Learning How to Hope: A Message for the New Year 5775

Deanna and I were in Jerusalem for most of July, during a large portion of the conflict with Gaza.  Several times we experienced what Israelis experience with far greater frequency.  We heard a siren indicating that a rocket was about to land and knew that we had a little over a minute to try to find a secure place to stay.  One time we were in the street and ran into a friend’s apartment.  Another time we were in the street and ran into a supermarket and huddled near the dairy section, where we distracted ourselves by noting how many different types of cheese there are in a typical Israeli market. 

For me personally, the moments of running to a relatively safe place and waiting to see what happened next were a jumble of thoughts and feelings.

Wondering what’s going on.  Feeling helpless.  Thinking of our children thousands of miles away.  And the quiet, but pressing thought, I hope we’ll be ok.

A few years ago on the high holidays I spoke about fear.  Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, or not quite.

For many reasons, I thought it was important this year to speak about hope, in some sense the counterpart to fear.

Hope is an interesting thing.  I’m not quite sure how to characterize it.  It’s not quite an action and it’s not quite an emotion.  When we are anxious about something, we hope it will turn out ok.  Sometimes in general we say, “I hope everything will be ok,” even though we know that’s kind of unrealistic. 

We hope all the time. But what does hope actually mean?  To what extent is it helpful, to what extend is it a painful exercise in self-delusion?

Hope is crucial, but perhaps we need to reconsider the way we hope.  At the start of the New Year 5775, I propose that we reconsider what it means to hope when it comes to the international and the national, the political and the personal. 

Great Neck Shabbat Project 5775: October 23-25, 2014

On October 23-25, the entire Great Neck Jewish Community will join together to celebrate Shabbat as part of the world-wide Shabbat Project.  Highlights will include a communal Challah baking, Friday night services and dinners for all ages, and an exciting community-wide Havdalah and concert.  The above video was produced by the fun-loving folk at Temple Israel of Great Neck. Any resemblance to something you've seen before is purely coincidental...

We Still Need to Hope

Some summers are entirely pleasant affairs, filled with long strolls and ample time for reading and contemplation.  This was not that kind of summer.  The conflict between Israel and Gaza was intense and bloody and the after-effects remain.  The threat of ISIL seems to grow larger with each passing day.  The unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, was unsettling on many levels. 

Living in Jerusalem for a month this summer, I experienced and observed certain aspects of the Israel-Gaza conflict.  Mind you, it was quite tame in Jerusalem compared to southern Israel and Gaza itself.  But I did get a feel for the mood of many Israelis, including residents of the south, reservists in the army and parents of soldiers, as well as a few Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.

The mood overall was characterized by anguish and frustration.  As I wrote from Jerusalem several weeks ago, the word I heard repeatedly with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “intractable.”  Both an Israeli reservist and scholar and a Palestinian urban planner, speaking to my rabbinic cohort at the Hartman Institute in separate contexts, bemoaned the complicated dynamics that, to their thinking, make a full resolution of the conflict extremely unlikely in the near future.

And yet, even during the depth of the violence, I saw seeds of hope.  Muslims and Jews gathered together to break the Fast of Ramadan and the Fast of Tammuz.  The uncle of one of the slain Israeli teens received condolences from Muslim co-workers.  A group of Jews, including rabbis, offered condolences to the family of a slain Muslim boy. 

We Hold the Highlighter

Thirty years ago, I was sitting in an English literature class and I raised my hand at one point, as other people were doing, to offer an idea about a poem that the professor was discussing.  And he said to me, “just like a broken clock.”  And I said, “sorry?”  And he said, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  If you keep on offering that idea, eventually it will apply.”

I didn’t say very much else in that class.  But I continued to listen.  He was a good professor, if slightly acerbic.  One day he gave us his "highlighter theory." There was one novel in particular that we were reading which he said could be subject to multiple interpretations.  He said, you can take a highlighter and highlight certain parts, and then the novel reads like a very optimistic embrace of life.  You can highlight other parts and it comes across very cynical.

So, with due deference to my professor, I want to say something similar about the Torah.

A lot depends on what you do with your highlighter. 

Highlight certain parts and you have a tradition about taking care of the vulnerable, about showing mercy and giving the benefit of the doubt.

Highlight other parts and the thrust is about war and violence, about clearing a path for your people even at the expense of others.

Passing the Torch of Peace, Unity and Brotherhood in Violent and Chaotic Times

De and I traveled a bit in Europe after we left Israel, specifically in Italy and Greece.  In Greece, one of the places we toured was Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympics.

The ancient Olympics occurred over a period of 400 years.  In modern times, the International Olympic Committee reinstated the Olympics in 1896.

We are familiar with the Olympics tradition of carrying the torch from Greece to wherever the current site of the Olympics is.

The Olympic flame beginning its journey toward London in 2012

The first time that was done was for the summer Olympics 1936.  The place: Berlin, Germany. 

Now the three cornerstones of the ancient Olympics were Peace, unity and brotherhood.

The tourguide showed us the place in Olympia, a kind of fire-pit, where the torch was lit before it was brought to Berlin.  And she said, "Imagine the torch representing brotherhood, peace and unity arriving at the stadium in Berlin as Adoph Hitler presided in the stands."

Thoughts and Context After a Month in Israel

So much has been written in blogs, tweets, articles about the situation in Israel.

It is a heartbreaking, complicated mess.  And while the world’s attention is somewhat diverted to Iraq and Ferguson, Missouri, I want to focus on Israel because of its significance to us and because De and I were there for several weeks during the rocket firing and the operation in Gaza.  As you may know, I spent a month in Israel as part of a program run by the Hartman Institute, bringing rabbis from across the denominational spectrum for learning, analysis, professional development, etc.

I want to share some incidents, through my own personal lens, of the time I spent in Israel and then to offer some reflections on the larger context.  Of course, such a situation is vast and affects millions of people, but, as with any larger circumstance, we experience it as individuals, through our own lenses, one event at a time.

I had dinner with a friend at the beginning of my time in Israel at the old train station in Jerusalem.  At a certain point, we noticed that the people around us were visibly upset.  We checked the news on our i-phones and read that the bodies of the three abducted teens were found.  At that moment, as a parent of children close in age to these boys, I had a profound nauseating feeling which didn’t let up.  I recall feeling surprised, though maybe I shouldn’t have been.  Perhaps others, like me, harbored the hope that they would be kept alive.

Thoughts on the Conflict: Do Jews Believe in "Intractable?"

The Israeli government ordered ground troops to enter Gaza Thursday evening, Israel time.  Though this raises the potential for immediate casualties for Israelis and Palestinians, most Israelis, it seems to me, support the incursion.

More and more, over the past week, I have heard Israeli lay people and leaders alike use the word “intractable” to refer to the conflict.  Perhaps the incursion will buy us a few years of quiet, I hear people say.

Unfortunately, the sense that this conflict has no clear end is hardly new.  In a Hartman session devoted to the poetry of war and peace, my colleagues and I read a poem called “The Winter of 1973,” written in 1994 by those who were born following the Yom Kippur War.  The narrators in the poem, written by Shmuel Haspri and set to music, are now themselves in the army and they speak out to their parents about broken promises and disappointment.  Here is most of the poem:

We are the children of winter 1973

You dreamt us first at dawn at the end of the battles

You were tired men who were grateful for their good fortune

You were worried young women and you wanted so much to love

When you conceived us with love in winter 1973

You wanted to fill up with your bodies what the war took away…

You promised a dove,

An olive tree branch

You promised peace

You promised spring at home and blossoms

You promised to keep your promises, you promised a dove

We are the children of the winter of 1973

We grew up and now we are in the army

With our weapons and a helmet on our heads

We know how to make love to laugh and to weep

We are men we are women

And we too dream about babies

This is why we will not pressures, demand or threaten you.

When we were young you said promises need to be kept

We will give you strength if that is what you need

We will not hold back

We just wanted to whisper

We are the children of that winter in the year 1973

And here is a video of a performance of the popular song, based on the poem: