WASHINGTON--Lately, I've been disappointed with the world. Disgusted, perhaps, is a better word.

I spent the month of June in Israel with a group from Harvard Hillel. Israel is so much a home to me that I cried with joy as our plane landed. But the tears came many more times before the flight home, tears instead of frustration and sadness. Not because of the hopelessness of the peace process, which is a legitimately difficult struggle that the country is bravely facing. Years of hatred do not quickly change into an era of love. But many of Israel's problems are completely invalid. Corruption dances through the government in a country theoretically founded on the values of justice and righteousness. Violence in the streets and poor education systems plague Israel just as they do many Western countries.

Even religiously, I was disappointed. Liberal forms of Judaism barely exist in Israel, and the choice of how to express religion becomes a sociological rather than theological question. For modern women, it's especially difficult, because there is no religious arena in which to voice their opinions. The choice is either moral silence in a religious world or religious silence in a secular world.

The smaller things made it even worse. Maybe the government would eventually get their act together, and maybe the religious struggles will be resolved. But when I watched little boys litter the sidewalks of Jerusalem with their gum wrappers or read another newspaper article about a traffic accident caused by reckless driving, I became very hopeless. What could be done to make changes at the individual level? And what could I really do to make a difference?

Upon my return to the United States, I found out that my hopeless feeling was not particular to Israel. I am working in Washington, capital of the "world's only superpower" (as one of our politicians said last week), and I wake up every morning to news listing how many people were shot the previous day. Our politicians are corrupt at all levels, and the current presidential election is between two men with both excessive money and familial ties to government.

Even at my job, the same immorality and materialism appear again and again. I read about biotechnology industry and the importance of maintaining the right to patent. "Were there no patents, who would really bother to do scientific research anyway?" asks the lobbyists. Money determines what we study, what we produce and to whom we listen.

Religion is no simpler in this country, either. The Hillel in Washington e-mail list has had many "happy hour" events but not one social action project. Sitting at Friday night dinner at the George Washington University Hillel with some other students, we spoke about our internships. Some worked at the White House, others at the Holocaust Museum or the American Israel Political Affairs Committee or National Hillel. Maybe, I thought, these people have the opportunities to work on a bigger scale than I do. Maybe their efforts can actually make a difference, while my picking up a gum wrapper from the streets of Jerusalem only makes room for the next one to be thrown. In fact, however, these interns seem to do even less than that. They sheepishly admitted to spending most of their day sending e-mail and Instant Messages.

Thus even in D.C., it was all feeling futile. "Vanity of vanities, it is all vanity," as Ecclesiastes laments. But the worst part, the worst part of it all, is that I felt I couldn't make a difference. Even if I were perfect (I'm far from it), and spent all my time and energy and resources on bettering the world, could I really make a dent in any of these problems?