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\\u201cWhen I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.\\xa0But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.\\u201d\\xa0Mark Twain

I think of the Mark Twain quote whenever I ponder a signature\\npiece of wisdom of my late mother that I resisted as a teen, but that I agree with as an adult.\\xa0My mother used to say: \\u201cLower your expectations.\\u201d\\xa0

My mother\\u2019s rationale: If we go through life with high expectations, there is a higher likelihood we might be disappointed.\\xa0If we go through life with lowered expectations, there is a higher possibility we might be pleasantly surprised. \\xa0

I thought of my mother\\u2019s wisdom when hearing the sobering, indeed searing Israel at War Podcast with Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi.\\xa0They confront the reality that 100 plus days later, Israel is scaling back its military operations in Gaza without having accomplished the aim that more than 90% of Jewish Israelis all agreed to on October 8:\\xa0Wage war in order to crush, destroy, defeat Hamas.\\xa0And now, more than 100 days later, Hamas is not crushed, destroyed or defeated.\\xa0Many of those who planned October 7 are still alive.\\xa0Their military capacity, including missiles, is not destroyed.\\xa0Their tunnels are not destroyed.\\xa0Hamas, its evil and its genocidal menace, persist.\\xa0How do we understand this moment?\\xa0

Donniel:\\xa0We need to move from a messianic Zionism (Israel can solve any problem, Entebbe style) to a more realistic Zionism which owns the limits of our power, which owns what we cannot solve.\\xa0He talks about a Dayeinu Zionism.\\xa0If God took us out of Egypt, but not through the Sea of Reeds, it would have been enough.\\xa0If God took us through the Sea of Reeds, but had not fed us in the desert, it would have been enough.\\xa0What is the meaning of this seemingly impossible text?\\xa0That we should be satisfied with what is, even when what is is not ideal.\\xa0Donniel quotes his father\\u2019s signature teaching that we are to thank God for being satisfied after a meal even if all we ate was an olive. \\xa0

Yossi Klein Halevi:\\xa0I could not disagree with you more Donniel.\\xa0Your Dayeinu Zionism leaves Israel uninhabitable in the south and in the north where hundreds of thousands of Israeli are internally displaced refugees.\\xa0We cannot be satisfied with an olive here.\\xa0We have to crush Hamas to live.\\xa0

Donniel: Great. We have to crush Hamas.\\xa0But we haven\\u2019t and we likely can\\u2019t.\\xa0And we are facing Hezbollah. And the Houtis. And the hatred of much of the world. And the Hague. Time for more realistic expectations.

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How do we understand this very sober moment in the Jewish people\\u2019s story?\\xa0This week, Shabbat Shira,\\xa0we read of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, and the Shira, the song of joyful exaltation following total victory. We would all love the Shira.\\xa0But if the Shira is not going to happen, can we be good with Dayeinu?\\xa0\\xa0Should we be lowering our expectations?