The Anatomy of Hope

Which concept from this video resonates with you the most and why?

How does she define the notion of real hope?

How to pursue real hope:

1. Don't be afraid of knowledge-- not backing away from news because it is scary or sad grateful without guilty
2. Accepting the fact that while there is no guarantee of progress, this shouldn't hindered our commitment to make things better while we are here
3. If you knew you could succeed no matter what, what is one thing you would do for the world? What is one thing you could do in the next day or week to get started? --> Hope doesn't bring about action, action brings about hope
4. Hope is simply the belief that tomorrow can be better than today

Modern Quotes about Hope

This texts suggests that hope comes from 2 different places

1. What/where are are they?

2. Have you ever found hope in either of these places?

3. Do you like/dislike this text and why?

Future Tense – How The Jews Invented Hope

Rabbi Sacks

...Human beings are the only life form capable of using the future tense. Only beings who can imagine the world other than it is, are capable of freedom. And if we are free, the future is open, dependent on us. We can know the beginning of our story but not the end. That is why, as God is about to take the Israelites from slavery to freedom, God tells Moses that His name is ‘I will be what I will be.’ ^{(See above, Exodus 3:13-14, for original text)}

In your own words, how would you explain the connection between freedom and G-d's name?

Judaism, the religion of freedom, is faith in the future tense.

Western civilization is the product of two cultures: ancient Greece and ancient Israel. The Greeks believed in fate: the future is determined by the past. Jews believed in freedom: there is no ‘evil decree’ that cannot be averted. The Greeks gave the world the concept of tragedy. Jews gave it the idea of hope. The whole of Judaism – though it would take a book to show it – is a set of laws and narratives designed to create in people, families, communities and a nation, habits that defeat despair. Judaism is the voice of hope in the conversation of mankind.

What laws or teachings do you know of that may help us create "habits that defeat despair?"

Judaism is a religion of details, but we miss the point if we do not sometimes step back and see the larger picture. To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair. Every ritual, every mitzvah, every syllable of the Jewish story, every element of Jewish law, is a protest against escapism, resignation or the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism is a sustained struggle, the greatest ever known, against the world that is, in the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet. There is no more challenging vocation. Throughout history, when human beings have sought hope they have found it in the Jewish story. Judaism is the religion, and Israel the home, of hope.

1. Which one sentence above rings most true to you and why?
2. What do you think that Wiesel means when he says "peace is not God's gift to his creatures"?
3. What do you think is the difference between hope, redemption and peace?

According to Dr. Aviva Zornberg, the [Jonah] story can be read as a case for uncertainty. Contrasted with Jonah, who consistently uses the phrase “I know,” all the other characters in the book say things like “Who knows” (Mi Yodeah) and “Perhaps” (Ulai).

Zornberg writes:

“Perhaps” is a peculiarly Jewish response to the mystery of God’s ways… “Who knows?” speaks of humility and hope, and a sense of the incalculable element in the relation of God and human beings.

In other words, we cannot know what God has planned for us. That is a major theme of Yom Kippur. “Who will live and who will die?”

Adopting an attitude of “Perhaps” or “Who knows?” is the key to unlocking this uncertain hope, allowing ourselves to dream while holding onto the possibility of disappointment. We shouldn’t give up hope, but we should temper it.

MOSES AND THE TABLETS - A NEW STORY

This orientation of “perhaps” not only helps us make space for the possibility of disappointment - it also helps us work through disappointment when it does occur.

In one major moment of disappointment, Moses came down from Mount Sinai holding the two tablets - the 10 commandments... to a people that were doing the opposite of the vision written down on those tablets.

He smashes the tablets on the ground. According to one midrash (Pirkei D’Rebbe Eliezer, Ch. 45), “the tablets simply became too heavy for Moses to carry.”

• Whether he actively chose to give up hope or passively couldn’t hold on to hope any longer, the result is the same. There he sat, at the foot of the mountain - surrounded by shattered tablets and shattered dreams.

In that moment, he could have fully given in to despair and decided that the end of the story he envisioned was the end of his story. Or he could have tried to pick up the pieces of the tablets and fit them back together - holding onto the false hope that he could recover and still realize the original plan.

He did neither.

Instead, he turned around and headed back up the mountain, on the road between hopelessness and false hope - on the path of “perhaps”. “Perhaps - Ulai - I will gain forgiveness for your sin” he tells the people before walking back up the mountain (Exodus 32:30).

Allowing for disappointment - accepting our story might end differently than we hoped for - allows for a new story to emerge.

Sure enough, Moses comes back down with new tablets - a new vision. “On what day was that?” our rabbis ask. Today. Yom Kippur. (see Rashi on Exodus 34:29)

Today is a reminder that our story doesn’t need to end in shattered tablets. There are new possibilities. Is “new” better? Not necessarily. And we will still carry our old disappointments with us wherever we go. As we read in the Talmud, the Israelites took the broken shards of the first tablets with them in the ark (BT Bava Batra 14b). But that is not all that they carried. There was room in the ark for the new tablets, too. Their story wasn’t defined by disappointment. Ours doesn’t need to be either.

That’s true even if we never get a new set of tablets. Sometimes, a disappointment isn’t replaced by a new, exciting opportunity. Sometimes a disappointment continues to feel disappointing throughout our lives.

No one knows this more than Moses...

~ Excerpt from Rabbi Aaron Potek (see link above)

God offers no silver linings here. This isn’t a “there is no promised land” or “the promised land was inside of you all along” Lifetime movie moment. There are no second tablets at the top of this mountain. Instead, God says: “Yes, there’s a promised land. You can even see it. And you won’t get there.” On the surface, it feels almost cruel.

But I’d like to think God is helping to broaden Moses’s perspective. The Promised Land is only one direction. Look West, East, North and South. A life, your life, can never be reduced to or defined by the disappointments, painful as they may be. There are always wonderful moments, too.

I wish I could tell you that you will reach your promised land. Perhaps you will. But the hard truth that our Torah teaches us through the example of Moses is that not everyone does.

Accepting that our dream might never be realized is painful… but it’s also liberating. It allows us to hold on to a more realistic form of hope - an uncertain hope. That uncertainty makes disappointments less devastating and compels us - when the time is right - to climb back up the mountain. What waits for us there? Maybe a new set of tablets, a new opportunity. Or maybe just a broader perspective that lets us see beyond the disappointment.

~ Excerpt from Rabbi Aaron Potek (see link above)