Optimism, Pessimism, and Hope - Mattot-Mas'ei 5784
What does Eikhah, the book of Lamentations, teach us about hope?
Americans have a very strange way of greeting one another: we ask, “How are you doing?” As we all know, this is not actually a question regarding your state of mind, or how you feel about current events, or even what is really happening in your life. On the contrary: it’s not usually an actual question, and a true answer to this non-question is not usually expected.
People ask me every day how I am doing, and I think some of them really mean it. And I must say, I’m reflecting a general sense of unease that we all must feel right now. The current situation is still definitely mixed.
Consider the graffiti which appeared on Monday morning, on the former New Light building at Forbes and Beechwood, and at the Federation building.
Now, on the one hand, we might easily dismiss this as the work of a powerless, aggrieved individual who has no outlet but to deface property in order to intimidate Jews. Or we might read it as a deeply antisemitic act reflective of wider trends in American society. We might be inclined to brush this off as a tiny manifestation of the continuum of the world’s oldest hatred, something which we will never manage to defeat, or as a harbinger of a rising tide of anti-Jewish activity which may lead to a much worse future for the Jews in Di Goldene Medine, the Golden Land to which my great-grandparents came.
The range of these conceptions are reflections of two major trends in Jewish modernity: Judeo-optimism and Judeo-pessimism. These are terms coined by the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer. He discusses them in a recent Hartman podcast:
“Some years ago at Hartman I taught about the difference between two ways to envision the future. The difference between what I call Judeo-optimism, those of us that would believe, since the Enlightenment, that the conditions of liberal democracy could actually one day make possible the thriving of Jews in liberal societies, those that would insist that we just haven’t built the right liberal democratic systems yet. And on the other hand, Judeo-pessimism, like some of those early Zionist thinkers, and like many Israelis today, who think that the whole promise of liberalism and emancipation is a lie, and the only option that we have to envision how we will be safe and secure in our future is if we put that responsibility in our own hands.”
I have spent much of my life as a Judeo-optimist. That is, I grew up in a liberal environment in small-town New England where, even though the Jewish population was small, the sense of inter-connectedness between each other and with our non-Jewish neighbors was fairly strong. We were different, but not outsiders, and for the most part did not feel “othered” through antisemitic sentiments and behaviors. When I spent my first summer in Israel as a teenager (on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program, from which my daughter just returned three days ago), I did not see Israel as a haven from a hostile world, but rather as a statement of Jewish success and pride following the Holocaust. We have joined the family of nations, and built a strong country in hardscrabble circumstances in our ancestral homeland.
As some of you have observed, I have spent much of the last year, and perhaps to a lesser extent the last seven years since the rally in Charlottesville, re-assessing my Judeo-optimism. This has been an extremely difficult time to maintain a positive view to the future regarding the place of Jews in America, much less the rest of the world, given everything that has taken place since.
And to some of you it might seem like, rather than talking about these things with my therapist, I have processed them here with you in public, from the bimah. But there is a reason that some refer to psychotherapy as, “the Jewish science”: this is what we do. We are good at talking, at parsing words, at determining motives, at assessing arguments. These things are baked into our text and our culture.
Of the many aspects to the current conflict that have been swirling around in my head over much of the past year is the challenge of hope. Hope has receded from the minds of many, and it seems that pessimism reigns supreme. Two-state solution? Moribund. Hizbullah? Well, they will inflict a lot of damage, what with the 150,000 or so rockets they have pointed at Israel. But we are already at war, so the logical move would be just to take them out right now, despite what will surely be heavy costs. Iran? They will have a nuclear weapon next week. The rest of the world? They are not our friends. American university campuses? Well, they have been a key engine of Jewish success in America, but now, well, who knows?
Pessimism.
Just a few minutes ago we announced the new month of Av, which will begin on Monday. As this is the month which features the day on which we commemorate the darkest moments of Jewish history, in particular the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem (by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Romans in 70 CE), the rabbinic wisdom (Mishnah Ta’anit 4:6) about the month of Av is, “משנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה” - from the time we enter Av, our joy decreases.
And so too, at least for the first nine days, does our hope. In the 3rd chapter of Eikhah, the book of Lamentations which we will chant a week from Monday night, we read the following (Eikhah 3:29):
יִתֵּ֤ן בֶּֽעָפָר֙ פִּ֔יהוּ אוּלַ֖י יֵ֥שׁ תִּקְוָֽה׃
Let him put his mouth to the dust—
There may yet be hope.
It’s a line which resonates with me every year on Tish’ah BeAv, particularly due to the association of the word tiqvah, hope, and its association with the rebuilding of the Land of Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel in our time. Tiqvah suggests optimism; that the yearning of the Jewish people of 2,000 years of wandering and persecution will some day come to an end. However, this verse is, at first glance, one of desolation: perhaps there is hope, but surely the sufferings of the Jewish people will continue as we lick the dust under the boot of Babylon or Rome or the Crusaders or whomever.
And yet, a mere two verses later (v. 31),
כִּ֣י לֹ֥א יִזְנַ֛ח לְעוֹלָ֖ם אֲדֹנָֽי׃
For the Lord does not reject forever.
Desolation is only temporary. Redemption is not just a possibility, but an eventual reality. We just have to hang in there until this moment passes.
I’ve made this observation in this place before, but it bears repeating: the difference between an optimist and a pessimist in Israel is that the optimist is learning Arabic, and the pessimist is learning Chinese. We the Jews are especially talented at catastrophizing: we see ourselves, as the 20th-century Jewish philosopher Simon Rawidowicz put it, the “ever-dying people.”
One of the greatest catastrophes of the current moment is not just that the prospects of peace in the Middle East seem further away than ever, but rather the loss of hope. Judeo-pessimism has, it seems, won the battle. One symptom of this is that Israelis are quite concerned for American Jews at this moment. The campus chaos and marauding Hamas supporters in the streets of American cities have convinced many Israelis that we are the ones who are unsafe; the growing anti-Israel voices in Congress have led them to the conclusion that now is the time to move to Israel. When Judy and I were in Israel a few weeks back, multiple friends and relatives asked us seriously about this.
A whole generation of Israeli and Palestinian children is growing up with no hope. אולי יש תקווה - perhaps there is hope, but likely not. The hope of the late ‘90s, shattered by the Second Intifada, has left us bereft.
And so it will be up to us to turn “perhaps” into “definitely, but not just yet.”
And let’s face it: I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to turn pessimism back into optimism. I do not know where we will find the hope.
Israel is at this moment bracing herself for war. Perhaps the only hint of optimism found therein is that the chance to seriously degrade Hizbullah would be good for Israel. But let us not forget that Hamas, even after these 10 months of fighting, is still firing rockets from Gaza. Hizbullah is a much more formidable enemy.
I am somewhat heartened that our mayor and a bunch of local politicians signed onto a statement following the latest graffiti incident, calling it a deplorable example of antisemitism. But I am also not deluding myself into believing that such political statements make any difference to those who hate Jews. I fear that this is too little, too late, particularly following the failure to quickly take down illegal anti-Israel encampments on public property.
It may yet be too early for us to speak about hope - not while there are still 115 hostages held in Gaza, and 130,000 displaced Israelis, and 12 dead Druze kids in Majdal Shams, and IDF soldiers still battling terrorists in Gaza, and on and on. Maybe we can only pray for their safety right now, and pray for an end to the current hostilities. Maybe when the hostages come home we can speak of hope.
When we announced the beginning of Av, we referred to this coming month as “Menaḥem Av,” the Av which brings comfort. It is a reminder that, although the first nine days of this month are about destruction, the remainder, as we move toward the coronation days of Rosh HaShanah, highlight comfort and rebuilding. Our consolation is coming. Hope will return, and maybe with it some optimism.
So how am I? Ask me again after Tish’ah BeAv.
As always, Rabbi, thank you for your thoughtful message. Over the last few years, we’ve all been hovering between optimism and pessimism over the various issues we have been faced with. Like that which fills the spaces between all the other dualities in creation, the uncertainty that currently bedevils us is merely a prompt that reminds us of the power of our choices. In a way it is akin to boredom which is a call to our imaginations to enact our next move.