Looking in Two Places at Once: An Authentic Jewish Response to Current Events

A boy named Henry was a real wise-guy and eventually was kicked out of the Jewish day school he was attending. 

So his parents enrolled him in another school.  Henry showed up that day and was doing pretty well until it came time for snack.  The children were all lined up in the cafeteria.  There was a basket of apples on one side of the serving table and one of the rabbis had written a note that was placed next to the apples:  The note said: Take only one.  God is watching.

Henry read the note.  He then noticed a big plate of chocolate chip cookies on the other side of the table.  Quickly, he wrote his own note and put it next to the cookies.  It said:

Take as many as you want.  God is watching the apples.

We like to believe that God is capable of keeping track of more than one thing at once.  We can debate that, I’m sure.

But I’m reasonably convinced that we mortals are not very good at doing that.  Given how over-loaded we are, given our particular perspectives, we tend to see one thing clearly at the expense of another. 

Jewish rabbinic tradition famously requires us to consider more than one thing at a time.

I’m going to begin with layers of understanding that go back generations and then I’d like to reflect on how we might face the very real challenges that confront us today.

From Opposition to Governance, Becoming to Being: Thoughts About the UN and Paris after a Tragic Week

Menachem Begin was a tough opposition leader when the Israeli government was presided over by Labor prime ministers.  He criticized Ben Gurion for multiple reasons, criticized Golda Meir for not having adequate intelligence during YK war, criticized Rabin for making too many concessions for the sake of peace.  He was a clever polemicist, sharp-tongued, and as the leader of the opposition party for decades, he got to take his shots and he took advantage of every opportunity and then some.

And then, he became prime minister, the first non-Labor prime minister elected.

He was no less sharp-tongued, no less polemical, but he quickly learned that it’s different to govern than to criticize government, different to be in charge than to be the opposition.

The opposition merely has to demonstrate why the leader is wrong.  The leader has to actually figure out to do that is the most right given circumstances that are often very difficult.

I think people were surprised that Menachem Begin was so successful at negotiating peace with Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt. 

Begin transitioned well, in my opinion, from leader of the opposition to leader of the country.  He navigated and compromised more effectively than many might have expected. 

I doubt everyone in this sanctuary shares Begin’s political or ideological perspective.  But his transition from oppressed leader of the opposition to empowered statesman was a really important one.  It required him to accept incremental and even partial success.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote the following about Palestinian leader Abbas’s recent efforts at the UN:  “Why does he persevere?  Because the pleasures of dreaming are better than the labors of building, just as the rhetoric of justice, patrimony and right is so much more stirring than the fine print and petty indignities of compromise.  Mr. Abbas consistently refuses a Palestinian state because such a state is infinitely more trivial than a Palestinian struggle.  Becoming is better than being.”  (Bret Stephens, “The Dream Palace of the Arab,” WSJ, January 5, 2015)