How Many Leaders Does It Take (to Change a Light Bulb)?

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Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

June 19-20, 2026 • 5 Tamuz 5786 • Korach (Num 16-18)
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There are many versions of this joke; it may be mere political folklore:

1. The Ben-Gurion & Eisenhower Version

Eisenhower lamented how difficult it was to be the president of 170 million people. David Ben-Gurion fired back: "You think that's hard? Try being the prime minister of two million prime ministers." 

2. The Golda Meir & Richard Nixon Version

During Golda Meir’s first state visit to Washington in September, 1969, seeking critical military aid, Nixon suggested she didn't appreciate the difficulty getting things done in America: "Madam Prime Minister, you have to understand, it's difficult to get things done here, America is not like Israel; I'm the president of 150 million Americans."

Meir countered, "Mr. President, I assure you I do understand, and if you think that your job is difficult, consider: I am the prime minister of three million prime ministers!"

3. The Charles de Gaulle Version

The joke is so perfect for capturing a national psyche that it actually collided with another famous quote. French President Charles de Gaulle famously grumbled in front of Golda Meir, "How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?" Meir responds: "Can you imagine how difficult it is to lead a country that has three million prime ministers?"

4. The Shimon Peres Version

When Shimon Peres served as Prime Minister, he frequently retold this joke on the international diplomatic circuit, but he updated the numbers to reflect Israel's late-20th and early-21st-century population booms. He would often tell American or European dignitaries: "You are the leader of millions of citizens. I am the prime minister of seven million prime ministers."

5. The Benjamin Netanyahu Defense-Minister Version

In more recent decades, the joke evolved to reflect how specialized and deeply invested the Israeli public is regarding military and security strategy. Bibi and other modern Israeli politicians have occasionally shifted the punchline slightly to fit cabinet roles, joking: "It is not hard to be the Defense Minister of a country. What is hard is that I am the Defense Minister of nine million Defense Ministers, all of whom know exactly how the military should be run better than I do."

6. The Restaurant Kitchen Version

"Running a Michelin-starred kitchen isn't about cooking. It's about trying to convince a room full of twenty-something culinary school graduates—all of whom think they are the next Gordon Ramsay—to stop reinventing the menu for five minutes and just chop the onions."

7. The Software Engineering Version

In tech, there is a famous axiom known as Sayre’s Law ("In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue"), which engineers turned into a classic industry joke: 

"If you ask a team of 50 senior software engineers to build a nuclear power plant backend, they will approve it in ten minutes without looking. If you ask them what color to paint the bicycle shed in the employee parking lot, you will get 50 different blueprint designs and a three-week corporate civil war."


This joke is funny because it reveals a truth. Question for your table: What is that truth? And if it's true, is it inevitable? (Is there a version of this joke that works for your place of work or family or social setting?)


Shabbat Shalom


This message may also be read at Times of Israel.
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To Err is a Mistake?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
June 23, 2023 • 3 Tamuz 5783 • Parshas Korach (Num 16-18)
The purpose of this blog is to lead the Shabbat table toward perfection. Please share.
Happy birthday shoutout to Gina!

As you can see in this screenshot, we've got some momentum! Thanks to many of you for helping get us there.

Along this publishing road, here's something funny that happened to me this week....

We've been working on the e-book version of Body and Soul - for Kindle, Apple Books, etc. - for over a month. The conversion has been slow because of the hundreds of footnotes, endnotes and cross-references that all had to be hot-linked.

Two weeks ago, the ebook-conversion people sent us a "completed" file that was full of errors.

This week, they sent us the revised file.

I'm happy to say that, while not perfect, I think it's good enough to publish. (For now; we'll perhaps press them to get it a bit more perfect in the meantime.)

Publishing it for Kindle is pretty straightforward and it didn't take long to receive this warm confirmation.

The funny part didn't occur until a few hours later, when Amazon sent us the following email:
 

During our review, we found that your book contains interior and/or cover content that’s available from a different publisher. We need you to confirm your publishing rights before the book is made available on Amazon.

 

Body & Soul: The Torah Path to Health, Fitness, and a Holy Life by Seinfeld, Alexander (AUTHOR); Grove, Daniel (AUTHOR) (ID: 54985871)

 

To publish the book(s), reply to this email and send documentation and/or verification showing you hold rights to the content. Please submit any documents you have, along with an explanation of any previously published books within 5 days. If we do not receive the appropriate documentation, the book(s) will be unavailable for sale on Amazon.

 

Acceptable documentation may include:

• A letter from the previous publisher reverting rights back to the author

• A signed copy of the agreement between you and the author

• A signed copy of the agreement between the author and the previous publisher

• A signed letter from the previous publisher indicating that they do not object to your edition

• Documentation showing the previous publisher holds nonexclusive rights

 

If you have questions or believe you've received this email in error, reply to this message.

 

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

The problem with this email is that both books have the same author, publisher and copyright holder! They're asking me to write a letter to myself giving myself permission to publish my book for Kindle!

First thought: "Aha! Amazon made a mistake! Gotcha!"

But then I thought, "Is that plausible? That Amazon made a mistake? Isn't that almost like saying that Moses made a mistake?"

That one reconsideration - that perhaps Amazon did not make a mistake - enabled me to find the true mistake, which was of course mine and not Amazon's. 

On the print book, we have the publisher listed as Jewish Spiritual Literacy Press. On the e-book, we abbreviated it to JSLI. 

It was our mistake, not Amazon's. Amazon does not make mistakes.

Let's repeat that: Amazon does not make mistakes.

But seriously, this is a real question for your table: Is there anyone we can rightfully expect not to make a mistake? Are there some people who ought to feel like they must be perfect?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - The Kindle edition is indeed now live - CLICK HERE.

PPS - The new Torah Health and Fitness landing page is growing and improving daily - please check it out and send me your feedback.

The Purpose of a Museum

Mazal tov to Marc and Lily who just celebrated their anniversary. You are one year closer to bliss....

First question for your dinner table: What's your favorite gem or mineral?

Marc gets credit for introducing me to the wonderful world of gems and minerals.

Maybe not for introducing me, but for helping me appreciate them in a new way.

I met them yesterday with a couple of my kids and a couple of their kids at the Smithsonian's gem and mineral gallery.

If you haven't been there, you really don't know what you're missing. You may have seen some pretty rocks, but there is no collection quite like this.

Pick your favorite artist or artists. Imagine a single gallery filled with all of their paintings. That's what this place is like.

Room after room.

One room has meteorites. Space rocks! Of all shapes and sizes.

Another has the best displays I've every seen on how rocks and minerals are formed.

Then you get to the good stuff. Emerald, rubies, diamonds, all that precious and semi-precious stuff. Then you have your azurite, benitoite, cerussite, danburite, emerald, fluorite, goshenite, helenite, iolite, jasper, korite, lazulite, moldavite, nephrite, olivine, pectolite, rhodolite, spectrolite, titanite, uvarovite, variscite, wulfenite, and don't let me forget zoisite. (When you read this at the dinner table, try saying that list in one breath.)

Notice what letter I left out?

There's only one Q mineral that I recall - good ol' quartz, and almost nothing compares. There are so many stunning varieties of quartz they could have their own gallery.

Here's an image of Abswurmbachite.

And check out this Wulfenite!

So over lunch, Lily asks, "You live in Baltimore, you must get down here a lot."

With such a resource only an hour away, you would think, right?

I think the last time I was in the Smithsonian was five or six years ago. How can I justify that?

"Well, you know, there's not a lot of time, with school and summer camp and so on."

Lame.

Look at the enjoyment on the kids' faces at seeing this natural beauty. Forget the kids, what about my own enjoyment?

It was only on the drive back that I remembered the real reason why we don't pop into DC at least once a year to enjoy these museums.

Traffic. The easy one hour door-to-door trip down became two hours on the return.

All this leads to my first question for your table (remember to print this out and read it, it's much more effective)....

Some people say it's the goal that matters most (visiting the museum).

Others say that it's the journey itself that matters (learning to be present at all times, even stuck in traffic).

What do you say?

More important, what do you practice?

(Incidentally, the word for pleasant in Hebrew is “arev” which shares the same root as in to “mix”. What we enjoy mixes with us; and opposite it true.)

(Bonus question - where in Jewish tradition do we find the use of beautiful gems and minerals? Name at least two.)

Shabbat Shalom

(Did I mention printing out this message and reading at your dinner table? Try it, your family/friends will love it.)