Since my trip to Israel in August, actually the place of my birth, I have begun seeing my religion as a way to interconnect with my ancestors.

This didn't happen all at once actually, it really started a few years back at an Inipi( sweat )ceremony where I began to see the importance of those who came before. The Lakota Native Americans believe the rocks from the lodge are ancestors, and when heated, they begin to express the things they could not say to you before.

So imagine, when I went home for the first time in ten years, how many cold rocks at my feet were just aching to scream. Imagine also, my amazement, when the rocks of the Western Wailing Wall began to speak to me as if by magic telepathy.

I really could feel the vibe man. Since then, I have searched for a way to combine all of the wonderful things I learn from other religions with the one I was born into.

Reading the weekly Torah is sort of like getting a weekly sermon. On the net, you can find a thousand different sermons by different Rabbis for every week.

There are liberal perspectives and conservative ones, ones by women and ones for children.

This weeks portion is about Moses, and the choosing of Moses as the leader of the Jewish people.

I read interpretations ranging from Moses being chosen for strength and decisiveness, to the interpretation that the passage is all about the molding and shaping of the Jewish people through labor in Egypt.

Still, the most striking part of the story for me was the part about the burning bush. Yes I am a quasi-liberal, and burning Bush does sound very good. But that's not why.

I began to think about energy. The bush burned, but was not consumed. Keeping the light alive, without being consumed.

You can imagine the thoughts in my Sci-fi brain, "the bush wasn't on fire, there was really a bright Alien spacecraft behind it. "

But no, the real moral, I feel, of Shabbat, of the day Moses stood on the mountain, is that we have an obligation to keep the light of the world burning, without it being consumed by negative vibe.

I feel, particularly in the Palestinian conflict, that liberals and conservatives no longer see the light of the issue. Israel is a place aglow with the light of divinity, a trinity of nations racially intermixed and faithfully hoping.

Jews, Palestinians, and Christians there come from all different places, in all different colors, each religion it's own melting pot.

Here, in this land of G-d, evil takes it place on the battleground in the form of mistrust, on all sides, terror, anger, consumption of love with hatred.

Still, there are little known places, in schools that teach peace, in factories that make bread when they are open, where a human is a human, and no one hates. These people somewhat ignore the outside, at least to the extent that they do not let the outer evil hatred make them live a certain way. Instead, they live righteously. They are Israeli soldiers, off duty, on duty, and resisting. They are Palestinian farmers, managing to get a small portion of their olives through hell. They are Proffessors in Jerusalem, teaching Arab, Jewish, and Christian theologies to kids from all sides, teaching all the best students to be doctors and save lives regardless of where they come from.

We fail to recognise, with all of the fires we've stoked, all of the hatred we propogate on T.V., that there are those among Israelis and Palestinians alike who work towards the light.

In America also, we have a large group of those working. Julia Butterfly, burned like a diogenisian bulb in a tree for two years.

They say there are seventy interpretations to the Torah.

I'd like to think I have my own for this passage.

That we, all over the world, remember to be the light that is not consumed by hatred, that stands the test of fire, that follows G-d by example....