Abraham, Judaism’s founding father, discovered God in Ur Casdim (today’s Iraq); The Torah was given in the Sinai Desert; Jewish monotheism becomes fully monotheistic only in Babylonia; the most important book in Judaism (other than the Torah) is the BABYLONIAN Talmud; Maimonides wrote his monumental Code of Laws while in Egypt; Reform and Conservative Judaism emerged in Europe int he 19th century. This lecture will explore the reasons and possible “message” of this strange paradox: if the Holy Land is central to the Jewish People, why do almost all its theological advances occur outside the Holy Land?