I am a late addition to the bandwagon of blogosphere praise for the President’s speech delivered in Cairo yesterday. He hit all the right notes on Israeli-Palestinian peace, US engagement with the Muslim world, democracy building, and science and economic engagement. But it was, at the end of the day, just a speech.

That’s why I was interested to read Tom Friedman’s New York Times column yesterday, which opened with a joke about “Goldberg the Jew.” Per Friedman, the joke goes like this:

There is this very pious Jew named Goldberg who always dreamed of winning the lottery. Every Sabbath, he’d go to synagogue and pray: “God, I have been such a pious Jew all my life. What would be so bad if I won the lottery?” But the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win. Week after week, Goldberg would pray to win the lottery, but the lottery would come and Goldberg wouldn’t win. Finally, one Sabbath, Goldberg wails to the heavens and says: “God, I have been so pious for so long, what do I have to do to win the lottery?”
And the heavens parted and the voice of God came down: “Goldberg, give me a chance! Buy a ticket!”

Right, I get it. Friedman is saying that for God to help you, you’ve got to be willing to help yourself. Wait, what’s the analogy to Obama’s speech? According to Friedman:

I told the president that joke because in reading the Arab and Israeli press this week, everyone seemed to be telling him what he needed to do and say in Cairo, but nobody was indicating how they were going to step up and do something different. Everyone wants peace, but nobody wants to buy a ticket.

So, Friedman’s point is, I guess, that like God, Obama is expected to do everything to bring about peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, while the parties on the ground won’t even take the first steps. I think that’s a fair point. But the better point, I think, is that America—even a vastly stronger, more popular, credible and morally certain America under President Obama—is less important to all of the problems in the Muslim world than average citizens and their leaders are.

That’s why I think the most important thing the President can do is to set high expectations, and stick to them, like: We expect Israel and the Arab states each to stop playing for advantage in a peace process that has dragged on for too long. We expect Muslim countries to give women equal political and economic rights. We expect the “Arab street” to stop spreading lies about America, Jews, and 9/11.

Obama is not God, and he doesn’t have the power to deliver even most of his vision for peace and harmony with the Muslim World, whether or not Muslims take the first step of “buying a ticket.” It’s time for citizens and leaders in the region to realize that nobody else can solve their problems for them, and that it won’t be easy.

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