.Picture this:
The rabbi sits down to begin writing her sermon.
The topic is: “Israel: Is there hope even now?”
She types out the question. She stares at the screen.
She doesn’t know how to answer.
She doesn’t even know where to begin.
Ok, I know you get it.
The rabbi is me. The question is real.
And in order to begin, I have to go back.
Because last Rosh Hashanah, which was just one year ago on the calendar, but 1000 years ago in post-Oct. 7th time-keeping, I gave a sermon on Israel and hope. In that sermon, I talked about the importance of Jewish unity, and finding hope in examples of Jews coming together across different divides.
Oy.
Weeks later, all of that hope was eclipsed by the horrors of the Black Sabbath, and each day of the war that has followed.
So then, is all hope lost?
Or can we find hope again, even now?
Even now, when our world has been turned upside-down?
When war rages on? When rockets are falling?
When children are dying? When hatred of the Jew,
and hatred of the other, is on the rise everywhere we look?
Even here, in our own shul, we are divided.
We have pointed fingers and used ugly language.
We have lost trust in one another.
We have turned our backs on one another.
Jewish unity feels far off. Peace feels even further away.
Rabbi Jenny Solomon recently reassured a group of rabbis, who were struggling together to try to find hope in Jewish texts, that, “hope can feel elusive, (especially) when the circumstances around us are not inspiring hope. . .
So how do we make space for hope?” she asked us.
When I asked a group of colleagues about where to find hope, many of them spoke about the resilience of the Jewish people. They would say things like, “we’ve been through it before” –
hatred and pogroms and violence and war – “We survived then, and we will survive now.”
“And it makes us stronger!”
“It’s the fate of the Jewish people, to grow through adversity.”
Am Yisrael Chai!
I believe in the strength and resilience of the Jewish people.
I believe in our right to defend ourselves.
But right now I am struggling to find hope in a history that feels like an endless cycle of persecution, triumphant victory at best, mere survival at least, and onto the next generation, and repeat…
The old joke – they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat! – I don’t find it funny anymore. I guess you can say I’ve lost my appetite for it.
These days, my heart finds more peace and inspiration in nature, than it does in human history. It’s seems that for the biblical character Job, hope could also be found in nature. In his narrative, arguably one of the least hopeful of the bible, we find this passage (14:7-9):
There is hope for a tree;
If it is cut down it will renew itself;
It’s shoots will not cease.
If its roots are old in the earth,
and its stump dies in the ground,
at the scent of water it will bud
and produce branches like a sapling.
Reading this, I thought immediately about Table Mountain and the fires I’ve learned about in my years here in Cape Town.
One article I read taught me that “fire is normal in fynbos systems,” In fact, the article noted, “many plant species require fire. It is the most important natural disturbance in fynbos biomes. Fire provides an opportunity (as fynbos are only able to spread their seeds) in response to a fire. . . Fire is therefore required to maintain diversity.”
“The response of fynbos vegetation to fire is complex,” the article notes. In this complexity, might we begin to find some seedlings of hope?
Rabbi Solomon showed our group of hope-seeking rabbis photos of trees that had survived fire – burned out stumps with tender shoots and flowers growing through.
Recently, I came across a similar teaching by Rabbi Beth Naditch, who wrote about being in Sequoia National Park (in California), and observing the massive trees. “What was most startling to behold,” she wrote, “Were the blackened areas of many trees, marking them as having survived fire . . .
If you were to examine the cross section of one of these trees… you would see areas in the tree rings (which) still held the scars of fire, drought, or other environmental phenomena. Some years the tree rings had dramatic and visible evidence of distress, yet the trees continued to grow around the scars and heal.”
Nature is designed to regrow after a fire. Perhaps we are too.
As our group with Rabbi Solomon continued to search through Jewish texts for signs of hope, she introduced the idea of generationally-inherited faith, and asked us what it might mean, in these uncertain times, to lean into the faithfulness of our ancestors.
“How might it feel different,” she asked us, “to (feel) their hands (at) our backs?”
With my two chevrutah partners (my study partners that day), we explored this idea, asking one another: Can we find hope in the faith of our ancestors, even when we don’t feel it ourselves?
I shared with them that Rabbi Solomon’s question evoked for me the image of a parent guiding a child who is learning to ride a bicycle, with a hand hovering, gently at their back – not quite touching – but there to guide or catch them should they wobble.
Can the faith of our ancestors – can the knowledge of what they experienced and survived – be the steadying hand at our backs at the wobbly-est of times?
In our most painful moments, we recite Psalm 23, some of our most ancient biblical words: Gam ki eilech b’gei tzalmavet, lo irah rah, ki Atah imadi.
Even though I will walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death,
I will not fear harm, for You will be with me.
A certain Rabbi Gottlieb (“The Elder”), writing about faith, brings forth this text and invites us to think about the courage of our ancestors, “how they dealt with their reality,” and, “who (somehow) rebuilt their lives in the face of brokenness – not because they had any training to do so – but because they had (faith).”
Even when we struggle with faith ourselves, the power of the ancient words of our tradition often bring comfort exactly because they connect us to the faith we know we need, and are struggling to find.
Through the texts of our tradition, we link ourselves to those who had the faith we aspire to find for ourselves. It’s almost as if we can feel their hands at our back.
Finding hope is perhaps not so dissimilar.
In 2005, Elie Wiesel said the following: “One must wager on the future. I believe it is possible, in spite of everything, to believe in friendship in a world without friendship, and even to believe in God in a world where there has been an eclipse of God’s face.”
This is the same man who, after the Holocaust, wrote of seeing God dying in the flames of Auschwitz. Yet now, decades later, he believes again in God, “In a world where there has been an eclipse of God…”
How did he get back his belief? I don’t know.
But if, having experienced all he experienced, having witnesses all he witnessed, and having survived all he has survived – if he could find his way back to belief, then we can find our way back to hope.
I feel his hand on my back, guiding me in the darkness
It is a comfort.
And it’s a reminder that sometimes we must look to the survivors as well as to those who are carrying on the memories and the legacies of those who were lost. Perhaps in their example, we can also find hope.
At the funeral of peace activist Vivian Silver, who was killed by Hamas on Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, her friend Ghadir Hani’s eulogy for Vivian included these words:
My dear Vivian, if you could hear me, I would want you to know
that Hamas has not murdered your vision. You cannot kill compassion, humanity, solidarity, and yearning for a safe life. We must continue your journey – the journey toward a good and safe life in our homeland . . .
In another eulogy, this one written by Noy Katsman for their brother Hayim, who was killed by Hamas on Kibbutz Holit on October 7th, Noy wrote:
I believe that it would have been important for Hayim to call for an end to the killing of innocent people. I am with him on this path and I take up this call. I have no doubt that even in the face of Hamas’ people that murdered him, and in the face of their extreme (beliefs) he would still call out against killing and violence…
In January, Rula Daood, a Palestinian Israeli citizen, spoke at a rally calling for peace, cease-fire and a hostage deal. She said:
I am a Palestinian, and I am also an Israeli . . . I feel all the pain of this land. I understand all of the eulogies. Those that are said in Hebrew and those that are said in Arabic. And I also know all of the dreams.
Here and there, the vast majority want quiet. Here and there, the vast majority want their children to go to sleep without fear. Here and there, the vast majority want to know that also on the other side, they feel the same.
At a similar rally in December, Sally Abed, a Palestinian journalist and peace activist who is married to a Jewish Israeli peace activist, said the following:
I truly hope we’ll come out of the place we are in, stronger and more hopeful. Hope is something we create. Hope is our belief in our ability to change things. Together we are powerful. We can come together . . . We need to go out, to be angry, and not just be hurt – Here and now we will start to imagine a better future. . .
One final example.
Rabbi Tamir Nir, an Israeli Reform Rabbi in Jerusalem, shares his hope for growth and renewal in tragic and trying times through the lyrics of a well-known Israeli song from the 1970’s.
It’s not the same old house now; it’s not the same old valley
You’re gone and never can return again.
The path, the boulevard, a skyward eagle tarries…
And yet the wheat still grows again.
Rabbi Nir reminds us that these words, written by Dorit Tzameret in 1973 after the Yom Kippur War, expresses the wonderment of how wheat can grow again after everything else has gone. “Simultaneously,” he writes, “(she is) amazed and excited by nature’s regenerative capacity.”
“This,” he says, “is how I have found encouragement, hope, and motivation since the beginning of the war and even today.”
If these Israelis and Palestinians can find hope in one another, can find hope in their still-burning dreams and desires for peace, can find hope in God’s miraculous and regenerative creation – If after everything they have been through, they can find any hope at all, then surely we can too.
They are the hands at our backs.
So must we be the hands at their backs.
And, we must be the hands at one another’s backs so that each of us has someone to catch us when we wobble and are struggling to feel hopeful.
If you feel comfortable, I’d like to ask you to place your hand at the back of the person next to you, and to allow them to place their hand at your back.
As we are connected in this way, let us consider these question anew.
Is there hope for Israel even now?
Is there hope for us?
If so, where do we find it?
There is hope in knowing we are not alone in our historical experience. We are not alone in feeling the things we are feeling. Jews have felt these feelings before. Our psalmists and sages lived through exiles and atrocities and still created for us beautiful traditions built on faith and hope. In our darkest times, we reach for their words and find comfort.
There is hope in knowing we are not alone in creation, and that we, too, are created to be resilient. Like the protea, we grow back stronger each time we survive the fire.
There is hope in knowing that Israelis and Palestians have hope
even now. We can be guided by their words, their example, their experience. They were at the center of the massacre. They lost countless loved ones. They are still waiting for those who have not yet come home. They bear the most recent scars of the Jewish people. And yet, they persist in hope.
They are there. They are together. They keep going.
And finally, there is hope in knowing that we are not alone in this moment. We are here together. Each of us showed up tonight, for Jewish tradition and community, even though we have just slogged through the longest year in living Jewish memory. Even though we are exhausted and discouraged and grieving. We had every reason to stay home and lick our wounds. And yet, we are here.
We are here. We are together. We keep going.
In this, I find hope. May hope continue to bloom from the ash.
Kein Yehi Ratzon.
