Against All Odds
Rabbi Shira Stutman
The story of
Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, begins in 1878. Natphtali Herz Imber was a
young bohemian and poet who wrote “Tikvateinu”, “our hope”, expressing the
desire of the Jewish people to return to their homeland, to Israel. Imber left
Palestine in 1888, but the poem—with a new name, “Hatikvah”, and ultimately
turned into a song by the early Zionist pioneers of Rishon L’Zion—remained.
Written by this secular Jew from Austro-Hungary, with the melody brought by a
Romanian immigrant but adapted from a popular Moldovian folk song.[1]
In a settlement in Palestine. The
original melting pot. In 1948, when the state of Israel was established,
Hatikvah became the unofficial national anthem. In 2004, the K’nesset, the
Israeli parliament, officially ratified it.
Hatikvah
notwithstanding, it certainly was not the summer from hope. On the world scale,
we begin with rockets raining down on Israel, and the resultant, on-going, war
between Israel and Hamas, one which—no matter how you count the numbers—left
thousands dead, hundreds of thousands traumatized, many of them children. Or
turn to Ferguson, MO, where Michael Brown—18 years old, about to start
college—was gunned down by a policeman. Where his death is a loud reminder of a
system of oppression against people of color, and especially African-American
males, that snakes its way through our schools, courts, stores, and society.
Or anti-Semitism in
France, Germany, Boston, San Francisco. Jews killed in Brussels, stores
ransacked in Paris. People attacked here in America, the Goldene Medinah, in
New York, in Los Angeles.
And that’s just one
part of the news. Some of your minds are tuned to other issues, other places in
the world, also deserving of our notice. Rising sea levels. Ukraine, Sudan,
thousands of unaccompanied Central American children desperately trying to find
a better life here in America.
And what of our own
lives, hopes unfulfilled there? Jobs lost or never found, relationships ended,
friends leaving DC, loved ones ill or dying. Each of us, no matter how sunny
our dispositions or how perfect our social media posts, has our moment of
darkness, when we worry that all hope is lost.
How can we have hope
in a broken world?
To begin to unravel
this puzzle, let us begin, obviously, with a prostitute named Rahab. We’re back
a few thousand years, as the Israelites are poised to enter the land of Canaan
after being freed from slavery in Egypt. Joshua, who has taken over as leader
after Moses’ death, sends in two scouts—“go, look over the land,” he says.
“Especially Jericho.” Clearly, “go, look over the land” instead means “go find
a prostitute” so the men went directly to Rahab’s home, the text teaches, “and
stayed there.”
Meanwhile, the
Canaanites heard that there were Israelites at Rahab’s home. Soldiers knock on
Rahab’s door to slaughter the Israelites, but she thinks fast. She hides the
scouts and tells the soldiers that there are no Israelites in the home. The
soldiers leave. In gratitude, the scouts promise that when the Israelite army
invades Canaan, they will not touch Rahab or anyone in her family. All she has
to do is tie tikvat chut ha-shani (a line of scarlet thread) outside the
window, so the Israelites will know who she is. She and her family were saved.
Those of you who
speak Hebrew will have already noticed that the Hebrew word “tikvat,” here
meaning “line” of cord, is the same word as “tikvah”, meaning hope.
If we are looking for
one image, then, of where to find hope, it is in the kav, the thin red line, a
small opening in the midst of a difficult situation. It is what saved Rahab and
her family. Not just sitting back and waiting for God to provide, but instead,
in the midst of fear or uncertainty, anger or apathy, finding an opening for
courage: to move on and consciously decide that no matter what happens, you are
not going to wait for the end but instead look toward and help create a new
future. Some of you have heard me teach that in Judaism, many verbs are not
ends unto themselves, but require further action. Zachor, for instance, means
not just “remember” but “remember so that”. Consider a new understanding:
“tikvah” meaning not just “hope” but “hope—and then do.” Lo Samchinan Anisa,
the Talmud teaches. We are not permitted to rely on a miracle. Hope requires
ongoing action, even if it’s only a “kav”, a thread’s worth.
The root of the word
“tikvah” is connected to another word: “mikvah”, the ritual bath that Jews, or
people becoming Jews, immerse in for any number of reasons. If one way of
thinking about hope is as a thread to grasp, another is thinking about it as
holy waters all around, the possibility of rebirth. The image turns from
grasping at strings to embracing and shielding us as we step into difficult
moments. From hope as something private, individual, to something communal, the
sum greater than its parts.
Kav hope—the hope of
a thread—is important. It is what saved Rahab, after all. But since it only
affected her and her family, it was not enough. True hope is not a solo
endeavor; it is a communal one. It requires others around you who can pick you
up when you’re lost.
Consider today’s
Torah portion: God promises Abraham that both his sons, Ishmael and Isaac, will
become great nations. But Abraham expels Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, from
the compound, sending them into the desert. Hagar walks until she runs out of
water. She loses all tikvah, all hope. She places her son under a tree then
sits a small distance away, to await both of their deaths.
And then an angel
arrives, to show her what was in front of her all along. It “opens Hagar’s
eyes” so that she could see a well of water. She gave Ishmael water, and took
for herself. They settle into a good life, and Ishmael grows up and began to
build his nation.
Without her angel,
the text teaches, Hagar would not have been able to go on. Sometimes we are the
bearers of hope for our own selves, and sometimes we rely on others to bear the
burden with or for us. It is no coincidence that Israel’s national anthem is an
anthem of hope. It is no coincidence that the root word for hope has woven its
way into other parts of the Hebrew language. Judaism is, arguably, the religion
of hope and Jews are its people. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove speaks of this
beautifully when he reminds us that
Judaism’s
outstanding contribution to the landscape of religious sentiment is its
contention that no matter what happened in the past, the best part of the
narrative is yet to come. Every time a Jew prays, every time we recite the amidah,
we return to the banks of the sea and stand on the cusp of redemption…Our very
liturgy reminds us that you and I, each and every one of us, every single day,
exist forever with the best part of our story in front of us.
Even as we look
toward the future, though, we cannot forget the past. This past summer may seem
like a long time ago for those of us who are not living in the Middle East, for
those of us who walk the streets with white privilege. We may choose to engage
hope by utilizing strategic amnesia. It’s certainly easy enough to do in this
fast-paced world. But being part of the culture of hope means that we have to
look backward in addition to forward, that we mine the lessons of the past to
teach how to be hopeful in the future.
For when we look back
to the summer has passed and the fall that is unfolding, it is easy to think
that the world is self-destructing. And perhaps it is. Or perhaps in every
generation there have been events—some more catastrophic than others—that made
us feel hopeless. Certainly in each of our lives there have been moments when
all hope seemed lost. And sometimes it was—for a moment. For hope to work,
though, for it to continue to propel you forward, sometimes we need to shift
the goal-posts a little bit. You cannot tell someone on hospice to “hope for a
cure”. But you can say, “what is your hope for what lives on after you die?” Right
now, we cannot hope for a perfect peace in Israel and Palestine, with open
borders and exchange of ideas. But that does not mean that hope is lost. After
the holiday, go onto youtube and listen to inmates at Bergen-Belsen singing the
Hatikvah. And ask yourself how they, survivors of one of the worst moments in
Jewish history, could have found that kav of hope.
See a thread of hope
in Rambam hospital in Haifa, which is treating Gazans injured in the war. “Here
[at Rambam] we see humans; we don’t see sides,” said Yazid Falah, the
coordinator for the hospital’s Palestinian patients. “ At the end of the day,
everyone is in the same boat.” See a thread of hope in the story of Mustafa, a
Gazan who came to Seeds of Peace in Maine this summer so as “to share his
suffering” with Israeli Jews he had never would have had the opportunity to
meet. See a thread of hope in the fact that anti-Semitism in Germany is
criticized by the vast majority of political leadership. See a thread of hope
in Captain Ron Johnson standing in front of members of the Ferguson community,
and saying simply “To the family of Mike Brown--I’m sorry.” Don’t let the bad
in the world obscure the goodness that still surrounds us.
And don’t roll your
eyes, please. DC is a city of cynics, and this room, filled will policy
analysts and journalists, will be only too quick to let me know how meager,
“may I have a little more, please?” this list seems. We know we’re in trouble
when we’re grateful to the person who just states facts—thank you so
much, Chancellor Merkel, for stating that anti-Semitism is bad, but we already
knew that. In the first 13 days after Michael Brown was killed, at least 5 more
unarmed African-American males were killed by police. (We don’t have the exact
number because the vast majority of police departments don’t keep the data.)
And yet—if Jews have
given anything to the world, it is the ongoing, against-all-odds and reason to
the contrary, sense of hope. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, teaches that
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.
Without hope, all we
have left is despair. And as scholar Steven Katz writes, “Jews are, as Jews,
forbidden to despair of redemption, or to become cynical about the world and
humanity, for to submit to cynicism is to abdicate responsibility for the here and
now and to deliver the future into the hands of the forces of evil.” Yes—there
is evil in the world. Our job is not to ignore the evil but to lift up the
kav—the small thread—of hope wherever we can.
The central prayer of
the entire High Holy Day season is the unetaneh tokef, which David led us in
singing a little while ago. It is, as much as anything else, a prayer of hope
in times that threaten despair. “On Rosh Hashanah it is written/and on Yom
Kippur it is sealed: /how many will pass away and how many will be born; / who
will live and who will die…” and so on. We teeter on the edge of nihilism, each
of us acknowledging that we could die at any moment, and then? And then, hope
arrives. U’teshuvah, u’tefilah, u’tzedakah ma’avirin et roa hag’zeyrah. With
teshuva, with tefilah, with tzedakah, we can avert the decree. We have agency
in even the darkest moments. Even just a kav.
We conclude as we
began, with the Hatikvah, one of the few national anthems in the entire world
written in the minor key. A song of pride. A song, unlike many world anthems,
devoid of war or battle imagery. It is a song of hope for a world that we are a
long way from realizing. A world of shalom, of peace and wholeness.
But the song has not
been without controversy. Orthodox Jews object to one line, Arab-Israelis and
their allies to a few others. Nothing is easy when it comes to the Middle East.
But yet here we are, still moving forward, still choosing hope. Sometimes,
instead of reality defining our beliefs, we must allow our beliefs to help
define our reality. By choosing to embrace hope, we actually are better
positioned to create the conditions for which we hope, and thus our hopes are
more likely to be realized. Living in despair will guarantee that we remain in
despair. Living in hope can help to justify our hope--because it gives us the
strength to act.
Pessimists will tell
you that "hope is not a strategy". In fact, hope IS a strategy--as
long as the hope is coupled with action. In the year to come, may you allow
your hope to spur you on. Hope for an improved relationship with family or
friends, and move forward, one small step at a time, one text or lunch at a
time, toward it. Hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and go and
visit, learn peoples’ stories, donate to tzedakahs that support your goals.
Hope for an end to injustice in America and call out racism when you see it,
including—for those of us who are white—staying conscious of our own privilege
and where it comes into play. Do it as individuals, do it as a community.
In a recent article,
the journalist Yossi Klein Halevi wrote of psalm 27, recited every day in the
month before Rosh Hashana, which ends with the following words: “Put your hope
in Adonai, be strong, and keep strong your heart!” Every single day, the
entire month before Rosh Hashanah, we read this psalm, commanding us to hope.
And then, we sound the shofar, commanding us to action. He writes,
This
is a society of believers. Even those who don't believe in God tend to believe
in the enduring mystery of Jewish survival.
The other morning while
driving my 16-year-old son, Shachar, to school, I said: “Here we are, in a
traffic jam in Jerusalem. But sometimes I think about how the most ordinary
details of my daily life were the greatest dream of my ancestors.”
That was all he said.
But that was enough. I knew he would be able to survive here.
Hope comes in all
shapes and sizes. Sometimes it is as big as the 18th Zionist
Congress, in 1933, when Hatikvah was officially adopted as the Zionist
movement’s national anthem. Or as big as the 1963 march on Washington, at which
Martin Luther King gave his famous speech. Or as big as 300,000 people coming
together in New York City for the People’s Climate March. Those are mikvah hope
moments. And sometimes it is as small as a traffic jam in Jerusalem. Or a
12-year-old girl pitcher who throws 70 mph and ends up on the cover of Sports
Illustrated. Those are kav moments. And we need each and every one of them
to survive. As we are awash in hope, we are strengthened by it. And then we
sound the shofar, commanding us to action. It helps us keep strong our hearts.
May we all turn our hearts toward that hope and work together for a better
future.
