THERE ARE TWO WAYS to say "I'm here" in Hebrew. Like any language, there are probably lots more, but here are the top two.

"Po ani" means I'm here, or I'm present, or just present, the correct form when someone is, say, taking the roll. We used that one in Hebrew school when I was a kid. Brill? "Po Ani." Ingber? "Po ani." Littman? "Po ani." Miller? Miller? Miller? (Okay, most of the time I'd cut class to watch Soupy Sales, but I still remember what po ani means and I think that's pretty good. Besides, we thought laughing really hard at comedians had a kind of Talmudic value anyway, turning jokes into prayers, sort of a Jewish version of transubstantiation.)

The more formal or deeper expression is "Hineni" (pronounced hee-nay-nee). It means "Here I am," and is mostly used when God personally calls on someone in the Bible to do something difficult and important. Abraham? "Here I am." Moses? "Here I am." It's very complete and emotionally charged, and implies, "Here I am: ready, willing and able." There's a special prayer on Yom Kippur called "Hineni" which starts, "Here I am in deep humility . . . "

I don't know if God is making a lot of personal calls these days, but I have a feeling most of our responses as contemporary Americans would be slightly more equivocal, at least initially, and would at one point include, "Okay, sure, but . . . It's a little sudden, that's all. Hang on, let me turn the game off."

"Here I am" is a powerful and layered statement, but there's another meaning to hineni, even deeper and more resonant: Here I stand.

Here I stand. It's not a meek thought; it's a bottom line. "Here I stand. Here I will make my stand. I know what will most likely happen, but it does not matter, since I will not be moving. This is where I am going to make my stand. Hineni."

Christians and Jews have said one or another form of this many times in our histories; the Alamo and the Warsaw Ghetto are just two. It is, in many ways, the liturgical opposite of what is going on in Washington these days.

WHAT STARTED THIS bouncing around in my head was the headline in the Los Angeles Times, last Saturday: "House Takes Stand Against Troop Buildup."

And I thought, "Really? That's what they're taking? A stand? Is that what this is? A principled stand? This . . . non-binding thing, whatever it is?

That's my favorite new phrase in politics: non-binding. What does it even mean? Do you realize that, outside of Washington, D.C., nothing in life is "non-binding"?

"I had twelve drinks last night, but they were non-binding." Then I guess there's no headache. Lucky you.

"I slept with a waitress from the Airport Marriott in Hartford, but she and I both agreed it was non-binding." Good luck with that, and let me know if that rash is non-binding, too.

"I was yakking so much on the phone in the car the other day, I rammed the guy in front. Lucky for me, it was non-binding."