It's Sept. 22, 1982. Alex P. Keaton and I are both sophomores in high school. We both live in the Midwest and each of us has two siblings. Like his, my father works at a local television station and my mother is often home in time to make dinner for the family. We're both thinking of possible careers in journalism or politics. Alex and I--we have a lot in common.

But there are differences too. He's a card-carrying conservative and though I can't yet put it into words, I'm a social liberal. He's the oldest child in his family and I'm the youngest. He lives in the mediumsized city of Columbus, Ohio, whereas I hail from the biggest of small Midwestern towns, Chicago. There's one more thing-- in 1982, I was a real, live angst-ridden, acne-prone teenager, while Alex P. Keaton was the main character on the popular television show "Family Ties", the fictional creation of television writer, director and producer Gary David Goldberg.

Though I watched "Family Ties" because I liked the humor and because I didn't want to be left out of the Friday afternoon lunchroom conversations, I have to admit that I learned a few things during at least the early seasons. Alex was a student of American history, a subject covered inadequately in the Chicago Public School System, so I often gathered bits of information about the political process or the presidency that I had not previously been taught. More than this, I gained insight into an even more mysterious subject: the inner thoughts of a teenage boy (at least as they were imagined--or remembered --by a team of Hollywood writers).

Reconstructionist philosophy suggests that everything is Torah. In its broadest sense, the word torah means "teaching." (For those students of Hebrew grammar, it's connected to the word moreh or morah, meaning "teacher.") Reconstructionist thought posits that every experience has intrinsic educational value and that most experiences can be translated into imperatives for a just and moral life. On a recent trip to Israel, friends from a Reconstructionist synagogue studied the story of the giving of the Torah while sitting in the Sinai desert. They also visited a Palestinian village and spoke with its residents about their living conditions. They considered both of these things to be torah in equal measure. Both experiences, it was reported to me, contained lessons from which they could grow.

I'm not suggesting that 1980s sitcoms have the same educational value as the Torah or that watching two people have a fictional conversation can replace what you might learn by participating in a similar conversation in person. What I do believe (a friend has suggested that I am at least 33% Reconstructionist in my Jewish world view) is that every experience and encounter can be torah if we allow it to be.

I learned something, or perhaps was reminded of an important life lesson, while leafing through Gary David Goldberg's new memoir, Sit Ubu Sit: How I Went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair. In a chapter centered on his glee at "being the writer-producer of a hit television show," there is a passage where he reminisces about casting an actress to play the love interest of the main character, Keaton. Two women have read for the part and it seems as if they are both equally charismatic and equally qualified. He asks the star, Michael J. Fox, if he has a preference:

"No, I like them both," he says.

"I do, too," I tell him. "But I think I give the edge to Tracy Pollan. There's just something there I find incredibly compelling."

"Hey, it's your show. I'm OK either way. No big deal." "Four beautiful children and twenty happily married years later..." Goldberg writes about the Fox-Pollan union, "Go plan a life."

In Yiddish, one might say: Men tracht und Gott lacht--"Men plan and God laughs." Goldberg, as you'll read elsewhere in the Vine, will be the guest speaker at services on Saturday morning, March 16. I hope you'll join me in hearing the torah he has to teach.