The starting point for the conflict was material, the land both groups wanted as living place. But in addition to living place, for both groups the same land had special meaning. For Jews, it was the land they prayed to return to for two thousand years, and also the land on which they believed they could avoid the persecution they have suffered for many centuries, culminating in the Holocaust, the murder of about 6 million Jews in Nazi Europe. For Palestinians it was the land on which they have lived for a long time, on which they suffered repressive rule by various countries – Turkey, England, then Israel– the land that has been their home. The same land is not only needed as living place but is central to the identity of both groups.

Herman Cain and Ron Paul at the August 11, 2011 GOP/FOX News debate. flickr / iowapolitics.com

In 2010 Julian Sanchez set off a debate amongst conservatives when he argued that the movement suffered from “epistemic closure” – getting all of their ideas only from each other. This suggests a particularly ideological and rigidly conservative movement unwilling to challenge its principles despite contravening facts. Bruce Bartlett, a former economic advisor for the George H.W. Bush administration and outspoken critic of the second Bush administration, made a similar claim when he said, “conservatives have sort of reached a position of intellectual closure [italics added].” He means that the conservative intellectualism of the 70s and 80s precipitated an era of complacency and stagnation in the conservative movement. Modern conservatives debate how to implement the ideas of their ideological forbearers, but are reluctant to examine the ideas themselves. John Huntsman Jr. seems to imply this idea when he chastises other Republican candidates for their dismissal and derision of the scientific community when the science contradicts their preexisting conservative beliefs.

Steve Benen offers a particularly pertinent anecdote drawn from the writings of Herman Cain in which the presidential candidate suggests that his awareness of national issues comes primarily, if not entirely, from conservative talk radio shows. The conservative talk show hosts of today are not trained in public policy and do not develop their political ideologies. Instead, these entertainers simplify complex ideas developed by earlier thinkers in their movement. These radio shows provide talking points that assume conservative orthodoxy is fact. The scientific community is viewed with derision by hosts who believe that ideology is better suited to address these issues then the scientific process. These talk hosts are only interested in promoting, rather then examining, their ideological principles.

Herman Cain is not an outlier in terms of his dogmatic approach to national issues. The fact that these talk shows have informed his public policy positions, rather than the academic or scientific communities, on matters as dire as climate change is troubling. Are American voters going to tolerate an uncritical application of conservative ideology? Or will they demand a president who respects scholarly experts and is willing to find compromises between the competing governing ideologies of this nation?

Nader, Nawal, and baby Naseem of the Aoude family in their Dearborn, Michigan home. / Courtesy of TLC Network

The new TLC series “All-American Muslim” hasn’t even aired yet, and it’s already come under fierce and prejudiced criticism.

The reality show follows the everyday lives of five Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan, whose population has the largest proportion of Arab Americans for a city of its size. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 33.4 percent of residents said they were of Arab ancestry.

The issues they face are similar to everyone else’s – some are trying to start a family, getting married, and venturing to open a new business. They disagree with each other. They deal with rowdy children and guilt-tripping parents. The characters talk, act, and look like average Midwesterners. Because they are.

My self-discovery occurred on a drive to Austin two years ago. (It also occurred during my teenage years, but that’s a story for a different and possibly older audience.) After listening to a deeply unproductive discussion between several Palestinians and Israelis on a local radio station, one that was more the equivalent of a wrestling match than a debate, I had an epiphany.

Well two epiphanies: My tire was definitely flat and I was going to need to summon my “inner mechanic” along the side of the freeway. Plus, several minutes after the tire epiphany, while contemplating what to do about AAA’s two hour wait time, my mind wandered — in an intellectual not an Alzheimer’s sense — to a recent conversation with a local Jewish organizational official. Not because he promised that he could change my tire whenever I needed him to, although offering to fix flats might be an ingenious way for Jewish organizations to get a few extra bucks, but because his wait time was similar to AAA’s, if only I added two more zeroes and substituted years for hours: Fixing my tire might be possible in two hours andIsrael-Palestine peace might be possible in 200 years. I didn’t like either set of odds.

Why wait?

Ever since the beginning of the Arab Spring, and especially since the early days of the Occupy movement in the US, I have been following the wave of unrest that’s been sweeping the globe with great interest. I have visited the Oakland Occupation and participated in the general strike on Nov. 2^nd. I have been writing about my amazement, my humility, and my concerns for some weeks. On the basis of all I have seen, heard, read, and felt, I continue to nurse some hope that this movement may be the beginning of transcending the legacy of separation and creating new social structures attentive to the needs of humans, other life forms, and the planet.

At the same time, if I imagine for a moment that the Occupy movement succeeds in replacing existing governments with some other form of governance, I am not so confident that the outcome will be what I most long for: a world that truly works for everyone.

I am fearful that the people who are now the 1% would be mistreated, shamed, incarcerated, or even executed. I am fearful that women will still have an equally challenging time having physical safety, full inclusion in decision-making, and the possibility of affecting the ways that decisions are made. I am fearful that racial and ethnic divides will continue to plague us, and that some people will continue to suffer poverty and human indignities. I am fearful that consumption will continue rampant and the march towards depletion of the earth’s resources will go on. I am even fearful that a new 1% will emerge, sooner or later, and what might be gained would be lost.

Prioritizing social transformation without attending to the ways in which all of us have internalized the very systems and habits of heart and mind that we aim to transform runs the risk of re-creating these systems and habits. From my reading of history, such lack of attention to the internal and relational realms has resulted in astonishing amounts of pain and suffering, sometimes for millions of people. On smaller scales, this lack of attention has meant that many social movements are plagued by vicious conflicts, resentment, cynicism, and despair even while doing inspiring and uplifting work.

Protesters gather for a "leaderless" general assembly meeting at Occupy Oakland on Oct. 10. / Flickr: dignidadrebelde

The November 2 General Strike in Oakland was already up and running when I ascended the stairs from BART at 8:30 a.m. The traffic through the intersection was as it is every Wednesday morning. The only difference was that there was a platform set up at the corner with music playing and a few people speaking into the microphone, trying to awaken the people in their tents, and gather a crowd from the people passing by.. A few people were dancing behind the platform and others were standing around – waiting for something to happen, or walking around passing out various newspapers and fliers.

But, who are the people on the platform? Somehow they seem to be the ones in charge – the organizers, the ralliers – but really, who is in charge? This movement is different from most other historical movements because one, charismatic leader does not exist.

Members of the Tikkun Community might be interested the Rev. Richard Cizik’s piece in this morning’s Washington Post.

Palestinian activists in the West Bank are expanding their nonviolent protest efforts against civil and human rights abuses with a new campaign set to launch next week.

As Noam Sheizaf reports in +972 Magazine:

Palestinian activists are increasing their efforts to expose Israel’s segregation policy in the West Bank, as well as violations on their civil and human rights. In a message to the press, the Popular Struggle Committee announced that on November 15, Palestinian activists “will reenact the US Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Rides to the American South by boarding segregated Israeli public buses in the West Bank to travel to occupied East Jerusalem.”

Palestinians in the West Bank have lived under Israeli military control since 1967. Among other restrictions, they can only vote in elections to the Palestinian Authority, which has very limited power on the ground. They cannot travel out of the West Bank or receive visitors without Israeli permits, and they are tried in military courts, which curtail the rights of defendants. Jews living in the West Bank enjoy full citizenship rights.

It started as a fledging “Occupy” demonstration that attracted perhaps three hundred UC Berkeley activists on Wednesday. They erected about seven tents in a tiny, untrafficked square of lawn to protest drastic fee hikes and budget cuts at the public university.

By midnight, the protest had drawn more than 2,000 participants – thanks to shocking police brutality.

On orders from the UC Berkeley administration, riot police clubbed and arrested students, some of whom went to the emergency room with fractured ribs. This video shows some raw footage of this police violence as well as the protesters’ peaceful and creative responses. They appeal to the police with chants like, “You are the 99 percent,” “We’re fighting for YOUR children,” and “You’re sexy, you’re cute, take off that riot suit.”

While I was reporting from Gaza for five months in 2010, I met a 67-year-old filmmaker who produced a riveting video tour of Gaza called Inshallah. Maurice is now working on a courageous new film called Mohammed’s Cry. Please read his reflections, spread the word, and (if you can), help him raise the funds he needs to draw attention to the ongoing suffering of Gazan civilians.

Among other things, I teach business ethics at the university level. I have also been a consultant to Wall Street firms for some 20 years, and have worked in various capacities on the Street since I graduated from high school, in 1979. I know a few things about what ought to be; I know a few things about what is.

I visited the Wall Street protest site in New York City, at Zuccotti Park, on Saturday, October 1. Subsequently, I read Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column on the subject of the protests, known as “Occupy Wall Street” or, alternatively, the “99 Percenters” (the protests have in recent days and weeks spread across the country, taking on other names). I agree with almost all of what Kristof wrote, which both applauded the protesters and puzzled about their actual objectives.

Like Kristof, I think that the protests and demonstrations are healthy and important, but the absence of visible leadership and “authorized” spokespersons, and the lack of a plan or list of demands, may very well lead to the protest’s (movement’s) demise, giving comfort to those who wish to continue the plutocracy that exists in this country. Kristof was right to suggest a few concrete proposals that the protesters might run with.

I know most faculty, much less students, will not have time to read the Student Success Task Force Draft that various people in CA are proposing to “reform” community colleges. My general impression is that, with a few exceptions, the measures proposed will be harmful to the poorest and bar them from college by assuming they aren’t making an effort if they cannot succeed within needlessly early deadlines even if they are learning and growing. It is also assumed that every student has a computer. So to illustrate the way it works, I imagined applying it to another realm: the public library. Here is my report.

Reserving Libraries For Those Who Can Make Best Use of Them: those with time, skills, and money

Occupy Wall Street protesters with a message that's been gaining traction.

Media outlets have steadily increased their Occupy Wall Street coverage in recent weeks – a victory in and of itself for the movement. However, most dramatic is the sudden narrative shift that has occurred at the national level as a result of this increased media coverage.

No longer are our pundits and reporters obsessed with “the deficit” and “ceilings” and incomprehensible numbers with zeros that go on ad infinitum. Instead, they are talking about popular disaffection with big banks, about personal financial struggles, about personal debt.

It’s a point Sarah Jaffe correctly noted, in passing, in a recent article on the possibility of debt strikes (a topic to which I will return):

One of the fascinating things about the media dominance of Occupy Wall Street has been how the conversation has shifted away from the deficit-obsession of the last few years. Suddenly the debt that everyone is talking about is personal, individual debt – student loans, mortgages, credit cards and other ways the big banks control our lives.

According to an article in the Washington Post, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll reveals some interesting data on what people think about changes in wealth distribution. As most readers probably know, “income disparities between the highest earners and other Americans have reached levels not seen since the Great Depression.” The good news is that 61% of all adults know that the income gap is larger than in the past, and 60% want the federal government to enact policies that will lessen that disparity – and consequently, help rebuild the middle class.

A citizen in Tunis shows off a memento of his first free and fair vote. Creative Commons / Freedom at Issue

Tunisia has just held the first free elections of the Arab Spring, nine months after the fall of former President Zinedine el Abidine Ben Ali. There are also feverish meetings, summits galore in Brussels and elsewhere to save the Euro. Then there are the questions around Col Muammar Gaddafi’s death. I guess news in the US is headed by President Obama’s announcement that the last American soldiers will leave Iraq by the end of this year, drawing to a close an eight-year war that cost the lives of more than 4,400 US troops. Over 10,000 Iraqi troops and police, and well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

But there’s another event that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been dominating your foreign news headlines. Well below the radar screens of all but the most fanatical ‘world-watchers’. A general election for the Swiss parliament.

I’m a convinced democratic. Lower case – a believer in democratic values. As a non-American I wouldn’t hazard a comment on US politics here. My Swiss daily newspaper had a cartoon of a Swiss couple walking past some of the many posters that mark our campaigns, and the man’s saying ‘the only country in the world where we vote to change nothing’. As a dutiful citizen, I read through the 32-page booklet that I got through the post of ‘spicy recipes’ of the different parties for the Federal stew that makes Swiss politics, ending with a real recipe for Engadine barley soup.

This article was co-authored by Matthew L. Skinner.

Picture this: an Iraqi reporter becomes interested in the work of a Jewish student in Israel after reading an article about Jewish-Muslim relations in medieval Spain that the student published online. The reporter contacts the student and interviews him about future prospects for Jewish-Muslim coexistence.

As the student in this story and co-author of this article, Joshua Stanton knows first-hand how technology is reshaping the way people of different religions interact. To start with, he and the Iraqi reporter would never have connected without the Internet, which enabled them to bypass regional politics and borders.

Yet the Internet’s potential can yield various outcomes. Despite our increased connectivity, people of different faith traditions remain all too likely to talk past one another. Just look at the comments section of any online news article.

Our friend Rev. Jim Burklo (Center for Progressive Christianity) just visited the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  His visit is chronicled in this latest musing that I found fascinating and wonderful, especially what happened at the very end… (read on).

The point is not the points, the point is the poetry….

Marc Smith, founder of Slam Poetry

The concerns of the book of Bereishit now seems to shift. Perhaps having given up on the expediency of world shaking totalizing cataclysmic events as a way to improve or even impress humanity, the narrative becomes more local, away from grandiose spectacles, more concerned with the daily life of individuals (individuals of great spiritual and moral grandeur, to be sure), from Hollywood to mumblecore, as it were. Even when world war ensues, or events that are remniscent of the earlier sections of Bereishit, such as the destruction of Sedom and Amorra, the perspective is presented from that of our small cast of characters, down to seemingly minor concerns with food, etc.

The two perashiyot, Lech Lekha and Vayera, with which we will now deal, make up what might be called the trials of Avraham and his family. Even as the midrash expands the “nisyonot”, what we will tentatively translate as the “tests” or “trials” of Avraham to a total of ten, with their need to make a greater superhero out of Avraham (his emergence out of the inferno to which he was cast by an idolatrous king, for example), certainly there are two trials, which stand above the others, and justify the midrashic multiplication of passed tests. Both are narrated with great detail in the text, linked by similarities of language; we are speaking of the trial at the beginning of this week’s perasha, the command to peregrinate across the ancient near east from the place of his birth to start anew in the Western lands, and the one closing next week’s perasha, the trial of the Akedah, the “binding” of Yitzhak. Although it might seem apparent that the rougher trial is that of the Akedah, the Midrash (BR 55:7), noting the recurrent similar linguistic motifs in both (the phrase lekh lekha, for example), sees fit to query which is the “greater” test. A detailed analysis of the latter trial will be presented in the following essay; in this one we are will question the relationship between trial, reward, society, and language.

The specter lurking behind every hagiography, behind every narration of perceived spiritual greatness, is that raised by Derrida in his “The Gift of Death”. Derrida is concerned with the the “economy” of religion, whereby every worldy renunciation, can be seen simply as a path to a much greater payback. If one is certain that performing a religious act will bring about a great reward, or some other benefit, how can this act be viewed as a sacrifice to be commended? Certainly our small mortal contribution if compensated by an infinite divine reward is an unequal deal in our favor. Coming back to our perasha, then, what is so commendable about Avraham’s willingness to move from one country to another, if Gd promises him fame, fortune, offspring who will become a great nation, and so on in return? Wouldn’t you do as you were told with this kind of promise heard directly from Gd? (Many of us who have moved to Israel made this type of move with much less promised as reward…)

The story of Noah’s ark is known to all, it is a popular design for children’s toys as well as the theme of many books and cartoons (two of the best that come to mind are Disney’s Silly Symphony version of the 1930s, and the Lois Lenski book, Mr. and Mrs. Noah).

The imagery of the boat full of animals, the dove with the olive branch, and the rainbow, are simply irresistible. The only problem with these festive bedspread patterns, however, is that, at the core, it represents a horrible story. Essentially, after roughly ten generations of mankind, Gd decides that his creation was a failure, and wipes everyone out, man, woman, and toddler, in a nasty flood, saving only one family, that of Noah, and a representative set of animals, to repopulate the devastated world. Aside from the technological difficulty the ark represents, there doesn’t seem much of a lesson to the story other than ‘be good or learn to swim’, which is far from the usual more sublime message offered in the Torah. No wonder, then, that the medieval Jewish thinkers had no problem labeling this episode a metaphor.

Is there any way, then, to rescue the passage? A frequent Hassidic approach is to read this episode as referring not to a historical catastrophe but to personal travail, and one of the more influential Hassidic meditations pertaining to personal prayer is derived from the text of this episode. The Baal Shem Tov is cited in multiple sources as reading the phrase ‘tzohar taaseh latevah’, which literally refers to Gd telling Noah to “put a window into the boat”, as actually containing a teaching on how to pray. By way of a midrashic reading, cited in Rashi, which states that the unusual word tzohar can mean either “a window” or a type of “light emitting jewel”, the Baal Shem Tov reads the verse as follows: tzohar, illumination, teasah latevah, shall you produce around the letters (tevah=ark but also means letters, as in letters of the alphabet). In other words, not only the meaning, but the actual letters, as you pray, should be visualized in luminescence. (An interesting parallel is found in a Tibetan meditation which details how to meditatively view illuminated letters.) There are many variations on this theme found in the Hassidic literature, and it is a beautiful one (and worthy of personal experimentation), but let us return to the inherent difficulty in reading (or accepting) the flood story as it is written.

Is there a way to relate to the Deluge as it is narrated, and derive some kind of meaningful message from it? I would like to focus on a remarkable set of teachings by R. Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin, made all the more interesting in that the core of the teaching apparently first presents itself to him as a dream, which he states appeared to him in Izbice, when at the court of the Mei Shiloach. This dream, he states, in the ‘dream notebook’ which is appended to his work Resisei Layla, he felt related to the essence of his soul. From this dream reading, which weaves together a series of Midrashic and Talmudic teachings related to the Noah story, emerge a series of interwoven teachings which deal with the problems of leadership, community and relationship of these to Gd, which become particularly pertinent for these troubled times. I will first translate the dream as it is narrated in the text:

A dream I had while in Izbice in which were revealed to me issues pertaining to the essence of my soul- among the things I was told was that the generation of the Messiah will be the very same souls of the generation that followed Moshe into the Wilderness (as Moshiach is the soul of Moshe Rabbeinu as it states in the Raaya Mehemna), and these are in fact the same souls of the generation of the flood (Moshe himself was also lost in the flood, as it states in the Zohar and in the Talmud Hulin 139: that Beshagam= Moshe numerically), but at that time the generation destroyed itself through the sin known as ‘the sin of youth’, as it is said of them, that Man’s inclination is evil from the days of his youth, but this was rectified by the generation of the exodus, their following Moshe into the wilderness being referred to as the goodness of their youth. The generation of Mashiach will be that suggested by the verse (Psalm 103:5) ‘they will be rejuvenated like the eagle’, meaning that they will be the same generation of the goodness of youth, that will be renewed again. This is what I remember [of that dream]‘

Before we read any further, I’d like to borrow a distinction between two models of readings, from George Steiner’s Grammars of Creation. He distinguishes between the Biblical presentation of Creation and that of the Greek mythologies, labeling the first a ‘rhetoric’, with the approach of the Greeks being the ‘erotic’:

In the Hebraic perspective, creation is a rhetoric, a literal speech-act, ‘The making of being is a saying. The ruah Elohim, the breath or pneuma of the Creator speaks the world. He might have thought it in a single instant’ but He spoke creation, and because discourse is sequential in time, the making took six days ‘Why this insistence on the unison of divine creation and divine articulacy?’ The Judaic answer, today renewed in Levinas’s ethics, is profoundly suggestive. Speech demands a listener, and, if possible, a respondent.

On the other hand, continues Steiner:

If the Hebraic reading of creation is a rhetoric, that of ancient Greek cosmogonies is ‘an erotic’. Aetiology and process are, as in the psychoanalytic theory of the creative, libidinal. The etymology of Greek chaos is that of a ‘rent’, of a violent ‘tear’ as in a ‘cloth’.

In this reading, Gd in the Torah is perceived as being primarily concerned with a dialogical relationship with creation, whereby in mythology, the gods relate to creation in an ‘erotic’ or libidinal manner, whereby the gods want something and get it or destroy. Certainly there are a whole host of Greek myths whereby the gods descend to the mortal world looking for women, etc., and when not satisfied or when refused, the woman comes to an unusual end. This ‘rhetorical’ reading works for most of the Torah, but is problematic when applied to the Noach episode, which would seem much more in tune with the ‘erotic’ characterization of the divine, in that Gd suddenly decides mankind are no good and decides to wipe them out, all except His favorite.

The Talmud and Midrash were sensitive to this aberration, and attempts to restore a ‘rhetorical’ reading. The Mishna in Avot 5 states that there were ten generations from Adam to the flood, the number 10 always being significant. The Midrash (Shemot Rabba 30) suggests that this generation was so great that had they changed their ways they could have brought about the giving of the Torah. However, because of their great technological advancements (the Midrash states they only needed to plant grain once every 40 years), they became decadent, uncaring, with no regard for human relationships (thus, in various Midrashim this generation stands accused of aberrant relationships– on the sexual plane of onanism, and on the legal plane of devising means of stealing from one another without incurring legal indemnity).

Certainly the oddest midrashic teaching suggesting the high level of this generation, is the text found in the Talmud, Hulin 139: which asks– Where do we find reference to Moshe in the Torah? The answer given, is the verse ‘beshagum hu basar‘ (a text specifically referring to the sins of the generation of the deluge), with the word beshagum being numerically equivalent to the word Moshe! Now this text is puzzling on several fronts. For one thing, Moshe is a central character of the Torah, after all, he’s mentioned hundreds of times. So then, perhaps, the question is, where in the first book, Bereishit (Genesis), is there a reference to Moshe? The surprising answer, is that Moshe is found right there in the deluge narrative, right at the heart of the sin which brought about Gd’s wrath in the first place. In other words, explains R. Zadok, not only was the generation of the flood one ready to receive the Torah, but there was Moshe as well, among them!

Given the greatness in potentia of this generation, according to the Talmud, in Sanhedrin 108:, Gd attempted to dialogue with them, in order to turn them around and save them. The Talmud teaches that Gd, in order to move the people to repent, first changed the route of the sun, having it rise in the west and set in the east. When that failed, Gd altered time, and when that failed, we are told, Gd gave that generation ‘a taste of the world to come’. However, none of these spectacular alterations in creation moved the people; they were too decadent to be impressed. The Midrash states that Gd tried to instruct the people with four routes to salvation– Torah, redemptive suffering, sacrifices, and prayer, but, like the natural signs, these specifically dialogical moves on the part of Gd were unheeded by the people, and by their potential leader, someone who could have been a Moshe.

Returning to R. Zadok’s dream, we can now understand the impact the coming together of these teachings set off in his dream. R. Zadok understood that the generation of the Flood was the generation that left Egypt, and was the generation that would ultimately be that of final salvation– in other words, every generation could be that which transforms history in one direction or the other. What matters is the coalescence of the generation and its leadership. In the generation of the flood, neither the people nor its leadership were able to transcend their corrupt nature, while in the generation of the Exodus, the people were not ready, but their leader, Moshe, was. In the generation of the Messiah, in other words, in that generation which brings about universal social justice, both the leadership and the people will have reached their transformative potential, together.

What will bring about this kind of utopian societal situation?  The Mishna in Avot, cited earlier, continues that there were ten generations more after Noah until Abraham, and when Abraham appeared, ‘he reaped the reward of all the previous generations’. Why was Abraham able to retroactively change history? Because Abraham is the representation of chesed, mercy, of positive human interaction. He saw Gd in the world around, and rather than isolate himself in a “religious” monastic search for meaning, he brought the message into society by creating a guesthouse, as we will see in subsequent texts. If the failure of the generation of the deluge was that of self absorption, as symbolized by the archetypical designator for self-love, onanism, as well as complete disregard for other’s property (as in the Midrashic story of theft and deceit accomplished by means which could not be prosecuted by law), Abraham, and later Moshe, symbolize responsibility for the Other, even at great personal risk. R. Zadok suggests that the period of slavery preceeding the next stage in human development (in the above cited teaching) was a necessary transition phase between a world destroying generation and a world transforming society, perhaps because the experience of suffering and exploitation of the liberated slave people would never allow a societal relapse back into the ‘erotic’ reading of the world, of decadence and self absorption. One might suggest that this movement from the ‘erotic’ to the ‘rhetorical’ is implicitly suggested by the text even in Gd, who renounces world destruction in speaking to Noach after the flood.

The editors of the Midrash Bereishit Rabba, were unsure of what the Talmudic teaching regarding Moshe’s presence in the flood verses might mean, and there they add that it was a recognition of the possibility of a potential Moshe who might impact in a redemptive manner upon society that led Gd to save some vestige of humankind. Perhaps both readings are complementary; we should despair of the human possibility wasted in our generations of meaningless loss of life, while holding on to the suggestion that even among the rubble may sprout a new message leading us out of this sorry condition; we might say that not only in every generation is there a potential Moshe, a potential spark of Messianic world transformation, but within each and every one of us.