The former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel once said: "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
I have been holding on to this as a North Star for what will be just short of one year since the October 7th Pogrom, trying not to succumb to the pervasive despair that looms large these days.
I notice within myself a wavering between a growing anger and rage on the one hand, and I think worse on the other-an apathetic acceptance and settling that this is just the norm now.
But in moments like these, I remind myself of a phrase that the residents of the Bratslav Shtibel inscribed on their entrance sign in the Warsaw Ghetto: "Jews, You are forbidden to despair."
Ours is a religion that under all circumstances comes to teach us that we choose life over death, blessing over curse, always. It is why in Jewish tradition, if a funeral procession and a wedding procession cross each other's path, the wedding procession always has the right of way.
It is why we are not just permitted but encouraged to override any commandment in order to save a life-because the rabbinic passage equating the destruction of one life to the destruction of the entire world continues: the one who saves a single life, he saves the world in full.
This is what Abraham Joshua Heschel was talking about when he instructed that the key to navigating life comes down to Radical Amazement. Heschel understood that Judaism's entire purpose was to keep us awake and sensitized to this existence of ours, in its fullest sense. He recognized that in the course of ordinary life, we tend to become numb to or acclimated to the conditions of the world--whether good or bad. And Heschel understood that this condition was the ultimate threat to our existence. On this he said:
"An individual dies when they cease to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. And when I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can hope against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves."
We cannot permit ourselves to be anesthetized to the darkness. And so too we cannot permit ourselves to lose hope that we might yet bring light, even if there is no clear guarantee.
This idea, after all, sits at the very heart of the message of the High Holy Days with the most consistent and profound invitation of
teshuvah
. Colloquially,
teshuvah
means repentance, but it really means return, reminding us that the potential to redirect, to repair, to return is always possible. But such a return can only be realized when we remember and believe that change is yet possible.
As 5784 comes to a close and 5785 opens before us, I will hold on to the operative understanding that our people has lived by for thousands of years--the directive articulated by the courageous, resilient, and inspiring Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was severely wounded and taken hostage on October 7th by Hamas: "Hope is mandatory."
I hope by the time this article is published, we will be living in a world where the hostages are safe, free, and home, where our brothers and sisters in
Eretz Yisrael
, and all around the world are living in peace, where the New Year will bring with for all people an end to the fear, suffering, and hate that plagues our world, and gives way to a world that will only know
shalom
.
Rabbi Wendi Geffen is the Senior Rabbi of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe.
