Podcasts religion From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life Talmud Class: What Does Stephen Sondheim Mentoring a Young Singer Teach Us about Our Relationship With Israel?

Talmud Class: What Does Stephen Sondheim Mentoring a Young Singer Teach Us about Our Relationship With Israel?

Published: Sept. 17, 2022, 6:02 p.m.

For my money, the best, simplest, shortest expression of the complexity of Israel remains the opening chapter of Ari Shavit\u2019s classic My Promised Land.  Shavit\u2019s grandfather was among the first Zionists who settled Eretz Yisrael. Shavit himself served in the Israeli army as a paratrooper. The book opens: \u201cFor as long as I can remember, I remember fear. Existential fear.\u201d Two pages later: \u201cFor as long as I can remember, I remember occupation. Only a week after I asked my father whether the Arab nations were going to conquer Israel, Israel conquered the Arab-populated regions of the West Bank and Gaza.\u201d

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How do we, and our children and grandchildren, respond to this complexity?

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One response is, it\u2019s exhausting. We have enough problems here in America. Disconnection.

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Another response is indictment. Using words like Apartheid. Hostility.

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That is where a lot of American Jews (especially young American Jews) are, somewhere between disconnected and hostile.

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Tomorrow we are going to consider a model of wisdom from an unlikely source: Stephen Sondheim mentoring a young singer in singing Send in the Clowns . Could this model a different move to keep American Jews in loving dialogue with Israel? 

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This clip of Sondheim working with a young singer embodies a classic source, Maimonides\u2019 teaching on repentance, which is about a directional energy of moving towards in love rather than away from in anger. Maimonides offers: \u201cRepentance brings near those who are far away.\u201d What does this text about directional energy have to say about bringing our disconnected or hostile generations closer to Israel?