I would like to share a parable from the Talmud with you (Sotah 21a). It goes like this:
It’s a very dark night, and someone—let’s imagine that it’s one of us—is outside in some dark, wooded area, alone, and lost.
We’re afraid.
For one thing, we’re afraid of stumbling: on thorns or thistles; tripping on rocks or roots, or falling into a ditch.
We’re also afraid of wild animals, or wild human beings who may be hiding out of sight but who could pounce upon us.
And we’re afraid because … well, we don’t want to be here, and to quote that 1960s song by The Animals, “We gotta get out of this place,” and we don’t know which way to turn.
We come upon a lantern. It sheds a small circle of light around us, and we no longer worry about the thorns and thistles, or tripping over some rocks into a ditch.
But we’re still afraid of wild animals or people who might be lurking in the dark beyond the range of that lantern. We can’t see them – though they may be out there looking right at us.
But then, the sun comes up. We’re now able to see all around us. Now, we feel a lot safer — even from the threat of wild animals or people hiding around us, for at least we know that we have a chance of seeing them before they pounce.
But still, we’re lost. We don’t know which way to go, to get out of this place.
It isn’t until we come to a crossroads—a parashat d’rachim, as it’s called in Hebrew— that we can see what looks like it could be a way out. Only then, might we finally feel relieved that we are safe from the threats posed by this place.
We are in that dark, scary place right now.
We are living through a very difficult, stressful and distressing time. There’s no need for a laundry list. I’m sure that if we were asked, we could each come up with our own list of reasons to be distressed, in our own particular order.
Like the person in that parable, some of us may feel as though we have a lantern in our hands. Maybe we are savvy; maybe we have financial resources, and connections—with doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, and other professionals who can help us address whatever personal challenges we are encountering. Perhaps then we are convinced that we can protect ourselves from threats to our personal well-being.
We may even have a sense that the sun has risen, and that we have a clear view of all the dangers that might arise over a wider sphere than the particular spot where we happen to be.
But have we reached a crossroads? Do we know yet where to turn to “get out of this place”? To free ourselves from the pervasive anxiety, distress, and fear we may be feeling?
We are obviously not the first to face the unknown. We’re not the first to face stressful circumstances. The central figure in the Torah that we read about on Rosh Hashanah—Avraham Avinu, Abraham the Patriarch—was confronted with what surely appear to us to be confusing, distressing and even scary situations.
For example, consider the tsuris we read about this morning—Abraham being compelled to expel from his home his son Ishmael and Ishmael’s birth mother, Hagar. We know that Abraham was distressed by that, because the Torah tells us explicitly (Genesis 21:11): “VayeiRA ha-davar m’od b’einei Avraham al odot b’no. The matter greatly distressed Abraham.”
Tomorrow morning, we’ll read about how Abraham is given what we certainly would consider to be a horrifying directive: to take his son—his heir, Isaac, whom he loves—and lech l’cha, “get going,” and prepare to sacrifice him. That is, slaughter him.
That imperious directive, “lech l’cha,” should sound familiar to Abraham (and to us) because already ten chapters earlier, God had used those same words to order Abraham to move away from the familiarity of his birthplace to a new far-away land.
When we read those two stories in which Abraham is told “Lech l’cha,” we tend to focus on the big challenges Abraham was facing in the two circumstances. But there’s a small detail in both of these accounts that I’d like us to think about for a moment. In both cases—when God tells Abraham to move to a new home, and when God tells him to sacrifice his son—God doesn’t tell him exactly where to go. Both times, God tells Abraham to “get going,” and that he will eventually disclose to him his precise destination.
I would imagine that, for Abraham, that lack of specificity in his marching orders must have been tough. I know from my own experience how frustrating and anxiety-producing it can be when the GPS in my car tells me only the very next turn and leaves me wondering what comes next after that.
God, as depicted in these texts, apparently doesn’t always spell out exactly what we can expect.
Now, as we know, Abraham’s trial was halted in mid-air, just in the nick of time, and so the story we’ll read tomorrow morning appears, in the end, to work out alright.
We may be wondering, “How about our story? How well will it work out?
Abraham is not, of course, the only Jew who’s faced challenges. You don’t have to believe in the so-called “lachrymose conception of Jewish history,” the notion that Jewish history is all about Jewish suffering, to realize that in just about every place where Jews have lived, we’ve faced serious challenges.
We’re still here. We’ve managed, as a group, to endure an awful lot. On the other hand, as we know, “past performance does not guarantee future results.”
So, how do we move forward?
When the parable we’re studying is discussed in the Talmud, the Talmud understands the lantern and the sun to symbolize Torah and Mitzvot. As the proverb teaches us, “Ner mitzvah v’torah or: A mitzvah is a lantern, and Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23). That makes sense. Studying our tradition’s wisdom and embracing traditional practices can illuminate our lives, give us strength, and bolster our spirits, especially at difficult times. After all, “hem khayeinu v’orech yameinu: they are our life and the length of our days” (from the evening service).
But even Torah and Mitzvot can only bring us so far. We need something else, without which we can become paralyzed. That something is Tikvah, or hope.
“Hope” is a word with a variety of connotations. We might associate hope with waiting for something to happen—as opposed to trying to make it happen. If we do, it may seem to us unhelpful as an approach to confusion, anxiety, or despair.
I’m reminded of that story about the two sisters who are late for a train. One says, “We should pray that we get there on time.” The other says, “Let’s pray as we run.”
That skepticism—or, you might call it, the practical thinking—of that second sister is actually very Jewish.
There’s that famous teaching by Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, found in Avot d’Rabbi Natan (B 31), “If you’re planting a tree and someone comes up to you and says, ‘The Messiah has come! Let’s go out to greet him!’ First finish planting the tree and then go out to greet the Messiah.”
There are, though, of course, other ways of understanding hope.
Hope—at its best—is more than just waiting for something to happen. It can include taking actions that can help increase the chances that something will happen.
Now, hope offers no guarantees. You can hope for something to happen, and maybe it will and maybe it won’t. But that’s not how we measure how worthwhile it might be. Let me explain.
Vaclav Havel was the Czech writer and dissident who led the so-called “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, a series of non-violent protests that resulted in the collapse of Czechoslovakia’s communist regime. He then improbably became the first president of the Czech Republic. He spoke and wrote a lot about the importance of hope in achieving societal change. He believed in hope, while also being a practical person and a realist, who saw hope and realism as entirely consistent with one another.
For example, he wrote, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well; [it’s] the certainty that [a certain course of action] makes sense, regardless of how it turns out [emphasis added].” “It’s the ability to work for something because it is good, not … because it [necessarily] stands a chance to succeed.”
Havel described hope as “an orientation of the spirit that transcends the immediately experienced world.” Hope is “a state of mind, not a state of the world.” But about one thing he was clear: hope must be based on objective reality, not on wishful thinking.
To me, hope is like an internal compass (in Hebrew, a matzpen, that always points to the north, tsafon in Hebrew), that orients us and, like a gyroscope, keeps us even-keeled, with our focus in the direction of what might yet—and indeed, should—come to be.
Looking at hope as an orientation allows us to understand the role it can play in situations in which we might otherwise feel hopeless.
One summer while I was in rabbinical school, I participated in a chaplaincy internship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. At one of our group supervision sessions, I recall a fellow intern lamenting how difficult it was for him to visit one particular patient. “Why?” our supervisor asked him. “Because,” he said, “his situation is hopeless. There’s nothing more that the doctors can do for him—and he knows it.”
At that point, our supervisor asked a simple question: “Have you asked the patient what he might be hoping for? Perhaps he is hoping that he’ll regain enough of his strength to be able to go home, or that he’ll have the opportunity to bid farewell to his family. Maybe he hopes to take one more walk around the block, or have one more visit to his favorite restaurant. Maybe he’s hoping that his kids or his grandkids will grow up to be healthy, fulfilled human beings. There might be plenty of worthy, worthwhile, plausible and reasonable things he might be hoping for.”
Earlier today, when we chanted the liturgical poem L’El Orech Din, we were starkly reminded that Rosh HaShanah is called Yom Ha-Din, the Day of Judgment. We’ll be reminded of that again when we join in chanting the Unetaneh Tokef in a few minutes.
But that’s not the only Yom Ha-Din in our tradition. In fact, Rosh HaShanah, our annual collective Yom Ha-Din, is but a rehearsal for the ultimate individual Yom Ha-Din that each of us can anticipate. In our tradition, “The” Yom Ha-Din —with a capital “T”—is the Day of Judgment we will face when we “meet our Maker.” As one would expect, given the metaphor, we are to imagine that we will be called upon at that time to provide testimony about ourselves. That testimony will be prompted, according to the Talmudic sage Rava, by a series of questions.
Rava said: When a person is brought to judgment, they say to him: Did you conduct business faithfully? Did you designate times for Torah study? Did you engage in procreation? Did you await salvation? Did you engage in the dialectics of wisdom or understand one matter from another? (b.Shabbat 31a)
The first is straightforward and predictable: Nasata v’Natata be’emunah? Did you conduct your business affairs faithfully? That makes sense, right? Those in heaven presumably want to know if we’ve led a good life; if we’ve been decent, ethical, and trustworthy.
The next question is, Kavata itim la’torah? Did you designate times for Torah study? This question also makes sense. If we are Jews, the heavenly court would also want to know whether we’ve designated times for studying Torah, understood as the source of Jewish ethics and morality.
But then, among the other questions, comes one that stands out: “Tsipita li’shua?” “Did you hope for salvation?”
That’s an odd question to be asking in heaven, isn’t it? Conducting your business affairs with integrity, studying Torah: those are concrete actions. Hoping seems very different. You can’t really command someone to feel hopeful, can you?
But we can understand it to mean, “Did you live a life properly oriented toward a better future—for you, for your family, your community, your people, humanity, the entire world? And did you contemplate and take steps to help achieve that future?”
By the way, the root of that word tsipitah, tsadi, fey, heh, appears in the anthem Hatikvah. We say, “So long as within the heart a Jewish soul is yearning, ayin l’tziyon tsofiah [so long as] an eye is gazing toward Zion.”
“Gazing.” That’s how it’s translated. But the word “gazing” could be misunderstood. Sometimes it means that you’re looking at something while thinking about something else. That’s not the eye in Hatikvah.
The eye in Hatikvah is looking intensely, full of hope, toward Zion, with focus and caring and determination. It isn’t the eye of a detached or indifferent observer; rather, it is the eye of one who is engaged with Zion. It’s the eye of someone who cares about what—and who—it is gazing at.
We’re here today because, as a people, we believe in hope. We believe that no matter how dark and gloomy things may seem—indeed, may be—we believe that this is a place where we can try to figure out where we are, where we want to be, and how to move in that direction.
Tomorrow, in the haftarah, we’ll read the words Jeremiah shared with Jews who, at a dark time in Jewish history, right around the destruction of the First Temple, had to flee Jerusalem or the Land of Israel. What did he say to them? He said,
Yesh Tikvah l’acharitech: There is hope for your future.
V’shavu vanim ligvulam: The children shall return to their country.”
Jeremiah wasn’t telling them that it was going to be easy! He wasn’t even necessarily telling them that it was possible that their own children would return. Many of those exiles to whom he was speaking— and many of their children—never made it back to Judea. Some might have, but many, undoubtedly, did not. After all, in every generation, we’ve had to contend with constraints.
Hundreds of years later, after the Second Temple was destroyed and Jews were again sent into exile, during another extremely dark time—a time of terrible crises for Jews as a people and Judaism as a religion—Jewish leaders decided then and there that every Rosh Hashanah we should read Jeremiah’s words, yesh tikvah l’acharitech, “There is hope for your future.”
And even though, for many centuries, very few Jews were able to return from exile, we continued to chant these words year after year, demonstrating a hope that we retained for 2000 years, a hope that enabled those words ultimately to be fulfilled. That only happened because, as Hatikvah puts it, lo avdah tikvateinu, we never lost our bearings, we never lost our orientation toward hope.
CONCLUSION
If we are still wondering how, during dark days like these, it is possible to remain hopeful, let’s recall Psalm 27, the psalm we recite again and again throughout this season.
Think of that psalm’s last verse: It starts with the words, “Kaveh el Adonai! Hope in God!” The psalmist is saying that we should focus on our north star, on what it is that gives us moral direction and gives our lives meaning.
Now, that sounds great, but, hearing those words, we might react with dismay: “We’re being told to hope? There are so many good reasons to despair!”
Of course there are! Perhaps this is the crossroads we’ve been wondering about. Perhaps two paths have been ahead of us all along, labeled “Hope” and “Despair.” Which one should we choose? The parable doesn’t tell us. It leaves to us the opportunity—and responsibility—to make that choice. But for the author of Psalm 27, it’s clear. And so, the psalmist offers us encouraging words:
Hazak v’ametz libecha!: Be strong and let your heart take courage!
Or, as Pamela Greenberg, a local poet and writer, translates it: “Strengthen your heart and sturdy it.” The psalmist is telling us to stand up straight. The psalmist is telling us that we can do this. It will not necessarily be easy, but we can do this. Others have done it before us, and we can too.
The psalmist concludes by doubling down and repeating that line, “Kaveh el Adonai: Hope in God.” Or, as Pamela Greenberg sensitively translates it, “Keep up your hope in God.”
There may be constraints on our behavior but let’s strive to maintain our hope. Let’s live according to our values to the best of our ability.
Let’s find our way out of the forest.
By remaining oriented toward what the world should look like, may all of us do our best to summon up the strength, courage, and determination to hope. And then, to act accordingly.
Shanah tovah u’m’tukah. May we all be blessed with a good and sweet new year. Amen.