It’s been said that if Obama wins, that would be a big push for Aliyah.

I’m not sure how that works out considering the fact that 70% of Jews who voted, voted for Obama. I guess it’s that 30% that might be considering their options.

And how timely is that!

Nefesh B’Nefesh is going to be working overtime this winter.

If you were thinking about Aliyah, and now considering it more seriously, talk to NBN now to ensure you can get a seat on that plane.

So, if “Change” has morphed into “Forward,” let “Forward” morph into “Eastbound.” It’s time to come home.

Tell them Jameel sent you.

[Editor's Note: 60%-40% was updated to 70%-30% based on the latest exit polls of Jewish voters.]

A good Israeli friend of mine, like most non-Americans, is mystified by the plethora of poll numbers emanating from the presidential campaign and seem to mean very different things to very different people.

In this column I’ve been trying to stress the huge difference between the national polls, which do nothing more than reflect the mood of a representative sample of Americans on a given day, and the state-by-state polls, which are also snapshots by nature, but with more meaningful information regarding the actual results of the coming vote.

On Sunday, my friend complained that I’m the only one who says Obama will, basically, wipe the floor with his Republican opponent. Everyone else has been telling him the race is neck and neck.

Indeed, last Sunday, you could still find national polls that, while favoring Obama, did so with a gap between him and Romney that fell within the 3 point margin of error.

Every educated American has had to explain to a foreigner, at one point or another, our election system, or, more specifically, the Electoral College.

The Electoral College, comprised of 538 delegates from the different states, will meet after the November election and will vote on who should be our next president. It didn’t used to be a foregone conclusion, but in our time it is: the candidate to receive 270 delegates or more will be our next president.

The president is not picked by the popular vote, even though it often seems that way. He or she are picked by the 270+ delegates they collected.

This is why the national polls, which last Sunday showed the candidates running neck and neck, essentially, didn’t present a viable prediction of the election results.

I’ll give you an example:

Take the two neighboring states of North and South Dakota. They’re very similar in many ways, including the fact that the size of their citizenry entitles them to three delegates each to the Electoral College.

Let’s say that it takes roughly half a million citizens to qualify for one delegate. ND and SD then should have 1.5 million voters each.

Let’s say that Mitt Romney is extremely popular in ND, where he is loved by everyone, 100% of the voters.

In SD, however, he is only liked by 49% of the voters, while Barack Obama enjoys the support of 51% of the voters.

If we ran a poll about the popularity of the two candidates in the Dakotas, Romney would be the runaway leader by a whopping 3 to 1 ratio. A clear winner.

But, come election day, to his chagrin, Romney would only receive 3 delegates, as will Obama. Because our system is winner-take-all, and having everybody vote for you, or merely a slim majority of the voters, comes down to exactly the same result.

Our country is divided into five kinds of states: Red—proud, dedicated Republicans; Pink—leaning Republicans; Blue—proud, dedicated Democrats; Baby Blue—leaning Democrat, and Gray – the tossup states.

Let’s assume that Romney gets both shades of red and Obama both shades of blue. This will net Romney 193 delegates, while Obama will have 252 delegates.

There are 93 votes remaining in the tossup states, which, were Romney to win the majority there, he could find his way to the yearned for 270.

The problem is that he is behind in most of them, and in all the larger states in that bunch.

Take North Carolina, where Romney was the clear leader throughout the summer – but not any more. An NBC/WSJ/Marist poll covering the period from 9/23 – 9/25, sampling 1,035 Likely Voters – folks who are registered to vote and planning to do so, with a 3.1 margin of error, show Obama with a 48-46 lead over Romney. That’s a Southern state, with mostly red state-wide elected officials, which should have gone to Romney and is slipping away from his grasp.

A Republican poll in the same state gave Obama a 4 point lead for the period of 9/18-9/19.

In Florida, the biggest tossup state (29 delegates), Obama is leading by 3 and 4 points (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac last week gave him 9 points).

And in Ohio, with its 18 delegates, Obama has been doing so well, that the site Real Clear Politics, the Mecca for political junkies during these trying times, has moved Ohio from gray to baby blue. It’s no longer a tossup state.

Wailing, fasting and the wearing of ashes, alongside socializing, communing and catching up with old friends in a fun outdoor atmosphere. That is the dichotomy of the 9th of Av in modern day Jerusalem. On the one hand a somber mood, but on the other hand, a paradoxical sense of joviality fills the warm summer night.

It makes sense that some level of happiness is in the air, because after all, we are bewailing the destruction of Jerusalem in a big, beautiful and built Jerusalem. This contrast is highlighted in the Jewish liturgy on the 9th of Av when we say the “Nachem” prayer referring to mournful, destroyed and desolate Jerusalem. However, we say that prayer in one of the hundreds of beautiful Synagogues in the city, or at the courtyard of Jerusalem’s city hall, or at the Western Wall with thousands of our fellow Jewish Israeli citizens who have travelled from other thriving Israeli cities on the paved roads of the Jewish state to pray for the future of Jerusalem.

Indeed, a major change has taken place in Jewish life, and while we keep the same rites as we have kept for 2000 years, our reality is vastly different. To understand the change, here is a parable: Two women are in a room and both are single. One’s husband has just died, while the other is engaged to be married – both are indeed single, but they are in totally different states of mind.

So, too, is the Jewish nation: We have mourned for the last two millennia because we were forcibly dispossessed of our land, our capital was sacked, our Temple destroyed and it was as though our husband was murdered. But now with half the Jewish people in the land of Israel and Jerusalem standing in earthly beauty, we are engaged to be married and await the next stage of fulfillment. Our mourning now is the yearning for a final redemption – like a bride waiting for the wedding canopy, we impatiently await the completion of this great process.

Yet, so many Jews deny the obvious reality. Almost like a mantra, they tell you that nothing has changed, that we are still in exile, that there is no difference between living in Israel and living in the Diaspora. Our own people somehow don’t see the transformation that has opened the doors for our nation to return to lost tradition, speak our national language, fight in a Jewish army, and create a culturally Jewish state on our ancestral land. One gets the impression that some prefer not to see it, lest it break their romance with other dreams, namely, the American Dream.

Recently, I caught an article in the Jewish Journal and it was titled: “They just want kosher Dodger Dogs”. The article went on to say that a consortium of six “accomplished professionals” who are also “season ticket holders” are working to remedy the lack of kosher hot dogs at Dodger Stadium in LA. “We are really just a group of people who feel very strongly that the second-largest Jewish community in the country should have the ability to eat a Jewish hot dog at a ballgame…” said a member of the committee, an attorney.

Seriously? Is this what grown men spend their time on? The Jewish people are engaged in the most exciting project in two thousand years – building a Jewish State. We face enormous challenges to build up, educate, and protect our people, and all this is happening while wealthy season-ticket Kosher-eating Jews are fighting for Kosher hot dogs in Dodger stadium? Are we so comfortable with the status quo that Jewish leaders can spend their time on nonsense?

Even closer to their home, in the great state of California there are serious problems with antisemitism at many colleges, high intermarriage rates, and scores of Jews who are losing all connection with Judaism. Some young Jews don’t stand a chance of getting Jewish schooling, while others are afraid to show their Kippah on campus. Yet a group of wealthy Kosher-eating Jews is not ashamed to go public with their efforts to bring fresh Kosher dogs to their box seats?

Following is an excerpt from the letter that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent to Shaul Mofaz on Tuesday:

“I regret your decision to give up on an opportunity to make an historic change. After 64 years, we were very close to a substantial change in the division of the burden. I gave you a proposal that would have led to the conscription of ultra-orthodox and Arabs from the age of 18. I explained to you that the only way to implement this on the ground is gradually and without tearing Israeli society apart, especially at a time when the State of Israel is facing many significant challenges. I will continue to work toward the responsible solution that Israeli society expects.”

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s armored car motorcade was riding through the Egyptian port city of Alexandria where she had given a speech on democratic rights, a tomato hit an accompanying Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle were thrown at Hillary’s car, Reuters reports.

According to a senior U.S. official, said Clinton herself was not hit, since her vehicle had already turned a corner by the time of the incident. But she may have been able to hear the taunts of “Monica, Monica” which the protesters were chanting, a reference to the extra-marital affair conducted by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Others had chanted the Arabic equivalent of ” Clinton go home,” according to an Egyptian security official.

According to Al Ahram, several liberal and Christian politicians and public figures condemned Clinton’s visit to Egypt, accusing the United States of favoring Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. There were several large demonstrations by liberal parties and movements, including the Free Egyptians party and the Front for Peaceful Change, against Clinton’s visit outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo, the presidential palace and the Four Seasons hotel in which Clinton was staying. The demonstrators were joined by supporters of Mubarak-era vice president Omar Suleiman.

A large group of Christian politicians – including Coptic MP Emad Gad, rights activist Michael Mounir, former MP Georgette Qeleini and business tycoon Naguib Sawiris, refused to meet with Clinton during her brief visit to Egypt.

In a joint statement on Sunday, they expressed their displeasure with Clinton’s decision to meet with members of Egypt’s Coptic-Christian community following earlier meetings with Muslim Brotherhood members and Salafists. They asserted that Clinton’s move served to “promote sectarian divisions.”

Clinton met with women and Christians, two groups with reasons to fear repression under a Muslim Brotherhood government.

“I will be honest and say some have legitimate fears about their future,” Clinton told reporters. “I said to them … no Egyptian, no person anywhere, should be persecuted for their faith, or their lack of faith, for their choices about working and not working. Democracy is not just about reflecting the will of the majority. It is also about protecting the rights of the minority.”

Clinton said the U.S. had learned that “the hard way,” pointing out that the U.S. constitution originally did not protect the rights of women or slaves.

Al Ahram reported that on Saturday the Front for Peaceful Change, a pro-revolution youth group, issued a statement calling on the Egyptian public to participate in the protests to register its rejection of perceived U.S. interference in Egypt’s affairs and its deal-making with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al Ahram cites accusations of a secret agreement which was hammered out between the U.S. and the Brotherhood, which the paper says is a common refrain among the opponents of Clinton’s visit.

Emad Gad, a Coptic-Christian member of Egypt’s recently dissolved lower house of parliament, saw Clinton’s visit to Cairo in the context of an alleged U.S.-Brotherhood deal that enabled candidate Mohamed Morsi to assume Egypt’s presidency.

“In exchange for Morsi’s being named president, the Brotherhood is expected to protect Israel’s security by pressuring Hamas – the Brotherhood’s branch in Palestine – not to launch military attacks against Israel, and even accept a peace agreement with Tel Aviv,” Gad told Al-Ahram.

Gad, whom Al Ahram introduces as a prominent political analyst, told the paper that the U.S. was also supporting the Brotherhood in return for maintaining Mubarak-era agreements not to restore ties with Iran.

On Saturday night, according to Reuters, protesters outside Clinton’s Cairo hotel chanted anti-Islamist slogans, accusing the United States of engineering the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power.

In her speech at the recently re-opened U.S. consulate in Alexandria, Clinton rejected suggestions that the United States, which had been an avid supporter of the deposed Mubarak, was backing one faction over another in Egypt.

“I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot,” Clinton said.

“We are prepared to work with you as you chart your course, as you establish your democracy,” she added. “We want to stand for principles, for values, not for people or for parties.”

WASHINGTON – The latest battle over religious pluralism in Israel has unleashed a new barrage of criticism and calls for reform aimed at the Orthodox-controlled Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

Unlike major flare-ups in past decades, however, this time it’s not just the Reform and Conservative movements leading the charge – mainstream, consensus-oriented Jewish groups with no denominational affiliations are speaking out, too.

One flashpoint has been the fallout from the Israeli attorney general’s decision to approve government funding for Reform and Conservative religious leaders as “rabbis of non-Orthodox communities” – albeit through the Ministry of Culture and Sports rather than the Orthodox-controlled Religious Services Ministry, which funds Orthodox rabbis.

That announcement drew a caustic response from Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who in a June 27 meeting urged more than 100 fellow Orthodox rabbis – including Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger – to pray “in order to stop the destroyers and saboteurs of Judaism [because] they are trying to uproot the foundation of Judaism.”

“There is a natural backlash on the part of American Jews and American Jewish leaders when the Chief Rabbinate issues such statements,” said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Koppelman Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations. “As we enter the 21st century, the [Chief Rabbinate] needs to be reevaluted in terms of democratic norms and modern Israel’s relationship to world Jewry.”

In response to Rabbi Amar’s remarks, about 50 Reform and Conservative rabbis protested outside of the Chief Rabbinate’s building in Jerusalem. Two Conservative rabbis filed a police complaint accusing Amar of incitement – a particularly serious claim in Israel ever since the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The Jewish Federations of North America, which has leaders from across the religious spectrum, but which in recent years has become more vocal on behalf of Israel’s non-Orthodox Jews, was quick to respond.

“It is a fundamental Jewish virtue to ‘love your fellow as yourself.’ We condemn comments that disparage fellow Jews and, in particular, well-established branches of Judaism that represent 80 percent of North American Jewry,” Jerry Silverman, the president and CEO of JFNA, said in a statement. “Statements such as those made by Rabbi Amar only serve to alienate our fellow Jews from our religion, our people and the Jewish state.”

Shortly after that controversy, the board of governors of the AJC – another nonsectarian Jewish organization with no formal ties to either the Reform or Conservative movements – went even further in criticizing the Chief Rabbinate and calling for major changes to the institution.

“In the 21st century, a coercive Chief Rabbinate has become, at best, an anachronism, and at worst a force dividing the Jewish people,” the AJC’s leaders declared in a resolution.

The Chief Rabbinate’s actions “threaten to divide the Jewish people and risk an anti-religious backlash against Judaism itself within the Jewish state,” they wrote. The AJC urged Israel’s government “to undertake promptly all needed actions” to end the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over issues of personal status.

The latest wave of criticism comes amid a backdrop of religion-related controversies – tensions between Modern Orthodox rabbis and haredi Orthodox rabbis over conversions; the push for civil marriage in Israel; and the struggle over whether haredi men should serve in the military or continue to be exempt to study in yeshivas.

“Like any human institution, the Chief Rabbinate could use improvement,” said Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive director emeritus of the Orthodox Union.

“What those improvements would be though requires a lot of thought and a lot of study, and from the OU’s perspective in no way could the Orthodox nature and the halachic nature of the Chief Rabbinate be compromised.”

Rabbi Weinreb stressed that OU congregations and rabbis adhere to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s decisions. He added that the process of electing chief rabbis could be refined so that it is “less political.”

The call for radical reform of the Chief Rabbinate was greeted warmly by Reform and Conservative groups.

“It’s a powerful letter from the dead center of the American Jewish establishment weighing in on what the Israeli government and the Israeli public still thinks is a fringe issue,” Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said of the AJC’s position. “It’s a welcome voice in that debate.”

Mental health specialists tend to speak about their patients according to a classification referred to as the DSM, which stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This classification system was first published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association as a method to classify mental disorders and develop a statistical baseline through which disorders can be understood, studied and treated. It is not the only classification system available: the International Classification of Diseases, published by the World Health Organization, contains mental health diagnoses that parallel those of the DSM, but the DSM is most widely used in the mental health field, especially in the United States.

All classification systems evolve over time, and we are about to receive the latest iteration of the DSM in 2013. To understand why changes are made, one need only look at the changes made in each of the DSM revisions in the past. In the first DSM, which was based primarily on soldiers’ reactions to the stresses of World War II, all of the 106 diseases listed were termed reactive, or caused by reactions to social or environmental factors. This limited classification to traumas and environmental stressors.

In the DSM II, which contained 182 illnesses, the word reactive was removed, allowing for a broader approach to understanding possible biological or genetic contributions and other non-stress induced disorders.

DSM III, published in 1980, formulated a system that included a description of 265 diagnostic categories without any suggestion as to cause, unless it was very well documented, and conformed to very specific diagnostic criteria.

In 1994, the DSM IV added and deleted a variety of categories based on the research available at the time. In that version, which was further revised in 2000, only symptoms that caused clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning were included. Definitions of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorders and Autistic Spectrum disorders were expanded, and all of the disorders had a checklist of specific diagnostic criteria that had to be met in order to apply a diagnosis. This gave both clinicians and researchers a measurable way to classify their patients, the goal of which was to help find empirically validated treatments.

Every revision of the DSM causes a reaction among professionals and the public. Changes are often attributed to political considerations rather than research that supports the suggested changes. For example, in 1973, the DSM declassified homosexuality as a disorder, and the diagnosis was replaced by the category of Sexual Orientation Disturbance (SOD) because research failed to identify a specific abnormality caused by this sexual preference. Over the years, SOD has been modified and expanded to include a wider variety of sexual disorders and paraphilias. Some individuals still believe that gay activists advocating for their own agenda brought about this change, although that is highly unlikely.

The task force working on the DSM-5 was initially sworn to secrecy. This caused an uproar in the scientific community, which rightfully demanded an open process. Once the revision process was publicized and the recommendations for change became available, critics of the DSM-5 voiced three primary concerns. These include lowering of diagnostic thresholds that would increase the number of individuals who fit a diagnosis, introducing new disorders that are currently considered normal behavioral patterns, and questions regarding the scientific validity of certain categories.

If the DSM-5 goes forward as proposed, it could include changes such as a significantly broader definition of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder; an Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome which would allow the diagnosis of individuals without a psychotic disorder to be classified as having one; and the categorization of shyness as a pathology.

Another proposed change would be a complete overhaul of the category now referred to as personality disorders. Perhaps the greatest concern of the scientific community is the neuro-biological emphasis of the DSM-5, and what some are calling the “over-medicalization” of disorders that are clearly a combination of biological, psychological, and social stressors. This is of great concern because it would provide justification for wider use of psychotropic medications, many of which have questionable utility, in vulnerable people who might benefit more from psychotherapy or counseling.

The need for practical interventions that are proven effective should be the primary motivator, but financial considerations are a pragmatic driving force. In the end, there is a great fear that the new criteria proposed in the DSM-5 will favor medical interventions, which may be seen by insurance companies as cheaper than therapy.

Title: Change and Renewal: The Essence of the Jewish Holidays, Festivals & Days of Remembrance Author: Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz Publisher: Koren Publishing

Breathe deeply. You’ll need maximum physical and spiritual power to absorb the uplifting lessons in this book. Page 249 explains why some Jews are praised as “fish on dry land,” a phrase that describes Moshe Rabeinu. Am Yisrael began to appreciate his depth of character at kriat Yam Suf, realizing that “he lived in the revealed world as though he were in the concealed world.” Take another breath. You’re in for a spiritual treat as you learn how to do that.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz points out in his preface to Change and Renewal: The Essence of the Jewish Holidays, Festivals & Days of Remembrance that ‘shana‘ means both year and change. Page 44 depicts that dynamic by explaining the Malkhuyot tefilot of Yom HaDin. “There is meaning to the Jewish People’s unique existence as long as it is aware of the function of its existence, as long as it regards itself as a witness,” Steinsaltz comments. “The existence of a chosen people is meaningful only when it is a people of choice.”

The choice is made with a deep understanding of Judaism’s purpose. Page 224 describes generations’ worth of misguided Jews. The first batch and their ideological descendants chose and choose bondage in idolatrous Egypts because of what they idealize: “… exile and life among the nation… to continue being… a servant to the nations and to their values… the blows and suffering inflicted upon us by the nations cease to be something to be complained about… For some Jews, these, too, have become part of the Jewish People’s ‘mission’ – to be exiles… carrying the burden of other people’s lives and work.”

That resignation to suffer from goyim while going through superficial motions of religiosity seems to facilitate assimilation. The abandonment of Jewish values, though, is actually self-inflicted punishment for losing sight of HaShem‘s goals for Am Yisrael. Jews who reject the aliya imperative seem to be included in this indictment; they’re extraordinarily alienated from the Divine mission to live solely to fulfill HaShem‘s will. Preceding paragraphs indict the overall hametz/hunger for assimilation as the cause for other nations to resent the loss of a workforce, hence the rationale for some Jew-hatred [yg: there are others].

The chapter concerning Shavuot may resonate with Torah-aligned Jews. It cites “two decisive elements in the Ten Commandments that turn… their revelation into the great, irreversible turning point.” The first is the giving of the commandments, the second “… is the removal of life’s ideals and supreme values from the realm of the neutral to the realm of serving the Creator.”

Change and Renewal closes with comforting thoughts about teshuva, Jewish life as a do-over. It is justified hope for spiritually-charged futures. Steinsaltz writes that tzidkut rests not on achievement “but on something far greater… the very nature and very existence” of heroes and heroines among the Jewish people, “….attainments are merely extras.”

Succeed as sensible Jews. Read this 432-page hardcover.

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