Shadows On A Cave Wall

Another Friday, another visit from the Lubavitch kids.

This week it was a dynamic duo: the slightly embarrassed, retiring Moishe, who’s been flying solo for the last few weeks, testing out his missionary wings with me like a bird fresh out of the nest. 

On this day he’s accompanied by Shalom, acting as his handler or invigilator. Shalom is tall, skinny, pale, and sure of himself. He’s forceful in a passive way, not shy about closing the deal on getting me to put on tefillin, while insisting that I’m doing the mitzvah for myself, even when I tell him that I’m doing it only to make him happy. Shalom has the chutzpah to slip in, at the end, an insistence that I say a prayer beseeching the quick arrival of the Moshiach, which he knows I think is total BS.

The three of us warm up by chit-chatting about their fedoras. It’s a frequent opener since I’m such a fan of Lubavitch hat wear. And they engage enthusiastically.

Finally, I say to Moishe, “So, did you prepare something about the parsha?”

He smiles broadly, like he thought I’d never ask. Launches into his shpiel.

Parashat Ekev. Another chapter of Moses recapitulating the journey of previous Israelite generations who have been travelling through the desert toward the Promised Land.

It’s been forty years, so the generation that will finally enter the Promised Land are the grandchildren of the people who stood at Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law.

Moishe says, “The Rebbe teaches that when Moses speaks of the journey through the desert, he is telling us Jews something important as well. Jews who will be exiled and live in lands that are not theirs. He is warning them of the vastness of the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead.”

I nod skeptically, as I usually do, but don’t interrupt. I know how hard Moishe works at preparing his weekly shpiel. He is naturally an introvert, speaks softly, swallows hard, and stumbles with his delivery.

Shalom is doing the same, silently encouraging Moishe along.

“And the Rebbe says there are snakes and scorpions in the desert. Which is a warning to the Jews. The desert conditions, like the conditions of life in the diaspora, will have hidden dangers. One danger is like the poison of the snake. The other is like the poison of the scorpion.”

I think I see where this is going. He’s going to somehow compare the serpent’s poison to the toxic influences of assimilation. It’s usually pretty predictable. 

Moishe says, “The snake’s poison is warm and the scorpion’s poison is cold.”

What? I interrupt.

He repeats, “The snake’s poison is warm and the scorpion’s poison is cold.”

I say, “Who told you that? A snake’s poison isn’t warm. It can’t be. A snake is a cold-blooded animal.”

He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me. 

“I understand you want to make a point about the meaning of the poison, to compare it to a toxin that infects Jews who live in the desert of the diaspora. But you have to get the facts straight. A snake’s venom isn’t warm.”

Shalom comes to Moishe’s rescue.

“I think what he means by the snake’s poison being ‘warm’ is that it excites the body, while the scorpion’s poison is ‘cold’ because it shuts the body down. He’s talking about the excitement we feel with all the pleasures of living in the golus, and the spiritual numbing that takes place once assimilation sets in.”

“I doubt it,” I say. “I mean, I doubt that you’ve got your facts straight. I’ll tell you what. Let’s ask AI.”

And we do.

AI says exactly what I suspect: that a snake is cold-blooded and that its venom is similarly cold.

AI also tells us about how the toxins of snakes versus scorpions work in the bloodstream. Exactly the opposite of Moishe’s shpiel.

Snake venom acts on the nervous system to shut it down, not excite it. And scorpion venom actually stimulates the nervous system, overwhelming it to produce lethality.

I tell the boys, “Look, if you want to maintain credibility with your messaging, you have to at least get your facts straight.”

The boys don’t even crack a smile of acknowledgement.

Then Shalom says, “But the way we are explaining it is what the Rebbe says in one of his books.”

I say, “Well, either you don’t understand what the Rebbe meant by what he said, or he is literally incorrect.”

Shalom says, “But the Rebbe can’t be incorrect.”

“So the Rebbe knows more about snakes than herpetologists who study reptiles their whole lives?”

I can tell they have no idea what a herpetologist is. I don’t hold that against them, because I doubt most seculars know.

Shalom is steadfast. He repeats that the Rebbe can’t be wrong.

I say, “Look, you guys are very smart and studious. I respect that. Learning means asking questions. Just because the Rebbe says something doesn’t mean you can’t question it.”

Then I add, “No one is more certain that he understands something than a person who doesn’t actually fully understand.”

“The Rebbe understands,” says Shalom, looking at me with pity. He uses the present tense, as if the Rebbe were sitting in the chair next to him.

“Only Hashem fully understands,” I say, reaching for some common ground. “The rest of us are in a dark cave trying to discern shadows on a wall. Ever hear of Plato?”

Shalom smiles to humour me. Asks if I’m ready now to wrap tefillin. “For you, not for us,” he adds.

I do it, to lighten the mood.

The Hitchhiker

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after Ida Lupino

“I know what you’re thinkin,

so forget about it,

you’re gonna die is all.

It’s just a question of when.”

Two buddies gone fishing.

Picked up the hitchhiker 

by the side of the road,

come out of hiding.

Said he’d run out of gas,

thanked us 

for showing up,

slid into the back seat 

and pulled out a pistol.

“Keep your hands on the steering wheel.

Ten to midnight

where I can see 'em.”

The hitchhiker had one good eye

and one bum eye,

could never tell 

where he was looking

or if he slept.

Turn here.

Turn there.

Pull over and get out.

We followed his instructions,

never sure when 

the gun would go off.

Camped in the sagebrush.

Headed south to Baja

to get the ferry at Santa Rosalia.

One night the hitchhiker

took the watch my wife gave me.

Said he never got 

a timepiece from anyone.

Owes no one.

We’ll be there soon.

Where is there? I asked.

You’ll know when we get there.

I thought about my little one 

back home,

“Ve con Dios, pequeña.”

Digesting Ideas

You know those foods you enjoy so much while you're eating them, only to regret them later when your digestive system starts protesting?

As I get older, that list seems to grow longer. But I'm not writing about my current dietary challenges.

I'm writing because ideas can work the same way. Some go down so easily when you first hear them that they feel undeniably true. Then, given a little time to digest them, you realize they don't make nearly as much sense as they first appeared to.

Often, it's all in the delivery.

Yuval Noah Harari is a master communicator. He expresses himself clearly, concisely and compellingly. He has a remarkable gift for making something fairly obvious—for example, that human beings are storytelling animals—feel profound and revelatory. I suspect that's a large part of why his books have been so successful and why he's become such a fixture on the podcast circuit.

Lately, though, I've found myself growing skeptical of some of his most appealing ideas—the ones that go down easiest at first. I've started taking more time to reflect on what he's actually saying.

That happened recently while listening to his interview with Ezra Klein on The New York Times podcast.

The moment that stuck with me was Harari's comparison between religion and liberalism. Paraphrasing, he argued that religion promises redemption, whether in this life or the next, whereas liberalism does not. Liberalism, he said, accepts that human beings are inherently flawed and that conflict, tension and mistakes are permanent features of society. Rather than seeking redemption, liberalism invests in mechanisms that allow societies to correct themselves. Elections, he suggested, are one of the clearest examples of a 'self-correcting' mechanism.

It's an attractive argument. Liberalism sounds humble, realistic and practical. It doesn't promise perfection; it simply promises a way of correcting mistakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the argument was built on a series of false or mischaracterized understandings.

The first problem is that it compares two fundamentally different kinds of things.

Liberalism is primarily a political philosophy. It concerns itself with how societies should organize power, rights and institutions. Religion, by contrast, is principally concerned with questions of meaning, morality and humanity's relationship to the divine. Certainly, religions contain laws governing communal life—Judaism, for example, has extensive legal traditions covering everything from commerce to civil disputes—but even those laws are ultimately understood as serving the spiritual development of individuals and communities.

In Judaism, tradition identifies 613 commandments in the Torah, yet more than a third relate specifically to Temple worship in Jerusalem. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, only around half remain practically applicable. That alone illustrates that religion has never simply been a political system.

Liberalism and religious identity are not mutually exclusive, quite the opposite.

Someone can quite comfortably describe themselves as both a liberal and a Jew, or a liberal and a Christian. I certainly describe myself as a liberal Jew, and I suspect Harari would as well. Liberalism, properly understood, accommodates people of many different religious convictions precisely because it operates in a different sphere.

Second, Harari's understanding of redemption, at least the way he is using it here, is incorrect.

He seems to treat redemption as if it means arriving at perfection. But that's not how most religious traditions understand it. For practicing believers, redemption is not a final state of flawless existence. It is the ongoing work of self-examination, repentance, learning and moral growth. In other words, redemption is itself a self-correcting process.

My third objection is to describe elections as "self-correcting."

Elections don't inherently correct anything. They simply measure the preferences of a population at a particular moment in time. Sometimes those preferences lead to better outcomes; sometimes they don't. Elections provide peaceful accountability and adaptability, which are enormous strengths, but calling them "self-correcting" gives them more credit than they deserve. They are mechanisms for expressing collective will, certainly not guarantees of progress.

Harari, like every public intellectual, approaches the world with his own assumptions and preferences. As someone who has often criticized traditional religious authority, it's hardly surprising that he's drawn to philosophies that maximize individual freedom and remain skeptical of inherited dogma.

The rest of us have our own biases too. I certainly have mine.

What concerns me is how easily we can be seduced by attractive rhetoric at the expense of logic and coherence. There's something larger at stake than whether one agrees with Harari about liberalism or religion. It's the habit of intellectual honesty—the willingness to examine arguments carefully, even when they flatter our instincts or confirm our existing beliefs.

In an age of information silos and algorithmically curated worldviews, we all have reason to cultivate a healthy skepticism—not cynicism, but the discipline of questioning ideas before embracing them.

The ideas we consume deserve the same scrutiny as the food we eat. Some are nourishing. Some simply taste good in the moment.

It's worth taking the time to digest them before deciding whether they're actually good for us.

Time Travelling

I've written before about how I'm not much of a fan of travelling these days. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm not a fan of travelling in space, but I'm a great fan of travelling in time. I do it almost every weekend.

Here's what I mean.

I spend my summer weekends at our small cottage on the shore of Lake Champlain, on the Quebec side of the border. We're only about ten kilometres from Vermont, and much as I love that state, I can't bring myself to cross the border while Canada remains under continuous attack from trump.

Incidentally, my wife doesn't hold trump against Vermont the way I do. She rarely lets a weekend pass without driving over to hunt for collectibles and vintage treasures for her hobby business. This past weekend, when she returned to Canada, the customs officer asked, "So how have we contributed to trump's economy today?"

Gotta love border agents.

Back to time travel.

The bay—which is what my wife's family has called it since her grandfather bought the property in the early 1940s—has always felt to me as though it exists in another era.

Her grandparents discovered the area on their honeymoon. Back then it was known as Kirkland Beach, now part of the town of Venise-en-Québec. They were so enchanted by the place that they bought several acres along Missisquoi Bay, with three hundred feet of lakefront. The property itself is actually in the neighbouring municipality of Saint-Georges-de-Clarenceville.

Over the years, the family built five cottages on the land, starting with one for her grandparents and one for each of her two great-uncles and their families. Each family enjoyed about a hundred feet of shoreline.

The area also became a favourite summer destination for my wife's grandparents' circle of friends from the city. So many of them bought neighbouring properties that their little corner of the bay became known as "La Palestine." It's still identified by that name on Google Maps.

My wife's father spent the summers of his youth there, fishing and boating. Later, my wife and her siblings spent their childhood summers there as well. When I married into the family and we had children of our own, we continued the tradition. About a decade ago, I bought the cottage that had been built for my wife's family from my father-in-law.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I've always associated going to the bay with travelling back in time. Perhaps it's because the cottage itself has changed very little since it was built in the early 1970s. Even the kitchen stove we still use dates from that era.

The surrounding area, however, has changed dramatically. Property values have soared, and sprawling waterfront homes have replaced many of the modest cottages. The town of Venise-en-Québec has exploded with condominium and spa developments over the past decade.

Yet in my mind, the bay still belongs to another era, when life moved more slowly. Somehow the memories of my wife's childhood, her father's childhood, and her grandparents' generation remain alive there. The stories are still told: fishing derbies on the lake; trophy-sized largemouth bass, bowfin (they call beaverfish), pike and walleye; bonfires and scavenger hunts for the children; fathers teaching them to water-ski; grandparents playing gin rummy on the lawn, drinking whisky and smoking cigars.

My wife remembers arriving in June, putting on a bathing suit, and not taking it off until the end of August.

For her, the bay is about family memory and history.

For me, it's about finding refuge in myself.

Only an hour's drive from Montreal, the cottage became a sanctuary during the most stressful years of my life. Whenever I needed to escape, I'd steal away for a weekend alone. Somehow that simple retreat helped me recover myself and put life back into perspective.

When we got Sirius Satellite Radio in the car about a decade ago, the journey itself became part of the ritual. I'd tune into the 40s station and be transported even before I arrived. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Sinatra and Dick Haymes, Anita O'Day, Helen Forrest, and the Andrews Sisters—they became the soundtrack of my escape from the city and, for a little while, from my own life.

Crossing the Champlain Bridge, I felt myself slipping back into the postwar years—a time when the world could finally exhale after holding its breath for five long years. Somehow that music reflected how I was feeling as I struggled to keep our young family afloat while searching for moments of peace.

The music of the 40s was, ironically, swinging and joyful, filled with love songs and hopeful melodies. It wasn't an escape from hardship so much as an antidote to it. After years of pain and destruction, it celebrated the simple possibility of happiness again.

I'd arrive at the cottage after dark and leave the lights off, letting my eyes adjust to the lakeside landscape. The moonlight, reflected off the lake, filled the cottage through the gallery windows with a soft, ethereal glow. The tiny lights of distant cottages around the bay blended almost seamlessly with the stars scattered across the black sky.

In those early years, there was no television and no internet. All we had was a radio.

On Saturday nights I'd listen to Vermont Public Radio: the old-time music programs, American Routes with Nick Spitzer, My Place with Joel Najman, and, approaching the witching hour, Hearts of Space, Stephen Hill's hour of ambient music. It was the closest thing I knew to meditation—a quiet reunion with something timeless inside me, and with the universe as a whole.

A few years ago we finally got internet access, thanks to the cousins next door. I'm not unhappy about it, although it does mean I don't read books the way I used to. Over the years we've amassed a pretty extensive library at the cottage, and I regret that it's somewhat neglected now.

The internet, however, has enabled a different kind of time travel. This summer I've been binging film noir from the 1940s and 50s. This past weekend I watched Kiss of Death (1947), Road House (1948), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), and The Scarlet Hour (1956).

I love the pace of the storytelling and the dramatic lighting of those old black-and-white films. I love the way people dressed, the elegance and beauty of the actresses, and the dialogue—the more period slang, the better. I even enjoy all the smoking, despite knowing that it shortened the lives of so many of the actors.

Back then Hollywood released a new movie almost every week. I find myself looking up the prolific careers of the actors, directors, and screenwriters, wanting to know their stories.

Today's movies are relentlessly fast-paced. Every frame is filled with action; every scene cuts to the next before it has a chance to breathe. While the old films were built on performance and character development, the real star of many modern films seems to be the technology used to make them.

Sometimes I wonder if it's nostalgia that I crave. Can I really be nostalgic for a time that predates my birth?

The postwar films were ultimately human stories about love, jealousy, greed, loyalty, and betrayal. They were dark, but almost always redemptive. Many portrayed men struggling to fit in after returning from the service, trying to rebuild their lives and find their place in a changed society. What they found when they got home were women who had developed a new sense of their own power and independence. The femme fatale emerged from that cultural shift.

Many of those films revolve around gender conflict. The parallels with today's changing gender roles—and with men's continuing struggle to redefine themselves—are hard to miss.

I don't think what draws me to those movies is nostalgia. It's authenticity.

The films of that period feel authentic and human-centred in a way that many of today's films simply don't. They reflect the fears, uncertainties, hopes, and aspirations of ordinary people. They were made by artists who had lived through depression and war, many of them immigrants remaking themselves. Their stories are grounded in life's enduring struggles: rebuilding, falling in love, raising families, and carrying on.

It's sort of what the cottage at the bay represents to me too.

Turning Pro

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Twelve

and best friends, 

we both saved 

our weekly allowance

to buy magic tricks.

You'd bring a catalogue

from the local magic shop to school,

and at lunch hour 

we'd peruse the pages together;

the sleight-of-hand effects,

coin routines and gimmicked decks,

jugs that never stopped pouring,

boxes with false bottoms,

Houdini escapes.

Those days,

my parents were always fighting 

behind locked doors.

Yours had split years before.

The week you got your license

your father bought you a Tercel—

an orange tin can.

We drove around the city late at night,

stuffed ourselves with steamies and fries

at the local greasy spoon

and talked.

You loved a girl from school, 

didn't reveal the secret.

She wanted you as a friend.

You hoped

for someday.

I slept with her

when you were away at college.

Told myself 

she wasn't yours to lose.

We tried to hide it—

used misdirection.

When you came home

you didn't leave your bed for months

or answer the phone.

A vanishing act

behind closed curtains.

Then one day

you appeared

in your shit-box car.

We went driving.

I thought we'd talk about our futures

like old times.

"I'm going to turn pro," you said.

"Turn pro at what?"

"Tennis. I'm going to be a tennis pro."

"But you don't play tennis,"

I said.

"I've seen Borg,

I can beat him."

“That’d be quite a trick,”

is all I said.

Titleist

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We must be doing something right

when we can stretch out like this;

spend hours and hours

traipsing through estate grounds, 

around man-made ponds,

across escarpments,

batting a smooth dimpled sphere

about the size of a stone

with awkward bent rods

to deliver it into a tiny hole

marked by a small flag

cut into a patch of shaved grass.

It's called Titleist.

A fox hunt without much left to chance;

We dress for the occasion, wear special footwear,

and soft leather gloves. 

Instead of horses we ride vehicles

with rubber wheels and humming electric motors.

Instead of aiming rifles

we swing metal sticks around our heads.

The swings are counted—

the point is to reach par

which means average.

Below par means you're very good.

For the privilege 

we join expensive clubs—

moms with their neighbourhood friends,

dads with business associates,

after rounds, 

over finger food and cocktails

they compare handicaps.

Mom was club champion.

One time when we were kids

dad handed my older brother

his heavy oblong putter, 

told us to practice on the front lawn.

He used it to whack me in the head.

I’ve hated the game ever since.

The Rope-a-Dope War (aka How Iran Won)

For anyone who cared to listen to my opinions since the debacle and tragedy of October 7, 2023, I had one overarching message about where I thought Israel would ultimately find itself down the line. I said Israel would emerge stronger, safer, and regionally more powerful.

And for a few years, at least, I believe I was correct in that assessment.

Those were the days when Joe Biden was in the White House, Antony Blinken was Secretary of State, and Lloyd Austin was Secretary of Defense. Whatever you may think of that group—and they certainly made some mistakes—their competence and decades of experience cannot reasonably be questioned (not even Biden's mental competence, despite what his critics claimed).

Compare them to Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth.

After a devastating security humiliation—the worst in the country's history—Israel's operations against Hamas militants and Iranian proxies were successful beyond expectations. The Hamas attack failed to draw the other members of the so-called Axis of Resistance into the fight. Instead, Israel seized the initiative through a series of surprisingly effective operations: the devastating pager attacks, the killing of Hezbollah's leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, and the eventual elimination of Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the principal architects of the October 7 attacks.

Iran was decidedly on its back foot. Domestically, it was facing unrest brought about by years of crippling international sanctions, while citizen protests were steadily growing in both size and frequency.

Its regional proxies also appeared to be on the verge of serious defeat.

The high point, arguably from a strategic standpoint, was Israel's successful campaign to systematically dismantle Tehran's air defense system. That, in turn, opened the door for the U.S.'s limited strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities during the June 2025 "Twelve-Day War."

Trump proclaimed victory, repeatedly declaring that Iran's nuclear program had been "obliterated," which was patently untrue. Nevertheless, Iran was at a low point, as demonstrated by the widespread street protests at the end of December 2025, which the regime was forced to suppress brutally.

A series of tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and Israel followed over the next several months. Iran was against the ropes and needed to demonstrate both its resilience and its capacity to inflict damage.

This led Netanyahu to press Trump for further, more decisive action against Iran. He calculated that the Iranian regime was teetering and argued that the moment had arrived to act decisively to bring it down.

This was the gross miscalculation that marked the beginning of the conflict turning in Iran's favor.

That miscalculation was operationalized on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel coordinated a military strike aimed at decapitating Iran's leadership. The theory was that removing the regime's senior leadership would either collapse the government or render it impotent, inspiring a widespread popular revolt.

Although militarily successful in eliminating a large portion of Iran's senior leadership—including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many members of his family—the operation proved to be a major strategic blunder.

Subsequent attacks by Israeli and U.S. forces, including those that killed Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammed Pakpour, and Ali Larijani, the senior security official acting as Iran's de facto leader after Khamenei's death, along with internal security chief Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, only served to demonstrate the depth and resilience of the regime.

We had now entered what I call a "Rope-a-Dope War," borrowing the term from Muhammad Ali's famous boxing strategy during the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" against George Foreman.

Iran did not need to go toe-to-toe with adversaries that possessed overwhelmingly superior military capabilities. It merely had to absorb the blows, outlast its opponents, and occasionally lash out at carefully chosen strategic targets to demonstrate that it retained the capacity to inflict meaningful damage. Then, when the time was right and its adversaries had been weakened politically and economically, it could strike decisively.

That is exactly how it played out.

Iran retaliated with drone and missile strikes against U.S. military bases, attacked neighboring Gulf states, and finally closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz—which every military strategist and defense analyst had anticipated as a likely Iranian response since the 1979 Revolution—gave Iran the upper hand permanently. It fundamentally changed the stakes of the war and convinced the Iranian leadership that the longer it could sustain the conflict, the greater its chances of achieving objectives that extended far beyond merely surviving.

Those ambitions included lifting economic sanctions, stabilizing the economy through renewed sources of revenue, consolidating and legitimizing its control over the Strait of Hormuz, driving the U.S. military presence out of the Gulf, reshaping the regional balance of power, and extending Iranian influence throughout the Middle East.

That is where we are now.

Almost three years after October 7, Israel finds itself in a quagmire of its own making in both Gaza and Lebanon. It is despised throughout much of the world, and its relationships with the United States and key regional partners are at their lowest point in decades. The strategic opportunities it once possessed have been squandered.

This is what bad strategic planning and overreach look like when combined with hubris, corruption, ignorance, and incompetent political leadership.

The Abraham Accords are effectively dead. The Gulf states now understand—as much of the rest of the world has for some time—that the United States is an unreliable partner. Iran, meanwhile, is well on its way to becoming the region's dominant power.

Oh yes—I almost forgot the supposed reason for all of this in the first place: Iran's nuclear program.

There is now nothing to stop it from moving forward, and Iran has more motivation than ever to pursue a nuclear deterrent. Trump himself appears to have conceded as much with the recent Saudi agreement to assist the kingdom in developing civilian nuclear energy.