Talmud Class: Should the Jewish People Lower our Expectations?

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Mark Twain

I think of the Mark Twain quote whenever I ponder a signature piece of wisdom of my late mother that I resisted as a teen, but that I agree with as an adult. My mother used to say: “Lower your expectations.”

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

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

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

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

Donniel: Great. We have to crush Hamas. But we haven’t and we likely can’t. And we are facing Hezbollah. And the Houtis. And the hatred of much of the world. And the Hague. Time for more realistic expectations.

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