Can We Dare To Have Hope In This New Year? Shannah Tovah

I don’t know about you, but for some reason these High Holidays are causing concern in me. I mean not that they are here, and that it means that the summer really is over and the “year” for we Jews is really here; but I am entering this sacred season uneasy, maybe more in need of a sense of comfort than in many years past. Yes, it is a combination of all the uncertainty in the world, the fractious nature of our domestic politics as well as the overwhelming recalibration of how we are relating to Israel within the American Jewish community. It will be a challenge for congregational rabbis to manage this last issue during the Holidays. Increasingly, members of our community are asking themselves how we can live a meaningful Jewish life. So many of us feel adrift from the Judaism and the world that we grew up with. What we thought was true, now seems porous and without solid foundation.

In conversations with colleagues and lay people these past few months, a question that always came up was “what can I do?” These High Holidays may be a time for a little “tzimztum” of the soul. This is not a withdrawal from the world and our involvement in it, rather, it may be a recalibration of our involvement. It may mean acting upon that text from Pirke Avot that we are not responsible for saving the entire world, but we are responsible for our part of it. Maybe that means examining where our efforts for action are best needed and then focusing on those one or two projects. But this also may mean a recalibration of how we act in our relationships with other people. After all, we are reminded every Yom Kippur that the sins between people are remedied only through our own actions. There is so much division in the world today that maybe we can use this sacred season to let go of some of the emotions that bind us and, in that letting go, enable the flourishing of our spiritual self. But the question remains, how can we begin this?

Here is a suggestion. It came to me as a result of a conversation from a Torah Study class member in which he suggested I watch a You Tube video of the launch this Spring of a new Institute for the Study of Hope, Dignity and Well Being that has been created in Israel. Consider that reality! As the war in Gaza continues, there are people who came together to promote the values of hope and dignity and well being! What a powerful message for us: as always, we Jews hope. We sing it as Israel’s national anthem and it is even codified in our prayer service with the Alenu, a prayer of hope for a better future time. Hope is a gift that our tradition gives us, and it is not a passive gift. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (z’l) noted that optimism is a belief that things eventually will be better while hope is a belief that we can make things better. There is that traditional call to each of us, echoed in the Holiday liturgy as well, that it is not enough to pray for a better more equitable and just society, we must act on this call.

No doubt many of you will ask how is it possible to have any hope given the realities of the world? Gaza has split the Jewish community, political alliances and even families. We are witnessing the calculated assault on some of the very basic values of our democracy. For many these are fearful times, but as David Brooks write in a recent op-ed, “philosophers have long understood, the antidote to fear is not courage; it is hope.” It will take some acts of “chutzpah” this year to try and actualize hope. We will need to speak out, even create opportunities to speak with people who may disagree with us on issues. It may take “chutzpah” to bring back civility, dignity and respect. As elders we have that responsibility to model these values. As Brooks added: “good leaders motivate people through what you might call the bright passions—hope, aspiration, an inspiring vision of a better life.”

The Shofar calls that we hear now are, as centuries of rabbis have noted, calls from our collective history to actualize hope. It is a not so curious truth that in doing so, we will find our own “why”. That is, by engaging with the world, in working to make what we hope for a reality, we will come to find the reason we are alive, our purpose, our meaning, our “why”. This search for our own “why” is a question that exists as a fundamental call to each of us in this season. It is not only a call to celebrate that we are alive, but a call to work to determine “why”! And that choice is up to each of us.

Shannah Tovah.

Rabbi Richard F. Address

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