It took Hillel and that
Cheeky outsider
To reenact the scene.
“The whole Torah
While on one foot,”
He demanded.
“I’ve already tried Shammai,
And went away broken.”
Hillel recognized the scene.
“The whole Torah
Needs two feet,
Two people,
Your fellows.
Your fellows are
Your other foot.
Direct yourself to them,
(Not to me, Heaven forbid!)
And your other foot
Will complete
The Teaching.”
Alan Flashman was born in Foxborough, MA, and gained his BA from Columbia, MD from NYU, Pediatrics, Adult and Child Psychiatry specialties at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Bronx, NY. He has practiced in Beer Sheba since 1983, and taught mental health at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University. Alan has edited readers on Therapeutic Communication with Children (2002) and Adolescents (2005) in Hebrew, translated Buber's I and Thou anew into Hebrew, and authored Losing It, an autobiography, and From Protection to Passover. He recently published two summary works of his clinical experience (both 2022) Family Therapies for the 21st Century and Mental Health in Pediatrics and a short novel in Hebrew "NO WAY!" about the abuses of "parental alienation" in Israel.