Passover: Unrealized Hope

Click here to watch a recording of Rabbi Aaron Potek's Yom Kippur sermon.

Edited for length. See full sermon by watching clip above.

There’s a custom at the Western Wall in Jerusalem - the Kotel - to write a prayer on a piece of paper and insert it into one of its cracks. The idea is that this wall is the closest anyone can get to the location of where the ancient Temple once stood and is thus the most auspicious place for God to hear our prayers.

My first time standing there, at age 12, I didn’t write a note. I’d like to tell you it’s because I had already developed a sophisticated theology and determined all those years ago that God doesn’t privilege prayers based on geography.

But more likely it’s because I was self-conscious - I was there on an eighth grade class trip, and one of my classmates could easily have just walked up right after me, pulled out my note and showed it off to everyone.

So instead I walked up to the wall, put my hand on the cold stone and whispered my prayer silently into the cleft in the rock. And what did I pray for?

Not what you might expect from a 12-year-old boy. Not for the Twins to win the World Series. Not to make friends in the new public high school that I’d be starting in just a few months.

No, at age 12, I closed my eyes, and I prayed for God to help me find a wife. That story, 100% true, would have made for a touching toast to my wife at my wedding, fitting neatly into the “dreams do come true” genre.

Instead, I’m sharing this story as a single 34-year-old who’s life hasn’t turned out the way I had hoped. I know in most circles 34 is the new 24, but I grew up Orthodox - where 34 is the new 45. I wanted to be married with kids by now. And I’m realizing that even if it happens for me in the future, it’s not going to look the way I thought it would.

So today, I’d like to talk about disappointment. To ask: “What do we do with our hopes that haven’t been realized?”

It’s a subject that’s personal and sensitive, which can raise some defenses. Some of you might be thinking: “Who cares if you don’t get married. It’s not a tragedy.” Others are probably saying: “You’re a man - you’re lucky you don’t have to deal with the biological and societal pressures that women deal with.”

Yet all of those responses are attempts to dismiss, minimize or solve my feelings.

I’d like to be able to talk about disappointment - mine, and yours - without needing to compare or judge them. I’d like to focus on our subjective experiences of disappointment, regardless of how objectively rational or irrational, fair or unfair, serious or trivial they might be.

I’m also aware, in this moment, that the topic of personal disappointments is not the most urgent or significant issue facing our community, our country and our world.... It’s easier, in a way, to talk about the disappointments all around us - how we’re disappointed with America, our elected officials, Israel, the state of the world, God.

It’s much harder to talk about, to acknowledge, to feel the disappointment within. So much so that we do whatever we can to avoid it.

AVOIDANCE 1: BLAME

If we can’t dismiss it or minimize it or try to solve it, we jump to blame.

We blame others for the way our lives turned out - if only my parents did this, if only this ex had told me this then, if only I had gotten accepted to this thing, etc.

Or, more often, we blame ourselves - if only I was better about this or had done this one thing or had known what I know now...

This need to assign blame is driven by the erroneous belief that we have more control over our lives than we actually do. We hold on to the myth that, if just this or that were a little bit different, we really would be living the life we envisioned for ourselves.

Am I partly responsible for my being single? Yea. Have others contributed to the problem? Sure. I could spend countless hours looking backwards, trying to figure out exactly where things went wrong. But I’d still be exactly where I am right now.

I’m not claiming that actions don’t have consequences, or that reflection isn’t important. I just think it’s rare that any one action or person - ourselves included - are solely responsible for the way our entire lives have unfolded. Sometimes our hard work doesn’t pay off. Sometimes our dreams don’t come true. Some of life is out of our control.

• Which line in the section above speaks to you the most and why?
• What role does blame play in your life?
• Do you tend to blame yourself or others?
• What role does this serve?
• How might it be holding you back?
• Can you determine if certain issues tend to lead to internal or external blame?

AVOIDANCE 2: HOLDING ON TO HOPE

Faced with this reality - and the possibility that our lives won’t work out the way we hoped - many of us double down on hope. We convince ourselves it just hasn’t happened yet - but it will.

Jews do hope well - it’s part of our DNA. Throughout the many dark periods of our long history, we’ve stubbornly held on to hope.

Except sometimes, when it comes to our personal narratives, this hoping mechanism can be a coping mechanism, a way to avoid the reality right in front of us. Hope can be a form of denial.

• When has hoping been a coping mechanism for you?
• When has it been a form of denial?

And in spite of our continued hoping, deep down our bodies know what our minds refuse to accept. What Solomon the Wise acknowledged in Proverbs (13:12) thousands of years ago:

So then what’s the alternative? To not dream? To give up hope? To become hopeless?

No - all is not lost.

Rather there are two words for hope in our Jewish texts.

Tochelet (see above)

Tikvah (as in Hatikvah)

• In your own words, what is the difference between the hope of tikvah and the hope as defined by tochelet?
• Can you give a real life example of each one from your own life?
• Which type of hope do you think is better and why?

PASSOVER AND RECLAIMING DISAPPOINTMENT

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.

NO MATTER WHAT, IT’S GOING TO BE OK

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.

In a heart-breaking passage towards the end of the Torah, Moses recounts to the people his life’s biggest disappointment:

Moses’s dream was to enter the Promised Land, and God said no. Why? It’s not surprising that many, many commentators blame Moses for not being able to enter into the Promised land for a myriad of reasons - informed by the false assumption that if we do the right thing then everything will work out.

It doesn’t. Our dreams don’t always come true. We might never cross the Jordan river. And still - our disappointments need not define our entire lives.

Ironically, that might actually be the lesson God is trying to teach Moses, and us. God responds to Moses’s plea by telling him to ascend yet another mountain - Mount Pisgah:

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....We just have to remember to look around - North, South, East and West.

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.

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.