Hope Is Not An Option — It's An Obligation

At our Friday Night Shabbat service on January 10th, Rabbi Steven delivered a sermon on the strategic necessity of hope in dark times. In Joseph’s day, the land of Egypt was a refuge, and his family enjoyed wealth and prestige and political power. But in just a few generations, their descendants were enslaved by a tyrant in that same land. In a day when the freedom and stability that we sometimes take for granted is being threatened, how can we find inspiration in our ancestor’s struggle? 

****

For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates.

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

 I woke up on Wednesday with a sore throat, which is not unusual when I’m on vacation (as a rule, my body gives itself permission to get sick when I have a break). But when I stepped outside to grab coffee, I knew that it wasn’t a cold. Even though Balboa Island is fifty miles south of the Pacific Palisades, I could smell smoke in the air. Before we left my uncle’s house, we remade the guest rooms so they would be ready for friends who had been forced to evacuate their homes. And as our plane took off that afternoon, I looked north toward Los Angeles; the city was completely obscured by an ashen haze.

There is a quote circulating on social media, which reads “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.” And I think about the photos my family and friends have sent me of familiar landscapes devastated by fire, and even though I know climate change is no longer an abstract proposition, it is still shocking to see its effects so close to places that I know. It’s hard to believe that only a year ago I was watching fire sweep through the hills and towns where I grew up in Hawaii. And now Los Angeles: the city where I went to college, where so many of my friends and family live, engulfed in flames. And so for the past few days I’ve been sitting with a knot of grief and anger and hopelessness and fear, feelings I know are shared with so many people in this community who have been impacted by these fires, or the hurricanes that tore through the South and Southeast this past fall, or the floods that inundated towns across the Midwest last summer.

And I know that none of you are the people who need to be convinced of the dire consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Unfortunately, too many of those folks are occupying our halls of government — and there will be time to advocate and agitate for change (and if they still refuse to listen, vote them out of office because climate change denial should be an unequivocal disqualifier for holding office in 2025). But that time is not this moment, sitting with each other on Shabbat. In this moment, I want to do two things: first, I want to hold space for the very real feelings that are occupying our hearts. I want to recognize the sadness and rage and despair that fills the void left by everything we have already lost on a rapidly warming planet and the losses we are afraid will come. I want to extend comfort and care to anyone who is sitting shiva right now, for people and places that have been taken by a world on fire; folks in our community who have had to evacuate, someone on our staff who lost their childhood home. Be gentle with each other tonight. Be a little kinder. Hug (with consent) a little harder. And I want us to pray for shelter and for safety, for a sukkat shalom, for everyone who is in need.

Second, I want to talk about what we can do, what we must do when the obstacles that face us have no quick or easy solution. I keep returning to the advice given by one of my teachers, Ruth Messinger, shortly after the presidential election of 2016 (which she repeated again after this last presidential election): “We cannot retreat to the convenience of being overwhelmed. Despair is not a strategy.” It’s become one of my mantras over these past few years, particularly when I have a hard time seeing the way out of this mess. It reminds me that we are a people who have persevered through countless difficulties, have walked across barren wildernesses and traversed vast oceans, have outlasted every dictator and tyrant and pharaoh who has sought to oppress us. Our stories help us remember that despair is not in our spiritual DNA. No, our inheritance is hope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuiba1gnXYk

This week, we finish reading the book of Genesis. It ends with the death of Joseph, who at 110 years old has lived to see the birth of his great-grandchildren and the transformation of his family into a small people. His life was devoted to ensuring their safety, rescuing them from a devastating famine and securing refuge for them in Egypt. In the process, he not only saved his family but the other tribes and nations who called that land home. On his deathbed, he calls his brothers to his side and says: “I am about to die. One day, God will take notice and bring you from this place to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and our father Jacob. Pakod yifkod Elohim etchem v’ha’alitem et atzmotai mi-zeh. Promise me that, when this happens, you will take my bones with you.” And then Joseph dies. His body is embalmed, laid in a coffin, and placed in a tomb somewhere in Egypt.

Joseph’s request may seem simple enough. But considering where he leaves his brothers, it’s an incredible statement of faith in the future that was promised to them. Their family is thriving in Egypt. They are safe, secure, and well regarded by the ruling elite. There is no reason for them to leave for another land. And so our ancestors stay. And they grow. They become a people, atzum v’rav, numerous and great. And after a few generations, our ancestors forget where Joseph has been laid to rest.

The rabbis offer a couple accounts about this lapse in memory. Some say that his body remained in the royal tombs, but the people could not remember which coffin belonged to him (according to this telling, when it was time to depart, Moses walked into the royal tombs and called “Joseph, Joseph, the time has come for God to redeem us” — and so his coffin began to shake, so they would know where to find him). Others say that the Egyptians took his bones, placed them in a lead casket, and sunk it in the Nile so that it could no longer be found (according to this telling, Moses walked to the edge of the river and placed a metal plate inscribed with the words “Arise ox!” into the water. Again he called “Joseph, Joseph, the time has come for God to redeem us” — and so the lead casket floated to the surface).

Or perhaps our ancestors forgot where his grave was because they no longer cared or wanted to remember. The book of Exodus opens with a Pharaoh coming to power who does not know Joseph or what he did for Egypt. To him, the Israelites are more foreigner than friend — and so fearful that they might become a fifth column that aids his enemies in a time of war, Pharaoh enslaves them. And thus begins four hundred years of slavery, of oppression and hard labor. As generations were born in shackles, as memories of being a free people became history became myth, the idea of redemption must have seemed impossible. The rabbis teach that our ancestors felt so despondent, husbands refused to have sex with their wives so that no more children would be born into such misery. And so given this paucity of hope why remember where Joseph was buried when, living or dead, no Israelites would be leaving Egypt? Given all that had happened to them, looking at all that was happening around them, despair must have felt like the appropriate (and possibly the only) choice.

Earlier today (before sundown), we marked the 10th of Tevet. This minor fast commemorates the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar II’s siege of Jerusalem — which culminated many months later with the destruction of the First Temple in 587 BCE, the collapse of the Kingdom of Judea, and the Babylonian exile of Judeans (aka us, the Jews). One of my teachers, R’Micha’el Rosenberg, points out that this fast is unique in that it marks the start of a tragedy — rather than its end, like the 17th of Tammuz (i.e. when Jerusalem’s walls were breached) or the 9th of Av (i.e. the day the Temple was destroyed). He wonders what the people of Jerusalem felt at this time. Did they believe that they would be saved? Had they already given up? What exactly did they want us to commemorate by designating this as a day to observe with a fast?

Looking to the book of Eicha, which describes the siege, R’Micha’el points to a verse in chapter three; it teaches that even in tragedy, one should continue to work for a better tomorrow for ulay yeish tikvah, perhaps there is hope. Writing centuries later, Rabbi Ami asks: all of this, and only perhaps? “Yes, only perhaps,” R’Micha’el writes. “Sometimes, disaster simply cannot be averted; it is just too late.” Yet by marking the beginning of tragedy, the 10th of Tevet asks us — even when we find ourselves in the midst of destruction — to seize the chances we still might have to change course. Which is to say: hold hope, even if it’s only for a “perhaps.”

Like our ancestors, the cities we live in are burning to the ground. But also like our ancestors, we cannot afford to abandon hope for the temptation (however understandable) of despair. We will probably not live to see an end to the climate crisis, or many of the other problems that plague this moment in history. But I believe that there will be a generation who will stand on the other side of this mess, and who will need our tools, our wisdom, and our courage to get there. That’s the point of the stories we tell. Each of us is called to be another link in the chain, transmitting this inheritance of hope l’dor va’dor, from generation to generation. The rabbis teach that Miriam — a child in Egypt, born into slavery, whose parents were among the Israelites who refused to have any more children — convinces them to have just one more. Ulay yeish tikvah, she says, perhaps there is hope and this child will be the one to show us the way. And indeed, the next baby born to her parents is Moses.

And when it comes time for the Israelites to leave Egypt, suddenly and impossibly being given the chance for redemption that they had dreamed about for hundreds of years, Moses remembers the promise that Joseph had enjoined upon his family and their descendants: to bring his bones with them, so that he might be buried in the promised land. And so Moses asks, where is this grave? And I imagine one person looking at another, shrugging, wondering how anyone could remember something that happened such a long time ago. Suddenly, an elderly woman emerges from the crowd. The rabbis teach that she is Serah bat Asher, Joseph’s niece. And she leads Moses to Joseph’s grave.

I like to think that Serah was not actually four hundred years old (which is impossibly old, even by biblical standards). But that — like the village elder, the local shaman — she was a role, an identity and a purpose, passed from one woman to the next: sister to sister, mother to daughter, generation to generation. Her job was to remember, and in her remembering preserve hope — that somehow, someday the people would need to know where to find Joseph’s bones so that they could fulfill their promise to him on their journey to freedom. Even when that future seemed impossible. Even if other people had given up.

Hope may seem like a small act. And it is certainly not sufficient for change. But in moments that demand despair, hope is a necessary precursor to all other actions. I believe that for all people, but particularly for us as Jews: hope is not an option, it is an obligation.

A few weeks ago, I was driving through Michigan and passed a billboard on the side of the road that read: “Hope is a daily practice that saves my life.” I was driving too fast to see who paid for this message (or why) but I decided to add it to my list of mantras, right after: “Despair is not a strategy.”

Hope is a daily practice that saves my life. Hope saves our lives. Hope will save lives of people we know and people we will never meet. It may be too late to avert some disasters. But hope is what ensures that there will be the tenacity and the courage to seize opportunities to change the course of our future when they present themselves. The Jewish story is driven forward by people who — in dark times, against all odds — held hope, people who took chances and worked for a better tomorrow even if the likelihood of success was only “perhaps.”

And that’s what we can do right now. It’s something that all of us can do. There will be times when holding hope is easy, and there will be times when we must look to each other for support. There will be many moments when we need to look back at our own stories and the stories of our ancestors to remember how we have persevered in the face of tragedy and loss. And when we feel like giving up, when despair begins to weigh heavy in our hearts, let us remember that hope is not only our inheritance — it is our purpose and our blessing, to each other and to the world.