the time, and at first I found it puzzling and disorienting.

The word was “Torah.” Not, “The Torah,” i.e. the Five Books of Moses, the scrolls that live in the aron ha-qodesh, the “closet of holiness.” Not the ancient book that I had read from on many Shabbat mornings at my home synagogue in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, but just “Torah.” Torah in its wider sense, which is difficult to translate into English. But it’s a meaning that we should all get to know.

The word “Torah” means “instruction,” and it is related to the Hebrew root meaning “to teach,” lehorot, from  which we also derive the words “moreh / morah,” meaning “teacher.” Torah used in this sense means, “learning from the full complement of Jewish textual sources.” Not just The Torah, but the entire Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), the Talmud, midrashim, halakhic literature, medieval poetry and letters, tefillah / the words of the siddur, and in its broadest sense, even Jewish music and art. The entire historical and cultural discourse of Jewish life might very well be included in “Torah.”

And the rabbis of the Talmud, the ones whose discussions and arguments shaped the Judaism that we practice today, saw the study of Torah for its own sake, in Hebrew, Torah lishmah, as the highest ideal in Jewish life. You might also call this activity, “recreational Torah study”:

רַבִּי מֵאִיר אוֹמֵר כָּל הָעוֹסֵק בַּתּוֹרָה לִשְׁמָהּ, זוֹכֶה לִדְבָרִים הַרְבֵּה, וְלֹא עוֹד אֶלָּא שֶׁכָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ כְּדַאי הוּא לוֹ

Rabbi Meir taught: Whoever studies Torah for its own sake merits many things; moreover, it was worth creating the world for his sake alone. (Mishnah Avot 6:1)

The rabbis saw the learning of Torah for its own sake, solely for the pleasure of learning, as the highest ideal. Elsewhere in the Mishnah, the mitzvah of learning Torah is described as outweighing all the other mitzvot combined (Pe’ah 1:1).

So why had I not encountered the idea of Torah lishmah? Prior to entering cantorial school, I was under the impression that knew I quite a bit about Judaism: I had a decent familiarity with many of the stories in The Torah; I could read Hebrew fairly well and lead parts of many services; I could chant several different trope systems (Torah, Haftarah, Eikhah, Esther); I had grown up in a kosher home (well, OK, so we became kosher when I was ten years old); I had a solid grounding in Shabbat and holiday observances, even if we did stop off at the video store on the way home from Shabbat services; and so forth. How did I miss the greatest mitzvah in the crown of Jewish life?

So here’s the truth about Judaism’s highest ideal: it seems that for much of our history, it was relegated to a few elite scholars: those who were extraordinarily adept at studying obscure texts in ancient languages, and recalling from memory extensive tracts of interpretation and argument.

But toward the end of the 11th century CE, there was a paradigm shift.  Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaqi, whom we usually call Rashi wrote a commentary on The Torah and much of the Talmud that made it possible for many more people to learn Torah. Suddenly these students, still cloistered in the Jewish Ivory Tower, had an easy way to cross-reference midrashim and Talmudic passages. This revolutionized the learning of Torah.

And it was not until the end of the 15th century, when the first Jewish books were printed with the new printing press, that acquiring books to learn from was even possible, unless you had a wealthy supporter. Prior to that, most people could not afford to spend time learning; it was simply too expensive. That is one reason that learning has always been respected in Jewish life; historically, we have acknowledged that those who live a life of poverty in order to study Torah are making a particularly holy choice. It is an important statement about Judaism that a rabbi is not a priest; he or she is a scholar.

Still, for subsequent centuries, only a handful of these Jewish scholars were studying Torah, because you still had to learn to read and speak Hebrew and Aramaic, a ridiculously high bar for virtually all of our ancestors.

These are the historical reasons why most Jews, outside of that small circle of elite scholars, have not dedicated themselves to Torah lishmah. But things are vastly different today. We are living in an age of the great democratization of Torah. Within the last few decades, most of those ancient, obscure texts have been reprinted with new, modern translations and accessible commentaries. There are electronic resources that make everything available on your smartphone or tablet. There is a new user-edited website out there called Sefaria.org which is busy building a collection of Hebrew and English texts, and will produce for you an study sheet of textual sources that you can select and personalize. Before all of these innovations, if you wanted to learn Torah, you had to plow through multiple heavy tomes in order even to find what you were looking for, and translations were hard to come by. Now it’s all a few clicks away.

Danny Mishkin, the Director of the Youth House and Teen Engagement, and I attended a conference two weeks ago hosted by the Jewish Education Project called, “Whose Torah is it Anyway?” One of the speakers at this conference, Rabbi Irwin Kula, pointed out that there are more people learning Torah than in any time in our history. And that’s not just because Haredim tend to have big families. More regular, modern Jews are studying Torah than ever before.

So while historically, the way that most Jews could connect to Judaism was by participating in the physical mitzvot - lighting candles, synagogue services, holiday meals, and so forth - today we can all easily participate in Mitzvah Number One: Talmud Torah, studying our holy texts.

But that is only part of the story. We are also seeing, particularly in Israel, a resurgence in interest in the texts that have given Jews inspiration for centuries, not only among very fervent Jews, but among the ranks of the secular! Somewhere near half of Israel’s population is not traditionally observant - they do not keep kashrut; they never go to a synagogue; if they celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah, it is likely just a party.

And yet, there are now springing up all over Israel, get this, secular yeshivot. Non-religious Israeli Jews are engaging in Torah lishmah for the values that it teaches, for the intellectual exercise of breaking your teeth on a tough Talmudic sugya (passage), and for the sheer nationalistic joy in learning something that our people have studied for centuries, even if it was only the sages secluded in the beit midrash, the classic Jewish study hall. In the current issue of The Jewish Week, there is an opinion piece about one initiative in Israel that is attempting to bridge the gap between religious and secular Israelis. It is for men and women who have recently finished their army service, and what do they do? They come together to study Torah. (This is, by the way, something that I would like to do in Great Neck.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are seeing a paradigm shift, a Rashi-sized change in what it means to be Jewish. The Information Age has reached the Jewish sphere, and Torah is becoming universally accessible. As you can imagine, I am very excited about this; access to Torah is good for the Jews.

And yet, this comes in the context of decreasing involvement in Jewish life in America. Among non-Orthodox Jews, synagogue affiliation is down. Ritual practice is down. A bar mitzvah may be celebrated with a rabbi-for-hire without the need for congregational involvement or any educational requirements for the child. Commitment of any kind is down.

But it seems that learning Torah is ascendant; consider the Limmud programs hosted now in several cities that draw thousands of participants for Torah lishmah. What with all of the new tools, the bar is lower than ever for entry. And so I would like to propose the following: we need to embrace Torah lishmah. We need to make a positive statement about who we are as Jews - for the sake of our children, for the Jewish future, and for the sake of Torah - by reaching for that low-hanging, ancient fruit.

We learn in the Talmud (Qiddushin 40b) that study is greater than action, because while action is important, study leads to action. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to study more.

And here are three reasons why:

1. Learning Torah for its own sake teaches us about ourselves and the world. Not only do we draw valuable lessons about life, relationships, parenting, personal priorities and so forth from our ancient texts, but also the implicit lessons - about interacting with your study partner or your teacher, about the value of knowledge and the message it sends to our family and friends.

2. Learning Torah is an intellectual challenge that sharpens your mind. All the research shows that the best way to avoid diseases like Alzheimer’s is to keep your brain active and supple. Studying Jewish text for recreation is a great way to do that.

3. Learning Torah is fun! OK, so it’s not exactly like a day at the beach. But there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from puzzling through our holy books, and connecting it to our own lives. And, if you are studying with a friend or a group, there is a social benefit as well.

Another speaker of note that Danny and I heard at this conference was the media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, whose latest book, Present Shock, is about how digital media have created a world of the eternal present. No past, no future, just, “What’s happening right now?” as Facebook eternally asks. Rushkoff suggested that Torah can be a part of what’s happening now, and would be all the more value because it comes with history and authenticity. 

In a previous book, however, the boldly-titled Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, Rushkoff suggests that Judaism might be featured more prominently in the lives of ordinary Jews if we rise to the challenge of widely-available, open Torah study for all. He laments the fact that over the centuries, Jews “lost direct access to the Torah and grew increasingly disconnected from the spirit of inquiry,” and that Torah learning was relegated to a few bits of Jewish education in the sermons of well-meaning rabbis. Rushkoff goes on to suggest that, “In order to fuel a renaissance in participatory Judaism, we will need to reverse this trend and reinvent a beit midrash for our age.”

The Beit Midrash at the Conservative Yeshivah, Jerusalem

Ladies and gentlemen, we can create that beit midrash, here at Temple Israel, online, in your own home. I hope that this will be the next wave of Jewish engagement, that of learning, thinking, discussing, sharing. It’s what’s already happening now. Let’s embrace it. Find some Torah and jump in.

Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, June 15, 2013.)

Finding Yourself in the Torah's Holes - Bereshit 5773

This Shabbat marks the absolute completion of the intense cycle of holidays that began with Rosh Hashanah, almost one month ago.  We have welcomed a new year, 5773; we have repented for our transgressions and sought forgiveness from God and from others around us; we have celebrated the unadulterated joy of Sukkot and all of the ritual symbols that go with it; we have mourned those who have passed from this world on Shemini Atzeret, we have danced with the Torah in soaring jubilation as we finished reading one complete cycle of the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses.

And on this Shabbat we begin that cycle again with the reading of the first of fifty-four parashiyyot / weekly portions into which the Torah is divided.  This is Shabbat Bereshit, the Shabbat of Creation, and today’s parashah is filled to overflowing with precious gems. On this Shabbat we commemorate not only the creation of the world, but also the creation of the principle of Shabbat itself, arguably the most important feature of human existence that the Jews gave to the world: the weekly vacation day that allows all of us to recharge.

But what I think is most wonderful about Parashat Bereshit is not the two tales of Creation: the orderly seven-day epic of God’s fashioning each piece of the universe or the Garden of Eden story.  It is not the Torah’s attempt to answer the most primal philosophical Big Questions -- where we came from and how.  It is not the beginning of humankind or even the question of Homo sapiens sapiens’ apparent dominion over all of the Earth (Gen. 1:28) vs. our obligation “to till and to tend” the Earth (Genesis 2:15).  

No.  What is truly the most wonderful feature of this parashah is the preponderance of holes found within it.  The Torah’s opening stories are far from airtight; they are riddled with openings.

(When I was an undergraduate, I fulfilled my required semesters of phys. ed. by learning Tae Kwon Do.  This Korean martial art involves many kicks, and requires much flexibility in the legs, and we performed a lot of painful stretches.  I’m just not that flexible.  So one day, I’m trying valiantly to keep my left leg straight against the gym floor while stretching out over my right leg, when the Korean taskmaster -- I mean, teacher -- swipes his hand underneath my left leg, where there are several inches of clearance, and says, “Look at this!  You could drive a truck through there!” Those are the kinds of holes we have in Bereshit.)

But here, in the Torah, that’s a great thing.  One could make the point, by the way, that all of Judaism is fashioned from the openings in the text of the Torah (I’ll give examples in a moment).  The entire enterprise of rabbinic Judaism, the intellectual give-and-take that emerged in the centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, is based on disagreement over points of ambiguity found in the Torah.  

The first verse of the Torah is (Genesis 1:1, Etz Hayim p. 3):

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve-et ha-aretz.

Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi, the great 11th-century French commentator and democratizer of the Torah, is awestruck at the mystery and power behind these opening words.  

אין המקרא הזה אומר אלא דרשיני

Ein hamiqra hazeh omer ela “Darsheini!”  
This text only says, “Explain me!”  

It is calling out to us from the pre-Creation tohu vavohu, the concealed, chaotic mists of pre-history, beckoning to us to interpret.  So says Rashi.

You see, bereshit bara Elohim makes no sense!  It is grammatically incorrect.  It does not mean (as we have come to hear it courtesy of King James), “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.”  Rather, it means, “In the beginning of [fill in the] BLANK, God created heaven and earth.”  Or maybe it means, “In the beginning of God’s creation of heaven and earth....” Or maybe (as it says in our humash), “When God began to create heaven and earth...”  Or something else entirely that we’re simply not expecting.

There is something missing.  And that missing word, or phrase, or concept, is where all the action is.  That is where we find ourselves reflected in the text.  We can drive whole fleets of trucks through that hole.  It is a vacancy that will never be filled, an opening that can accommodate any idea that you can fit.  The mystery remains permanently enshrined in the first three words of Genesis.

Here is another example.  Some time later, after Eve and Adam are exiled from the Garden, their sons Cain and Abel squabble over who is favored by God.  As I am sure that you know, Cain kills his brother Abel in cold blood.  But just prior to the invention of fratricide, Cain says something to his brother, something which does not appear in the Torah (Gen 4:8, Etz Hayim p. 26):

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר קַ֖יִן אֶל־הֶ֣בֶל אָחִ֑יו וַֽיְהִי֙ בִּֽהְיוֹתָ֣ם בַּשָּׂדֶ֔ה וַיָּ֥קָם קַ֛יִן אֶל־הֶ֥בֶל אָחִ֖יו וַיַּֽהַרְגֵֽהוּ׃

Cain said to his brother Abel, "BLANK."  And when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.

What could he possibly have said? “Abel, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” or “You know, I’d be much happier if I were an only child.”  Or maybe, “Hey, bro.  Your shoe’s untied!“  The 3rd-century BCE Greek translation known as the Septuagint actually has a line here that the Torah does not -- Cain says, “Come, let us go into the field.”

The Septuagint notwithstanding, there are many possibilities here, and not a single one of them is wrong.  We can imagine many things that Cain might have said just prior to murdering his brother - venting his spleen, or confessing his jealousy and love and pain, or even asking his brother for forgiveness for what he has long been planning to do.

That’s where you come in.  The Torah is not complete without us.  While it would not be accurate to say that the Torah is a blank canvas upon which we can paint whatever we want, it is certainly not true that the words of the Torah alone give us a clear, fixed, immutable message.  The very essence of Judaism, in fact, throughout history has been the interpretation of the words of Torah by us.  By humans.  Because what we received from God, the scroll of parchment that we read from every Shabbat and Monday and Thursday, is in many ways just a sketch.

There is a well-known Talmudic story (BT Menahot 29b) about how when Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah, and he finds God putting little crowns on some of the letters.  Moses asks God, “Ribbono shel olam, Master of the universe, what are you doing?”

God replies, “More than a thousand years from now, a scholar named Rabbi Akiva is going to infer many things from these crowns.”

Moses asks, “Can I see this guy?”

God says, “Turn around.”  So Moses does, and he is instantly transported into the classroom of Rabbi Akiva in Palestine in the early 2nd century, CE.  Moses is sitting in the back behind eight rows of students, and he is listening to Rabbi Akiva interpret the very words of Torah that Moses himself had transcribed.  But he can’t understand any of what Rabbi Akiva is saying, and he starts to feel queasy.

One of the students asks, “Rabbi, where did you learn all of this?”

Rabbi Akiva says, “It was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai!”  And Moses feels much better.

He is relieved because he understands that those parts of the Torah that Moses himself cannot understand will eventually be interpreted by us. The crowns, which are meaningless to Moses, are explained by Rabbi Akiva, and Moses sees then that everything in the written text is subject to later human analysis.  Now of course, nobody alive today can interpret the Torah with the authority of Rabbi Akiva.  But on some level, each of us is obligated to personalize our relationship with God, the Torah, and Israel, to fill in those holes and seek meaning from not just the letters and words themselves, but crowns and the spaces in-between.

Many of us personalized the sukkot in which we dined and welcomed guests last week.  I hope that your Pesah seder includes discussion about how we each identify with the Exodus story and the lessons that we draw today from seeing ourselves as having personally come forth from Egypt.  And each of us, when we hear the Torah read in the synagogue or study it in another context, should strive to connect with the words in a way that is meaningful for us.

But this idea goes far beyond the ritual aspects of Judaism.  The Torah urges us to take care of the needy in our neighborhood, and it is up to us to figure out how to do so.  The Torah requires us to honor our parents, and we each find our way through the depth and complexity of these relationships.  The Torah tells us to teach our children about our tradition, and each of us makes judgment calls about what we teach and how we teach and whom we task with assisting us in doing so.  The Torah instructs us to treat our customers and vendors fairly, and the burden is on us to make sure that we find the right way to do so.

What is missing from the Torah?  You.  Each one of us.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson


(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, October 13, 2012.)

Second Day of Pesah, 5770 - Clinton, AIPAC, and "Digital Thinking"

(Originally delivered on March 31, 2010.)

Most of you know that I was not always a rabbi. I received BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering, and worked as an engineer for more than 5 years before deciding to go in a different direction. However, the idea of joining the rabbinate had been sitting in the back of my mind for many years, and it took a certain amount of "activation energy," the heat input required to initiate a chemical reaction, to make the leap, first to the cantorate and finally to the rabbinate.

I first applied to rabbinical school in 1994, to the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College. They did not accept me - I was 24, finishing my MS in Chemical Engineering, and not a Reform Jew in any real sense. The reason, they told me, was that the admissions committee concluded that I had difficulty seeing two sides to an issue.

That was 16 years ago, and my perspective has changed quite a bit, not necessarily because I am now a Conservative Rabbi, but more likely because at the time I was an engineer, thinking in a problem-solving mode rather than in the mode that I try to pursue today, that of understanding. Of course, being a rabbi, I find that I am often cursed with the problem of seeing THREE OR MORE sides to every issue. And that is certainly how I felt last week when I attended the Policy Conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, in Washington. I'll come back to that later.

I am concerned about the fact that I am seeing less and less "understanding" in our world. That is, fewer of us try to place ourselves in each other's positions; fewer of us take the time to listen to anybody else; fewer of us, in our professional lives, are able to extend ourselves beyond the four walls of our cubicles in order to gather enough information to make informed decisions. Hence the rash of plagiarism incidents involving journalists and authors; the horse-race style approach to political campaigns; the epidemic of greed and irresponsible lending that led to the collapse of the real estate market and the rest of the American economy. Indeed, we are all stretched to the breaking point - what with families to feed, children to ferry from lesson to practice to Religious School, insurance companies to argue with, and so forth, who can devote more than the minimum amount of time to anything?

I think that we have entered a kind of digital age. Not the one that you are thinking of, where we are all enslaved to our devices and captivated by the infinite interconnectedness of the Internet. But no, we are now in an age of zeros and ones. On a fundamental level, all digital devices can be broken down into a series of tiny switches that can only be on or off. There is no grey area; there is no glass half full. And the same goes for all of us, on some level: we are all either black or white, hot or cold, or content or infuriated.

Jewish tradition does not work like that. You can read the Torah or the Talmud multiple ways, and the raft of commentators medieval and modern disagree with each other, and in fact regularly tear each other down in print, across centuries and continents. But even when one rejects the opinion of another, they do it not by insulting them or dismissing them in anger. An opinion is an opinion, and can only be negated through logical argument.

Example: the mezuzah. Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam, two great medieval rabbinic authorities, disagree about the placement - Rashi dictates that a mezuzah should be mounted vertically on your doorpost; his grandson, known as Rabbeinu Tam, mandated that it should be mounted horizontally; each had their reasons. So what do we do? A vertical mezuzah cannot be horizontal, and vice versa. We therefore mount a mezuzah diagonally, thus satisfying (in some way) each of them.

Our tradition of rabbinic argument teaches us to see the complexity of divergent views that co-exist, even when they conflict. To be sure, that is the rabbinic way - there are always multiple opinions, multiple ideas, and complex arguments. There is rarely one, simple answer to any issue.

More relevant to Pesah is the story of the Exodus, as we read last night in the haggadah. On the one hand, the Egyptians are portrayed as the oppressors and the Jews as the oppressed. On the other, those of us who are first-born children know that we fast because the Egyptians suffered too (to be sure, there were more than 100 of us first-borns, women and men, here on Monday morning as Rabbi Stecker concluded study of Seder Mo'ed, siyyum, etc.). We acknowledge the suffering of the Egyptians, also God's creatures.

I do not see the same respect for those we disagree with today. Soundbites and 140-character tweets leave little time or space for nuance. All that remains are the ones and zeros.

Those people that we call leaders today, too, are not interested in understanding the other side's point of view.

Here is a more relevant example: the latest kerfuffle over Israel's intent to build 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. On the one hand, this is not a new policy - Israel has been building in East Jerusalem for over 40 years, since they annexed the eastern parts in the reunification of the Holy City following the Six Day War in 1967. Not only that, but this new building is in a pre-existing Jewish neighborhood, and one that is not nearly as controversial as many of the other areas of the West Bank where Jewish Israelis have put down roots.

On the other hand, the timing of the announcement was certainly awkward, and seemed almost to designed to provoke. The Obama administration has been making noise about "settlements" for some time, with the general goal of, I think, showing that they are responsive to the wishes of the other side.

Last week, I and a few other members of Temple Israel joined another 7500 delegates to the annual AIPAC Policy Conference. While many tend to see AIPAC as a politically right-wing organization, the reality is that it is merely supportive of the existing Israeli government, and its lobbying efforts are focused on maintaining the close alliance between Israel and the US, regardless of which way the political wind is blowing. The people that attend the AIPAC conference, and the speakers featured, tend to run the gamut, from peaceniks supporting a two-state solution to hard-liners advocating for Israel to pre-emptively take out Iran's nuclear capability tomorrow.

I was there in the convention Hall when Sec. of State Hillary Clinton spoke on Monday during the morning plenary session. During her speech, which was widely covered in the media, she reaffirmed the administration's positions on Israel, which are, of course, generally supportive and in line with the Netanyahu government. She stated that the United States is committed to the following:
1. Preventing a nuclear Iran
2. Maintaining Israel as a safe, secure, democratic state
3. Preserving Jerusalem as a place for everybody
4. That safety and security in the region depend on the establishment of 2 states for 2 peoples
5. That we will not negotiate with Hamas until they renounce violence, recognize Israel, and honor prior agreements

She of course also addressed the recent dustup over new homes in Ramat Shlomo, saying that the status quo is not sustainable for three reasons: demography, ideology, and technology.
Demography - because the Arab population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean will soon exceed the Jewish population.
Ideology - because continued conflict supports extremist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Technology - because the quality, accuracy, and power of the missiles that are now in the hands of Hamas and Hizbullah (largely financed and/or directly supplied by Iran) are changing strategic considerations on the ground.

The status quo, she said, actually undermines the quest for peace by supporting those who reject it. Meanwhile, the American administration's goal is to bring the PA and Israel back to the negotiating table, and, said the Secretary of State, the administration's critical statement about new building in J'lem is about getting to that table; accepting new building without comment undermines US credibility in the region. "We objected to this announcement because we are committed to peace," she said.

Judging from the reaction to these statements by many supporters of Israel, Secretary of State Clinton's message was hostile to Israel. The news media all played clips on the final point, leaving out all of the other supportive things that she said. Of course, the media tends to seek out the conflicts, rather than the points of harmony.

But the larger picture that I see emerging, in this context and elsewhere in American Jewry, is that some supporters of Israel see even the most tame criticism as indication that you are "anti-Israel," or even worse, "anti-Semitic." Anything less than unconditional support means that you are an enemy.

Well, my friends, I've lived in Israel, and the reality there is far more nuanced than it might seem to us on the other side of the world. It may be the Holy Land, but it certainly is not perfect. And its leaders. just like our leaders, are only human, perhaps overwhelmingly so. Few Israelis shy away from criticizing their own leaders, even those they support.

I must admit that the incident regarding new units in East Jerusalem seems to me a trumped-up excuse to criticize Israel in advance of the largest pro-Israel conference of the American political scene. (Aside: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at what was certainly the largest kosher dinner ever served in Washington, if not the world. There were nearly 8000 people there for the Monday night banquet.)

Perhaps this widely-publicized difference of opinion is an unfortunate example of manipulation by the Obama administration. And, once again, given the timing of the announcement, perhaps BOTH the Israeli and American governments are guilty of manipulation.

And even though I certainly agree with Mr. Netanyahu, who stated unequivocally at that dinner that Jerusalem is not a "settlement," but rather the capital of Israel, I also believe that digital thinking, black or white, could hurt everybody's chances of peace. Mrs. Clinton was right on when she said that the status quo is, indeed, not sustainable, and all parties gathered around the table, even Mr. Netanyahu, know this.

If we can get past the attitude of, "If you ain't with us, you're against us," we might be able to satisfy both sides, just like we satisfy Rashi AND Rabbeinu Tam on our doorposts. And, my friends, that is precisely where we should be headed.

Hag sameah.