Hundreds of millions of people heard the word Chabad for the first time yesterday, when it was revealed that the Chabad Jewish Centre had been one of the targets taken over by Islamist terrorists in Mumbai. The highly disciplined, well trained, and well armed attackers were after “foreigners,” the news reports said; apparently foreigners included not just Israelis, but Jews.

(Note: I discussed these events on CNN the same day I posted this: Konner on CNN )

Heavily armed Indian army commandos rappelled down from helicopters early Friday onto the roof of the Chabad building, known as Nariman House, and began an extremely dangerous counterattack aimed at freeing the hostages and killing or capturing the terrorists, after a harrowing 36-hour siege. At this hour (10 am EST, 8 pm in Mumbai, and 47 hours into the siege) the battle continues, but five hostages have been reported found dead inside the building.

At the outset Wednesday night a brave crowd of neighbors pelted the terrorists with rocks as they entered the building, but to no avail. The building was stormed, hostages were seized, and it was soon revealed how much danger they were in.

Sandra Samuel, 44, a cook in the Centre, and Zakir Hussein, 22, a caretaker, locked themselves in a room when a terrorist ran up the stairs. Samuel heard a child crying, opened the door, and managed to escape with two-year-old Moishe Holtzberg in her arms. “I just grabbed the baby and ran,” she said. The boy’s pants were reportedly soaked with blood.

The fate of his parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivki Holtzberg, was not officially announced, but it appears that they were killed along with three others. It’s a grave loss. They and their family represented the advance guard of Jewish outreach in Mumbai as their colleagues do in so many parts of the world. Whatever you think of Chabad outreach, you have to acknowledge the dedication and often the courage of the men and women who do it, trying to serve Jews and preserve Jewishness in an indifferent or hostile world.

The Holtzbergs, Brooklyn-born Israelis, were indeed foreigners to India. They started the Chabad House in Mumbai five years ago and help take care of the thousands of Israelis who travel there each year, often young people fresh out of the army and off to see the world. But Jews in general are no strangers to India. Of all the ‘golden ages’ of the Diaspora, the one in India was one of the best and longest.

There were three traditional Jewish communities. The Cochin Jews believed they came in King Solomon’s time; this can’t be proved, but around the year 1000, copper plates inscribed by the Hindu ruler granted them remarkable privileges. The Bene Israel may have arrived in the fifth or sixth century, from Arabia or Persia. More Jews arrived with the Portuguese, who established a colony in the 1500s. The “Baghdadi” Jews of Mumbai, who came from many Arab lands, were the most successful, including the Sassoon family, “the Rothschilds of the East.”

But eight centuries earlier the copper plates gave the Cochin Jews the privileges of high-caste Hindus. They could spread a cloth before the groom in a wedding procession or the infant on the way to his bris, carry a brass lamp or a silk umbrella, wear shoes made of wood and gold, and even ride an elephant. These were the privileges of nobility; what other country accepted the Jews so thoroughly or continuously for so many centuries?

The Cochin Jews used Hebrew extensively, kept Shabbat and kashrut, and observed all holidays and fasts, but they also borrowed practices from high-caste Hindus. These never violated halakhah but sometimes intensified it. While the Talmud says Passover preparations should start right after Purim, the Cochin Jews began after Chanukah, following Hindu standards of purity. As their neighbors prepared for the spring festival Holi by whitewashing their houses and draining and scrubbing their wells, the Jews did the same for Passover.

Simchat Torah was celebrated intensely. Hindus came to visit the synagogues, which were brightly lit and decorated with jasmine garlands. Women dressed in gold-embroidered dresses, and both men and women went from one synagogue to another to kiss the Torah. Everyone kept open house, with tables full of food and drink, and no invitation was necessary.

Jews had close friendships with Hindus and shared many customs. Women often wore saris and marked their foreheads with binis, the striking cosmetic colored dot that completes an Indian woman’s formal dress. The Sassoons of Mumbai were great philanthropists for both Indian and Jewish causes. It’s remarkable that the people who invented monotheism should have such close relations to the Hindus with their many gods, but this was so, and in many ways it still is.

Although most Indian Jews moved to Israel during the crisis of Indian independence—they feared civil war between Muslims and Hindus—many have moved back and commerce is very active. Israel and India have close relations, young Israelis love to travel there, and, unfortunately Jews and Hindus have something else in common: we are both hated by Islamist radicals. We must hope that the situation in Mumbai resolves quickly for the sake of both communities, but it is clear that the loss of life and the general shock are great.

Yet throughout the crisis, neighbors of the Chabad House expressed concern about the welfare of the rabbi and his family. When it is over, healing will gradually take place as it has in the past, and cooperation between Hindus and Jews, between India and Israel, will continue to defy the hatreds and nightmarish dreams of that small group of Muslims who say they love death more than life. Meanwhile, little Moishele Holtzberg remains with us, one of Abraham’s descendants promised to be as numerous as the stars, carrying the tradition into a new millenium.

Note: Many of the comments below refer to my appearance on CNN Friday night. Here is the link: Konner on CNN

I have answered many of them in a new blog entry.

On Sunday afternoon I found myself on stage with a gracious lady, interviewing her about her life. She was Tosia Szechter Schneider, a pretty, sprightly woman with sparkling eyes, a neat coif of white curls, and a gentle manner that belies immense inner strength. For although she has for sixty years had a normal American life, she spent her teenage years living history’s worst nightmare.

I have summarized her story and won’t repeat it here. In any case you should read her moving and simply eloquent memoir, Someone Must Survive to Tell the World. It will take you an hour or two, but it may help you see these events with a more human perspective than you have gotten before. It is not a horror story, although horrible things are told in it; it is a story of the triumph of the human spirit.

I’ve heard Tosia speak several times, but there was something about the conversation in armchairs on the stage of the Jewish Community Center Theater—one of several events in the Atlanta Jewish Book Fair—that was more intimate and gripping. For half an hour it seemed that the audience wasn’t there. The silence was almost eerie.

I asked Tosia to talk about her idyllic childhood in Poland and Romania, which she did with a gentle smile—splashing in the Dniester River, playing in the ravine behind her family home, polishing floors for Passover by dancing with buffers on her feet until you could see your face in the floor. She and her best friend were obsessed with Shirley Temple and were constantly saving pennies to see the child star’s next movie.

I won’t repeat the details of how this good life was destroyed, but to give you a feeling for it: Ann and I were at dinner afterwards in a nice French restaurant with Tosia and her brilliant, erudite husband Fred, also a survivor. We were talking at one point about the risk of illness, and I thoughtlessly asked about Tosia’s family history.

“How would I know?” she replied softly. I slapped my forehead. “Of course. How would you know?” Everyone in her family was murdered before they were old enough to have a medical history.

On stage, after questions from the floor, I said, “I want to end on a positive note. Can you tell the audience about your recent trip to Israel with your granddaughter?”

Tosia briefly described how precious and exhilarating it was to take her sixteen-year-old granddaughter to see the millennial refuge and long-distant-dream of the Jewish people. Tosia had tried unsuccessfully to go there after the war, but was blocked by the British. She later visited many times, but taking her granddaughter was something else again.

“I stood with her before the Western Wall and thought of all my ancestors who dreamed of standing there but were never able to do so. I looked at her and I thought, Mir zaynen do, from the Yiddish song. Mir zaynen do. We are here.”

This was the stirring refrain of the “Partizanerlid,” the “Partisan’s Song,” written by Hirsch Glick and sung by men and women who knew that they would almost surely be killed but were fighting back. I don’t know if many in that theater knew the song, but the refrain goes like this:

Zog nit keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg,

Ven himlen blayene farshteln bloye teg;

Kumen vet noch undzer uysgebenkte sho,

S'vet a poyk ton undzer trot – mir zaynen do!

Never say that you are on your final way,

Though leaden skies blot out the bluest day;

The hour that we have yearned for will appear,

As our footsteps drum the message, We are here!

I turned to the audience, gestured toward Tosia, and said, “If anyone has any question about the meaning Israel has for the Jewish people, tell them this story.”

After losing everyone she loved, after countless horrors, after staring her family’s murderers in their ugly, pedestrian faces, she could stand in the holiest place in the Jewish world, longed for through eighteen centuries, gaze on her lovely granddaughter blooming with life and health–the same age now as Tosia was when she stepped out of hell into the dim light of a broken world–and think to herself, Mir zaynen do.

The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff lays to rest, for now, my concerns about Obama’s future support of Israel.

Emanuel is practically an Israeli himself. His father is a pediatrician who fought in the extremist group Irgun during Israel’s war for independence. (The father made a remark in an interview with The Jerusalem Post the other day showing that he has not gotten over his anti-Arab bigotry, and the Arab-American Anti-Defamation League has properly criticized him, but that is not something the son can do much about.)

There’s no doubt of his deep Israeli roots and strong Jewish commitments. His father took their family name from a fallen Jewish fighter killed by Arabs, and took Rahm’s first name from a slain Jewish extremist. Rahm had part of his elementary education in a Jewish day school, and he sends his kids to a day school today. They belong to a Modern Orthodox shul in Chicago whose rabbi says they are “a very involved Jewish family.” On Rosh Hashanah this year Emanuel supposedly asked the rabbi for permission before he stepped out of shul to take a conference call in the middle of the financial meltdown. On religious grounds that I have discussed (“Because of the Jewish Holiday”), he got the dispensation.

He had dual citizenship but relinquished his Israeli nationality at age 18, presumably to avoid army service. But during the 1991 Gulf War, as Israel was subjected to Saddam Hussein’s missiles, Rahm was volunteering on an IDF army base repairing truck brakes. Most importantly, he has the political track record that his boss lacks: not just saying the right things about Israel but voting for them and fighting for them again and again.

Rahm is a little scary. He once shouted out a list of his political enemies, brandishing a huge knife, yelling “Dead!” after each name while repeatedly stabbing the tabletop. I wouldn’t want him over for dinner, even for noodles with only chopsticks lying by. He’s not my kind of dinner companion. He’s a noisy and openly nasty version of Karl Rove. He’s a brilliant political strategist with a take-no-prisoners style, and he’s a complete sonofabitch. But he’s our sonofabitch, and by that I mean the Jews’ and the Democrats’.

Did I mention that he was once a ballet dancer, and that he now competes in triathlons? That he went into public service but resigned the Clinton administration to make $16 million as a banker during just a few years in the business, before running for Congress in 2002? That in high school he ignored the infected middle finger of his right hand (he’d cut it severely while working at Arby’s) until half of it had to be amputated?

Maybe this is why he feels he has to give everyone the finger—figuratively speaking.

All in all, he is quite a piece of work. As I said, I wouldn’t have him to dinner (not that he’d come), but as a half-genius, half-attack dog, and wholehearted Jew running Obama’s White House, I’ll take him. His appointment is Obama’s first real act (as apart from many words) that demonstrates his commitment to Israel and his respect for Jewish opinion.

Some Chicago Jews who have known Obama for years call him the first Jewish president, an oblique reference to Bill Clinton’s designation as “the first black president,” and a direct reference to Obama’s affinity for Jews and his debt to Jewish supporters. But Clinton was not the first black president, Obama is. And whatever Obama’s relationship to Jews, the first Jewish president is a distant dream. In any case it won’t be Rahmbo.

But if the Arab lobbies are uncomfortable with him, it is unlikely that he will warm the hearts of  Jewish right-wingers. He was deeply involved in bringing about the 1993 peace agreements and the famous handshake between Rabin and Arafat on the White House lawn. He is said to be very proud of that achievement.

But will he involve himself at this point in history in exerting undue pressure on Israel? I doubt it. Tzipi Livni, who I hope will be Israel’s next leader, is in New York attending a high-level meeting called by Saudi King Abdullah. She addressed the UJA of New York and told them that Israel is not a state that puts its problems on the American table when a new administration takes office. She appreciates what George W. Bush has tried to do in the Middle East and expects it to continue.

But she also appreciates his relatively hands-off approach, and she wants that to continue too. As she told the Quartet—the European Union, Russia, the U.S., and the U.N., meeting along with Palestinian and other Arab leaders–in Sharm-el-Sheikh last week, "We don't ask you to intervene. Please, this is bilateral. We don't want you to try to bridge gaps between us. Don't put new ideas on the table. We know what we are doing, we are responsible enough. We need your help just in supporting the process according to the parameters and the provisions we all set between us."

Let’s hope that Rahmbo controls his Rambo instincts and refrains from interfering with a delicate peace process. In appointing him, Obama is trying to lay to rest, with his very first move, any remaining Jewish doubts about his commitment to Israel’s survival. In the coming months we will see whom else he appoints, and whether appearances continue to become reality.

Meanwhile, a skirmish yesterday left several Hamas militants dead after they approached the Gaza border and were fired upon by Israeli troops. There were weapons and grenades on their bodies. Hamas followed up today with six rockets aimed at Ashkelon and other centers, fortunately an unsuccessful attack. A spokesman of the Hamas military wing said, "The anger of our people and our resistance will reach everybody, God willing, and our response to the enemy will be painful, and will spill the Zionists' blood."

I for one want the situation to remain in Israeli and Palestinian hands, just as Livni does. With Benjamin Netanyahu as the only alternative to her leadership, it’s the best we can do. And I think it will be pretty good, provided outsiders—including Rahmbo and the president he’ll be working for—can provide encouragement and keep their hands off.

Monday, many hours before the polls opened, much less closed, I wrote a piece called “President Obama.” With victory assured, I celebrated a moment in American and world history that not millions, but billions have waited a lifetime for. As a boy I marched for civil rights and took a bus from Brooklyn to Washington to stand on the Mall and hear a great black leader talk about his dream. I have now lived to see a major part of that dream come true.

Jews were in that movement way out of proportion to our numbers, as we have been in every progressive cause in modern times. In 1909, Jews (including rabbis) were among the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and led and funded that organization for decades. In the 1960s, half the Freedom Riders and half the civil rights attorneys were Jews.

This sibling relationship between two historically oppressed peoples did backfire for a time in the ‘70s and later, when a restive, increasingly independent black community needed to assert itself without outsiders. But the alliance was natural and largely healed.

In this election, Jews voted more than three to one for Obama, as we have for some favored Democrats before. The expected withdrawal of Jewish support because of questions about Obama’s friends, church, and pro-Israel credentials did not materialize.

But these questions have not quite gone away. I wrote about them way back in February, seeking the real Obama among the conflicting claims. He said the right things about Israel, and was endorsed by people like Dennis Ross and Martin Peretz, strong pro-Israel voices. But he also enlisted anti-Israel advisors like George Soros, Samantha Power, and Robert Malley. Haaretz, the New York Times of Israel, ranked Obama much lower on their friend-to-Israel scale than any other serious candidate.

Most of these people appear to have faded into the background, and that is reassuring. Obama had to repudiate his personal pastor and long-time friend Jeremiah Wright, who has often over the years of their association used his pulpit to denounce Israel as racist and colonialist; they gave an award to the openly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. I simply don’t believe Obama was unaware of his church’s and his friend’s strong leanings.

As for Bill Ayres, the former Weatherman Obama has worked with, and Rashid Khalidi, the former Yasser Arafat associate who raised money for Obama, both are staunchly pro-Palestinian opponents of Israel, and neither association has been properly explained.

But what will count is what happens next. A very bright spot yesterday was the offer of the White House Chief of Staff position to Rahm Emmanuel, the aggressive congressman and campaign strategist whose parents were Israeli. Rahmbo, as he’s sometimes known, volunteered at an Israeli army base during the first Persian Gulf war in 1991. His father is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who belonged to the Irgun terrorist group fighting against the British. Dad likes Obama.

Rahmbo may stay in the House, where his take-no-prisoners style will probably make him Speaker some day. But the offer is reassuring, and in the coming days we will find out who Obama’s foreign policy team will be. This could remove the question mark over his Middle East policy.

I voted for Obama because I am not a one-issue voter; if I were, I would have voted for McCain, since there is no doubt in my mind that McCain would support Israel fully in any crisis; with Obama, there is.

I do accept the argument that in general a more peaceful world would be good for Israel, and it certainly would be good for everyone else, but unlike many of my friends, I am not sure Obama will bring about a more peaceful world.

The challenges Joe Biden predicted Obama would meet on the world stage began within hours. Medvedev gave a state-of-the-nation speech in Russia that excoriated the United States and announced deployment of missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave surrounded by European Union nations. Iran called for a reversal of America’s policy. And Hamas terrorists in Gaza launched a huge barrage of Kassam rockets at Ashkelon and kibbutzim in the Negev.

Hello Mr. Obama, welcome to the neighborhood.

As for Israel, words are important, and Obama has transcendent eloquence. But deeds, to paraphrase the liturgy, are still lacking. Gaza pounds Israel with rockets; will Israel pound back? And then what will Obama do? More important, what will he do if, as seems quite possible, Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear installations? Time, not promises, will tell.

I wrote a close Jewish friend—a staunch liberal Democrat and a friend of peace advocate Yossi Beilin—that I hoped Obama would do the right thing about Israel. He wrote back, “I trust you can tell me what the ‘right thing’ is.”  In fact, I could and did tell him.

“What I mean by ‘doing the right thing’ is simple. What I mean is what Sarah Palin said when she was asked a bunch of detailed questions about the settlements. She said, “I don’t think we should be second-guessing Israel.” That’s all I want to hear from any American president. Not a word that’s a hair to the right of where Israel is, nor a hair to the left.

“So how do I know where Israel is? Simple. I listen to what the people that Israelis elect say. Recently that has meant Olmert. For the immediate future I hope it will be Livni, because the alternative is not Beilin, it is Bibi.

“Whoever is in that very hot seat is there because the strange vicissitudes of Israel’s democracy have put him or her there. That is good enough for me. And I feel that way despite the fact that a significant minority of the voters there are not Jewish. It’s the Israeli electorate whose views I try to follow. Not Bibi, not Beilin, not even Israeli Jews, just Israel, as represented the only way that makes sense to me: according to what is decided by the democratic process that determines Israel’s government. When Beilin is Prime Minister, I will certainly apply the same standard to him.

“In other words, like Sarah Palin, I don’t think we should be second-guessing Israel. When Obama convinces me that he agrees with that statement, then he will be doing what I consider the right thing. You may not agree with this, but I hope you’ll agree that it’s a pretty straightforward standard.”

We will find out soon whether our brilliant, eloquent, and inspiring new president meets the challenges of his and all our lifetimes. I am rooting for him. I hope he remembers what Jews have done for and with blacks for over a century, and that he knows in his heart what Israel means to a people relentlessly persecuted not for hundreds but for thousands of years, not with whips and chains but with gas chambers and ovens.

I always said we would have a black president before we have a Jewish one. Now it is up to him to recognize the dreams of another oppressed people, who put his dream first.

“Whenever someone becomes Jewish by choice,” I began in introducing the speaker, “it represents a level of commitment that is unfortunately never reached by many of us who were born Jewish. It is also a compliment to Judaism, Jewish traditions, and the Jewish people. But when someone like Dr. Laurie Patton makes that choice, it’s a compliment of staggering proportions.”

Laurie, a colleague at Emory, was about to lead a class for alumni of the Wexner Heritage Foundation seminars. The program, co-founded by Rabbi Herb Friedman, its intellectual leader and inspiration, and Leslie Wexner, the Limited/Victoria’s Secret magnate who generously funds it, picks promising Jewish leaders in their thirties and forties and for two years of biweekly four-hour sessions to give them the Jewish education many have never had.

The first wave, in 1988-90–I was a “maverick” member according to Herb, decades before McCain-Palin–so inspired the participants that in Atlanta alone it led to the establishment of the first Reform day school, the first non-Orthodox community high school,and  a mammoth capital campaign. The idea was that instead of funding institutions, Les Wexner would fund generations of Jewish leaders who, inspired by their newfound appreciation for Jewish tradition, would build far more than he could, even with his billions. It worked.

Alumni of the first Atlanta wave co-funded the second, and a year ago both groups decided to get together for seminars. So the other evening us fifty- and sixty-somethings joined with the thirty- and forty-somethings to listen to an exceptionally gifted teacher.

Laurie went to Harvard and on to the University of Chicago, where she became an authority on early Indian religions and Sanskrit texts. She wrote or edited seven books, and the very day I was introducing her was the official pub date of her translation of the Bhagavad Gita, (Penguin Classics, $12) which scans beautifully as English poetry—not surprising, since she is also a poet.

Her first book of poems came out of trips to India, inspired by the religious ideas and rituals of that vast subcontinent. Her second, forthcoming, is based on the portions of the Torah read in synagogue each week, following them in their cycle around the year. Somehow she also managed to lead the Deparment of Religion at Emory to a rank among the top five in the country, and to win Emory’s highest teaching award.

The reason for that was soon evident. Her seminar was among the best I have attended in two decades of Wexner programs, a perfect blend of head, heart, and spirit. The room was full of successful people—doctors, lawyers, business and community leaders—who are often quiet because they feel they lack expertise. Laurie had them in the palm of her hand, and with a touch that seemed almost magical to me (and I teach for a living) she had everyone saying heartfelt, insightful things.

The theme was Moses as depicted in later literature. Poems by Emily Dickinson, Matthew Arnold, Longfellow, the 19th century Hindu saint Radhakrishnan, the Yiddish poet Alicia Ostrikher, and the present-day African-American poet Lucille Clifton were all inspired by the man Jews call “Moshe Rabbeinu”—Moses-our-Teacher—said as almost one word, as if inseparable.

Moses is seen by Dickinson as face to face with God, but not consumed, yet denied more than the sight of the promised land; by Arnold as finding God “near” and “flashing” as “he lay in the night by his flock/On the starlit Arabian waste;” and by Longfellow as breaking the tablets of the Law so that the fragments resemble those in the Jewish cemetery at Newport.

Radhakrishnan appeals to a Mother-goddess for all-embracing love, listing Moses along with Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Nanak (the guru of the Sikhs), and Mohamed as “lost in a rapture of pure love.” Ostrikher feels like Moses looking at God’s back as she watches her aged mother—there with her yet not there—slowly dying. And Clifton, in “To a Dark Moses,” sees herself as the burning bush, longing for “the one/I am lit for.”

In all these poems, as Laurie led us to discover, the common thread is the simultaneous presence and absence of God, and the nexus of faith lies in the discomfort zone between these two conditions. But it was her own poem about Moses, based on the parsha Devarim—the opening of Deuteronomy—that was perhaps the most evocative.

In it Moses as carries a basket of stars on his head—the Jewish people, already said to be as numerous as those heavenly jewels. But unlike Atlas, carrying the world, Moshe Rabbeinu must carry just one people:

Moses knew the value

of fragments—

perhaps he even knew

the calcium of our bones

was formed in a star…

Moses knew

he had to put

his stars down,

and put them in rows

and strange galaxies

called Israel.

Unlike the others, this poem is very, very Jewish, and made me remember the Midrash that says all Jews, including converts, stood with Moses at Mount Sinai. Laurie seems beautifully to remember what she saw there.

Jews have at times invited others to join them, but never tried to carry the world. Their God and their teachers are in part at least specific to them. Laurie Patton has been Jewish for less than a decade, but she has already joined the ranks of teachers among whom Moses was the greatest. She makes me wonder, with more than a little pain, what we lost by keeping women out of intellectual life for so many centuries, and, with expectant hope, what we may gain by a more inviting stance toward women and men who may want to join us.

I usually find myself in shul on Simchat Torah eve. It’s my favorite holiday, but that’s not the main reason. It’s also the yahrzeit of my late wife, Marjorie Shostak, the mother of my three children and the woman I shared life with for thirty years.

It’s a bittersweet evening for me. I went to our local synagogue, Shearith Israel, where the rabbi, Hillel Norry, creates an atmosphere of open-minded spirituality and liberal tradition. He is an energetic young man with short-cropped hair, a big black beard, a compelling style, and a gift for attracting children of all ages.

I like to think that Margie would have taken to him, despite the fact that she did not have much faith.  She loved children, so his truly profound bond with them would have moved her.

Shearith Israel is experiencing a population explosion. Small children, strollers, and babes in arms are everywhere. This is unusual in modern Conservative synagogues, which tend to be formal and staid, relegating the next generation to children’s services and day care.

Rabbi Norry wants the children literally under foot. I came in late from a meeting, and the hakafot—seven parades around the shul with the Torahs—were well under way.  I joined in the spirit of the evening, at least as an observer, and before the last hakafa, the rabbi unscrolled the Torah.

I thought I had seen pretty much everything Jewish, but a few years ago when I first saw this it took my breath away. I doubt if it’s strictly kosher, especially with women involved, but I love it, and I’ve since learned that it’s a fairly common custom among Reform and Conservative congregations.

Norry, in his big, multi-colored kippah, gathered the smallest children together on the floor in the center of a large room and asked the grown-ups and older children to stand in a circle around them. Then he and a helper began slowly unscrolling the Torah and tracing the circle with it, asking each of us to hold carefully the top of a section of the parchment.

He began to rhapsodize about its length, breadth, and beauty, in tones obviously directed at the children, but with the adults—many the parents and older siblings of the little ones–as important witnesses. 

Five of the kids had been dressed in bright yellow T-shirts with the names of the one of the five books of Moses emblazoned on their backs. These children were asked to come up and stand facing the passage in the scroll where their respective books began.

Norry bounced around the room saying lively, loving things about the text, asking questions obvious and tricky, displaying his infectious passion for this ancient scroll holding so much of the history and faith of the Jewish people. Some texts, like the Ten Commandments, could be found by eye, because of their distinctive layout. I happened to be holding the Song of Moses, which the Children of Israel sang in celebration of the drowning of the Egyptians after they themselves crossed the sea on dry land.

Even upside down I could read the first line and identify it. It was the part of the Saturday morning service that I began to omit saying, standing in silence in my Orthodox congregation at age sixteen, because in my naïve boy’s way I found I could no longer sing a song of joy about the deaths of so many.

Then Rabbi Norry asked those who were going to have Bar or Bat Mitzvahs in the coming year to point out the Torah portions they would read as the year went by and the Sabbaths cycled through the scroll.  A couple of boys pointed theirs out, and then a shy girl with dark eyes and curly hair called out, “Ki Tavo,” and walked over to point correctly to that portion.

As she walked proudly back to her place in the circle of grown-ups I called out, “That was mine too—fifty years ago!” Everyone seemed touched by the idea that I would have the fiftieth anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah on the day and with the Torah portion that would mark this young girl’s becoming a woman.

But no one was more moved than I, especially when, as the last hakafah began, her mother brought her over to meet me and invited me to take some role in the service.  I made it clear that I would not for the world do anything to detract from her daughter’s moment, but they both seemed to want to make a place for me.

I told her in her mother’s presence that it could not be more meaningful to me to have the anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah coincide with her Bat Mitzvah, and that the half-century that separated us made me feel connected to the future. The poised young lady shook hands with this old fellow and smiled broadly.

I was soon called to the Torah for an aliyah during the brief reading for the holiday eve. Although it is “not done” for the Torah to be read at night, Simchat Torah is an exception; since so many scrolls are taken out and danced or paraded with, it would be unsuitable not to read a bit from one of them.

As I blessed the Torah, I thought of Margie, who never had a Bat Mitzvah, and of the young girl who would have hers on the fiftieth anniversary of mine.  And at the end of the service I said Kaddish with a warm heart full of sadness and contentment, fond memories and great hope for the future.

Simchat Torah celebrates the endless circle of the Torah; its end is its beginning.  Next year when Ki Tavo comes around, I hope to be called to the Torah again, and as I bless the it I will be blessing too the young woman for whom that day opens a future even bigger than my past.

Frankly, I don’t want either one of them to be president. I suppose that, for the first time since 1968, when I became eligible to vote, I could stay home. Or, for the first time, I could vote Republican. But neither of these choices would be consistent with my most cherished beliefs.

Since the race card is being played, let me state my credentials. In that first election I voted in, I wrote in the name of Eldridge Cleaver, a black radical I believed in at the time. Neither Hubert Humphrey nor, certainly, Richard Nixon, could get my vote. Would I have voted for Cleaver if I had thought he could win? Probably not, but I thought it was a useful protest.

I was by then long involved in the integration movement. In August 1963, a few days before my seventeenth birthday, I defied my parents’ express command, left them a note in the middle of the night, and boarded a bus to Washington to hear the great speech that changed America and the world.

Martin Luther King’s dream has not quite come true, but there are many signs that it is well on the way, not least of which is that our next president may well be black. In the abstract, I will cheer that outcome, as I did when a president I strongly oppose—George W. Bush—appointed Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to two of the highest positions in our government.

I would vote for Colin Powell for president in a heartbeat, at the head of either party, over any other candidate I can think of. He has the experience and maturity to be the world’s most powerful leader. I trust his judgment—despite the fact that he was bamboozled by Bush and Cheney on Iraq—and I believe in him as a man of principle, not a politician. Probably that helps explain why he refused to run for president, but I consider that reluctance one of the great political tragedies of our age.

Obama, I believe, is not ready to be president. He is objectively the least experienced nominee for president in over a century. He has said much, but done very little. He has policies and rhetoric, but no experience. He went to Harvard and excelled there; he gave up a chance at a lucrative law career and did good work in the streets of Chicago. I know many people who fit this and similar descriptions. This doesn’t qualify them to be president.

He served as a state senator and performed acceptably. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in an easy race and he did practically nothing in the Senate before he began the all-consuming run for the White House. His greatest accomplishment by far is winning that race (so far), and I don’t find that reassuring.

As for his eloquence, I find it rather empty. I am not persuaded that he is capable of standing up to the truly evil men in this world, and I am not persuaded that he is a true friend to Israel. With the exception of his initial opposition to the war, I think he has been wrong on Iraq for years now. I think he is foolish to propose negotiations with Iran at the level of the presidency, and I doubt that he has the resolve to do what may be necessary to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

So why will I vote for him?

I won’t, really. I will vote against McCain. I will vote against a Supreme Court that would be reactionary until my children are considerably older than I am now. I will vote against a reversal of Roe vs. Wade, in favor of the rights of gays and lesbians, and against the strong hold the religious right has had on our country for too long.

Although Sarah Palin appeals to me and has more relevant experience than Obama, she is a right-wing fanatic who lacks the intelligence and judgment to be president; McCain is seventy-two and recovering from cancer. So I will be voting against her too.

I will also be voting for some things I have fought for all my life. Universal health care. Funding, not just mandates, for educating our children. Equal rights and opportunities for African-Americans. A unique opportunity for racial healing by electing a biracial man with a multinational history. And a chance to renew America’s stature as a beacon of liberty and reason in the world.

These seem like abstractions compared to the litany of personal and biographical weaknesses I associate with Senator Obama. I feel as if I am taking a big chance with Israel’s fate, among other things dear to me. I don’t think Obama is remotely ready to lead the nation or the world. But I can’t accept the idea of more right-wing ideology, more reactionary “solutions.” And I believe too strongly in voting to stay home.

So, with grave reservations, I will vote for Barack Obama.

It was probably a good sign that as we streamed toward the outer gate of the Great Synagogue the lady in front of us made a surprised sound and I bent down to pull her shoe out of a grating where the heel had stuck. I felt gallant, her friendly and grateful look was welcoming, and we exchanged Shana Tovas with her and her husband. Although there were more than a few police, no one checked on us.

The synagogue is imposing, built on the same plan as the main one in Budapest and the one in Berlin destroyed in 1938. Inside was the most beautiful sanctuary I have been in since services one Shabbat in Padua: seating 900, it has a large area of dark benches divided in two and a balcony around the top supported by elegant wooden columns that reach the ceiling.

It is in the architectural style of the Assyrians, which seems odd since they were oppressors of Israel—but then again so was everyone else. It does evoke Middle Eastern climes. The space is majestic, forty feet high, with elegant tall windows. On the eastern wall, the aron kodesh, the holy ark holding the Torahs; and above them a great stained glass window. It is called a rose window, after the ones in cathedrals, but this was a six-petal flower, a kind of Star of David, its petals a rich, intense blue. There was one large menorah on the bima—interestingly, with nine branches, not the usual seven; it wasn’t lit, but a number of smaller candelabras were.

Surrounding the ark, three Hebrew inscriptions: on the right, Torah tziva lanu Moshe, morasha kehillat Yakov—Moses gave us the law, the heritage of Jacob’s community; on the left, Ki lekach tov natati lachem,Torati al ta’azovu—For I give you good teaching, do not forsake my Torah; and across the top, V’zot ha’Tora asher sam Moshe, lifnay b’nei Yisroel al pi Adonai, b’yad Moshe—And this is the Torah Moses set before the children of Israel, on the lips of God, in the hand of Moses.

Women who wanted to sit separately were in the balcony, easily visible behind a low, delicately carved wooden barrier; behind the women were tall, stately lancet windows. On the left side of the floor was men-only seating, on the right, where we sat, mixed, and densely packed. As we waited for Kol Nidre to start, we got into a conversation with the friendly but dignified sixty-five-ish man on my right, Erik Lempert. When he heard we had just come from Uppsala, he said he worked there.

He turned out to be the Chief Judge of Uppsala. Uh-oh, I thought. Divine judgment in front of me, worldly judgment to the right of me. Fortunately, to my left, leaning toward me, was Ann, who to me means first of all forgiveness. (Any man surrounded by judgment on three sides had better keep his back to the wall.)

But Erik was not judgmental–he was kind, wise, and even funny. His wife just retired from her job in Stockholm; she was a justice of the Court of Appeals. As he said, “She overturned my opinions in the courts . . . also.” His father was American and he was born in a town near Rochester, New York, but had his bar mitzvah and education in Sweden.

Kol Nidre began with one of the best voices I have heard in a synagogue–a subdued, almost restrained tenor, ethereal in its spirituality yet frequently capable of immense power. His name, I later learned, is Paul Heller. Ann, who was trained in singing, had no doubt he was an opera singer—which would put him in a long line of cantors who did both.

Some cantors, whether or not their voices are good, seem to be performing for a hypothetical music critic who isn’t even there. This one was clearly trying to speak to God. There wasn’t a show-off moment in the service, but there were many when I was greatly moved not just by his exquisite voice, but by his lucid shaping of the words, full of sadness, awe, and longing.

Next morning I was early, and they did check my passport and ask a few questions, but I was soon inside chatting with Jonas Tovi, one of the gabays, the usher/floor-managers who make every service work. He was friendly and welcoming, and turned out to be a general practitioner, an MD-PhD with a specialization in elderly diabetics.

I spoke to him about the cantor, and he said, “Yes, he really prays. We talk too much in the gabay section, and he told us, ‘You have to stop talking. I’m praying.’” Jonas asked me if I was a Kohen or a Levi, intending to call me to bless the Torah; I said, “I’m a Levi, but in a congregation this size I don’t think you should be giving me an aliyah.” “A shy American? Is this a new species?” “I’m not shy, but I understand synagogue politics.”

He laughed and nodded; later, I was led up by an earnest young man to open the ark, another honor. Jonas himself read the Torah, just as well in his way as the cantor sang, with precision and gentle feeling. I later found out that he had not been religious until a decade ago.

The aliyah I would have gotten was taken by a teenage girl with a proud, clear voice that made me happy. I heard that the congregation would soon have mixed seating everywhere and was considering hiring a woman rabbi. A woman around forty in our row went up, and her two little daughters were on tiptoe, their heads bobbing and necks stretching to see their mother carry the Torah in grand procession.

The congregation—at least the stalwarts—prayed all day, with an hour break from three to four. The rabbi, a tall, imposing man in his seventies in a tall white hat and robe, gave his third sermon in less than twenty-four hours. He was as stately as the sanctuary, and although I understood few of the words, there was no mistaking that he had his flock in the palm of his hand. He made them think, he made them laugh, and he seemed to make them value their lives a little more.

Jonas read the Torah again, and also the haftarah, the stunning tale of his namesake and the whale, perhaps the world’s greatest story of forgiveness. And then the closing service, with the ark constantly open and the congregation standing—fathers holding babies, elderly men and women who had lived through World War II, the new Israeli ambassador, who’d presented his documents to the King in a ceremony the day before—all in awe of a power, or at least a mystery, beyond themselves.

They beat at their breasts in unison and said they had trespassed, dealt treacherously, robbed, slandered, done violence, deceived, scoffed, blasphemed, oppressed, acted wickedly, committed abominations, that they had gone astray and led others astray. And their voices rose in a gentle wave of chanting, begging forgiveness.

Avinu Malkeinu, chatanu l’fanecha.

Vår fader, vår konung, vi hava syndat inför dig.

Our father, our king, we have sinned before you.

Avinu Malkeinu, chaneinu v’aneinu, ki ayn banu ma’asim. Our father, our king, be gracious and answer, although we are lacking in deeds . . .

As evening fell and the ark–and, Jews believe, the gates of heaven–closed, the small, distinguished, closely knit Jewish world of Sweden hoped and trusted in forgiveness, as they had done in that beautiful space for 128 Yom Kippurs. The shofar blast, an unexpectedly high note from a long, winding kudu horn, seemed to go on forever.

I had heard that the Rabbi, Morton Narrowe, was from Philadelphia, and when I went up to shake his hand, his friendliness swept over me. He had fasted 25 hours and given three energetic sermons, but both he and his wife—a sprightly, warm woman with a deeply intelligent face–insisted we come over for scrambled eggs and homemade challah. The four of us, Americans all, sat in their kitchen and ate and talked.

Judi Narrowe was not your mother’s rebbitzin. She turned out to be an anthropologist who taught at the university and did research in Ethiopia, but that was only one of many things we had in common—American politics, Swedish economics, cultural materialism, Torah, Ann’s research on bilingual children and her fight against sexual exploitation of children, all our children and their grandchildren, and what it was like to be Americans who had become Swedish during forty-three very blessed years, we covered it all.

Rabbi Narrowe came out of retirement after eleven years for this High Holiday cycle, because his congregation needed him. That he came back in strength is putting it mildly—strength, eloquence, and a tad of irreverence. He shares my odd view that Abraham, in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, failed God’s test. He had spoken about it on Rosh Hashanah, quoting sources from Kierkegaard to Midrash. And he explained his Kol Nidre sermon, which had begun with the Chinese blessing, May you live all the days of your life. I knew he had been speaking about the life cycle, but I now understood that he had talked about how each phase of life must be lived on its own merits.

He and Judi had obviously followed this advice; she seemed to be his greatest fan and most reliable critic, never letting him lose his sense of humor, and he seemed like her greatest fan as well. They have given each other all that most of us wish for, and they have lived and are still living all the days of their lives. As Ann and I strolled back to our hotel through the pleasant Stockholm evening, I knew that I had just lived one of the best days of mine.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase from a newscaster in connection with the closing of Congress in the middle of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. This, I thought, can’t be good for the Jews.

So I checked the anti-Semitic web sites, and guess what? They are having a field day with it. Two percent of the country controls the government, etc.

It confirms the association in people’s minds between Jews and money. Not only do these Jews make fortunes on Wall Street, taking advantage of millions who don’t understand money, but when push comes to shove over what they’ve done, even the ones who are supposed to be public servants take a holiday.

Not really true, you say? Well, a lot of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11. So I am guessing that this Rosh Hashanah recess confirmed those people’s worst suspicions about the Jews.

I also have to wonder whether the recess was kosher. I vividly remember my childhood rabbi, Bernard Berzon, telling the story of a Jewish soldier who was ordered to fight on Yom Kippur. His rabbi, the chaplain in the field, gave him permission. Shot in the gut that day, he survived only because there was no food in his belly.

My young boy’s mind took away two lessons: First, if you are in a life-and-death struggle, no one expects you to observe the usual commandments. Even on the most sacred day of the year, do your duty to your country, and God will understand. Second, if you keep the commandments as best you can, God will take care of you.

I’m not saying I believe that; I’m saying it’s what I was taught, in an Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn, by a rabbi who was always rigorous but who understood the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. He knew that when they truly differ, it’s not the letter you follow.

According to the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, the head of the Federal Reserve, and the leaders of both major political parties, this was and is a once-in-a-century crisis. Not just the wealth of thousands, but the well-being of millions was at stake. Something had to be done, and it had to be done fast.

I’m not certain I believe that either, but most members of Congress said they did. So what, I have to wonder, were the Jews doing calling a recess for their holiday? It so happens that both Ede, the Muslim feast that ends Ramadan, and Navratri, the Hindu festival of nine nights honoring three benevolent goddesses, overlapped with Rosh Hashanah this year.

There are 29 Jews in the House (7%) and 13 in the Senate (13%). There are also two Muslims and two Buddhists in the House, and 16 Mormons. What would we have thought if Congress had gone into recess in the middle of this crisis because it was ten percent Muslim, Buddhist or Mormon? I can’t imagine we would say very complimentary things. I imagine we would say: Millions of people may suffer because of this delay. What kind of religion would make them put their country on hold in such a dire crisis?

The night the Dow fell 800 points three Jews—Larry King, Ben Stein, and Paul Krugman—were lined up in a row on a split screen on CNN. Ben Stein said:

“Congress should be called back into session immediately. The idea that we can’t have a session Tuesday or Wednesday because of the Jewish holidays is nonsense. We don’t have a state with an established religion in this country, and if we did it certainly wouldn’t be Judaism. So let’s get everybody back to work immediately. People work on Christmas, people work on Easter, people work on Sunday—get back to work.”

Larry King then said, “By the way . . . Happy New Year to all our Jewish friends, and it is the year 5769—we’re an old people.” Three Jews lined up discussing the financial fate of America and the world, on after the worst point-drop in the history of the stock market, while Congress goes home for the Jewish holiday.

I hope the convergence of festivals of three great religions—torn by two ancient hatreds–on a single day this year is an omen for the good, and that the coming year will bring a greater hope of peace. But I can’t help wondering: Wouldn’t God have preferred that the Jewish Representatives stay in the Capitol with their sleeves rolled up, taking care of their country? Did God need to see them in shul at such a moment?

We are an old people. As Isaiah said about Yom Kippur twenty-five centuries ago, after belittling sackcloth and ashes, "Is not this the fast I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him . . . Then shall thy light break forth as the morning . . . " (58:5-8)

Do we become a light unto the nations by putting our own religious needs first? Or by letting them know that we care more about the country and the world than about strict observance?

Happy New Year.

Sometimes I get a bit obsessed with numbers, but on the other hand, they can be important.

For instance, 190. That’s the number of nations whose representatives sat in the UN General Assembly Tuesday and listened politely to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talk about, “solutions for achieving sustainable peace and expanding love, compassion, and cooperation” and “a brilliant, desirable and beautiful future in the hearts of men.”

My next number for the day is 7. A lucky number? Not this time. That’s the number of times I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket said the word “Zionist.” They are the “criminals” and “murderers” responsible for “60 years of carnage and invasion” in Palestine, of course, “displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land.” You knew that.

But I bet you didn’t know that the victimization of “the peoples of Georgia and Ossetia” is also the result of “the underhanded actions of the Zionists.” These Zionists sure get around. I guess they weren’t busy enough killing “the true owners” of Israel.

And did you know that, “The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”

Did Dinner-Jacket actually read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and find out this secret about us? Or did he just read the coverage? Or maybe God clued him in. We just can’t keep our Zionist secrets any more.

How else would he know that “the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.”

Now that the cat is out of the bag, I guess the world will rise up and, under Dinner-Jacket’s leadership, crush the Zionist enemy that causes every problem in this warm-hearted, glorious world, and bring about permanent world peace—with a Caliphate centered in Tehran, of course. When this ancient curse is removed from the decent people of this planet, the lion will lie down with the lamb.

Okay, it’s not really funny. I can hear my Shoah-survivor friends whispering in my ear, When Hitler said these exact same words, everybody laughed. I remember the cartoons that made him seem so ridiculous. I remember Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious parody. I remember they called him “The Ducktator” and “The Carpet-Chewer.” And then I remember everyone I loved going up in smoke.

So let’s get serious. Shimon Peres called this speech “the darkest anti-Semitic libel” and "an attempt to bring to life one of the ugliest plots of history.” He pointed out that Iran has undermined and divided not only the Palestinian people, thus delaying their dreams, but the people of Lebanon and the people of Iraq.

Ahmadinejad’s strategy really is just like Hitler’s: Talk about world peace, relentlessly build your weapons, lull people into believing you are just another little nation trying to get along, consistently undermine and foment conflict among your neighbors in order to dominate them, repeat again and again the big lie about how the Jews run and ruin the world, and prepare the groundwork for a final solution to the “Zionist” problem.

What did the 190 nations do? Many of them applauded. Tzipi Livni, elected by the Kadima party to replace Ehud Olmert, said, "[Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's speech makes the situation absurd for an organization that raised the banner of 'Never Again' upon its establishment."

Some other numbers: 431: the number of votes by which Livni won the primary, out of some 40,000 votes cast; 42: the number of days allotted for her to pull together a coalition government; 29: the number of Knesset members in her party; 61: the number she needs; 90: the number of days to a new election if she fails.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party would probably win such an election, which would be huge setback for the peace process. The nations of the world are disunited, but so is Israel itself, and so is its best friend the United States. It is not reassuring at the moment that the world is facing the worst financial and economic crisis since the 1930s, the last time half the world decided to blame the Jews.

700 billion: the number of dollars American taxpayers must lay out to avert that crisis; or is it 1.8 trillion?

40: the number of days until those same taxpayers decide which of two flawed men will take responsibility for the world’s economy, for fostering peace in the Middle East, for the containment of Iran, and for the protection of Israel against a nuclear Holocaust.

And then there is that other number, always in our minds, the number that needs no explanation: 6 million.