Hopeless.
Utterly hopeless.
That’s how I felt writing this Rosh Hashana sermon.
I don’t usually get writer’s block. It hasn’t happened in years. But there are at least five half-written sermon drafts sitting on my computer. The problem wasn’t getting ideas – I had plenty of those. I could tell you all about the sermons that you are NOT going to hear this morning.
The problem was that each time I started writing about one of my ideas, I found myself in a downward spiral of hopelessness. When I say hopeless, I mean it literally – “lacking hope.”
Each one of my sermon attempts was dark and despondent. It didn’t seem to matter where I started – with prayer, with God, with my interfaith work – I ended up in a place of despair.
When that happens once, maybe you’ve chosen the wrong topic.
When it happens twice, maybe you’re having a bad day.
When it happens repeatedly – and it’s getting closer and closer to Rosh Hashana – you know you’re in trouble and that the problem lies within.
The problem wasn’t writers block. The problem is that I’m feeling hopeless.
So I did what my teachers in Rabbinical School taught me to do. I read the Torah portion for today – Genesis 21.
And what do you know – I found a story filled with darkness:
There is no one in this story who comes out looking good.
While I can empathise and understand the behaviour of each of these characters, it is not an uplifting story.
So my plan to look to the Torah for inspiration only pushed me further down my path of hopelessness.
But then I remembered again what my teachers at JTS taught me. If you don’t find what you are looking for – look harder.
And indeed, if I look at this story harder, I find not only hope, but inspiration.
It’s just that the hope lies beyond the margins of this particular reading.
The hope lies in the promise that God gave to Hagar in Genesis chapter 16, when Hagar was pregnant with Ishmael and ran away from home. While in the desert that time, she was visited by an Angel who instructed her to return home. The Angel promised her that a better future lay ahead.
As a result of Hagar’s encounter with God at that well, the place was named “be’er l’chai roi” – the well of the Living One who Sees me.
In fact, one could argue that the critique of Hagar in our Torah portion today is due to her forgetting God’s promise that her descendants would be too numerous to count.
There was hope for Hagar – it’s just that the hope is offered in chapter 16, well before our Torah reading for today.
It’s also possible to find a happy ending for Hagar – but not until well after our Torah portion.
In Genesis 25, we are told that BOTH Isaac and Ishmael bury their father, Abraham. And we also discover that, at the time, Isaac is coming to the burial from Be’er L’chai Roi. It is distinctly possible that, following the tragic – dare I say “hopeless” – tale of the Binding of Isaac (that we will read tomorrow) – Isaac retreats to the place associated with Hagar, perhaps even to seek comfort from her – someone who could understand his feelings of being abandoned by Abraham.
Seeking out others who share your feelings – What a hopeful thing to do!
Is it possible that Isaac even makes his home there with Hagar? Perhaps even alongside his half-brother, Ishmael, with whom he buries his father?
This story is not as hopeless as it seems when we read it all the way to the end of Genesis 25.
And there it was – my teachers at JTS were right.
The Torah did hold a message for me:
Hope can be found in this story – but it sits in the margins, outside of what is currently available to me in today’s Torah reading.
That message is important:
Hope is not always obvious. It may not even always be available, but I am obligated to search for it.
And so, in the course of writing this sermon, I have been searching for hope, and here is what I’ve found.
It turns out that psychologists don’t describe hope as simply an emotion.
The field of positive psychology defines Hope as “goal-directed thinking.”
And if hope is actually a way of thinking, rather than just an emotion, then hope is something within our control. We can train our minds to be hopeful. It can be learned.
We create hope when we set realistic goals and then persist in pursuing them.
And guess what are some of the elements that help us to do that?
What do you know – that sounds like the essence of what we are doing here today in synagogue:
The Talmud has a wonderful passage where one of the most famous rabbis, Rava, teaches that each of us will be asked a series of questions on the Day of Judgment.
The list includes certain questions that you’d expect:
I’m not surprised by any of these questions – although I especially love the one about critical thinking and am amazed that a rabbi from 2000 years ago could anticipate the need for it in our times!
There’s one further question, however, that does surprise me. Rava says that we will be asked:
Did you hope?
Jewish tradition doesn’t usually legislate emotions. We are told to honour our parents, not to love them. That’s because loving is an emotion – we can’t control that. But honouring is a behaviour that is indeed within our control.
Well before the field of positive psychology existed, Rava understood that hope is not an emotion. Hope is something that can be cultivated and nurtured. It is within our control to actively seek it. Indeed, we have an obligation to do so – even when – in fact, especially when, it is not immediately available.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that hope has not been terribly available to me recently:
I’m sure there are many in this room who can relate to these examples of where hope is absent, and I’m sure that you all could bring many more reasons for feeling hopeless.
Yet – our tradition doesn’t allow it.
“Did you hope for redemption?”
This is what I will be asked.
Despite the fact that hope was not immediately available, did I search for it?
Did I use my cognitive faculties to look beyond the immediate?
Did I look to my community to help me?
Did I look beyond the immediate story in front of me to find it?
I am obligated to do so.
I’ll add one last challenge regarding hope – one that we will need to tackle together as a community in the coming year.
We are going through a transition – our beloved Rabbi Jonathan will move on to the next stage of his rabbinic journey, becoming Rabbi Emeritus of New North London Synagogue. We will be welcoming a new rabbi to our rabbinic team.
There will be many different emotions around that transition:
All of these emotions – and so many others – will be present as we navigate this transition. All of these emotions need to be recognised and honoured as legitimate.
But there’s one emotion that is not really an emotion that I want to suggest we all need to embrace: Hope
In what is probably my all-time favourite movie, The Shawshank Redemption, one of the characters says, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
Indeed, hope is risky.
But as the main character in the film learns, Hope is also necessary. Without hope, all is lost.
So I invite us all to hope together:
There is a reason that Jews sing HaTikvah, The Hope.
Well before it became the national anthem of the State of Israel, it was a poem embraced by the Jewish people to express a shared yearning – a shared Hope.
From Rava’s statement in the Talmud 2000 years ago to Naftali Imber’s poem, HaTikvah, we are a people who value hope.
We are a people who understand that hope isn’t simply an emotion – it is something that we can pursue and nurture.
So maybe I’m not completely hope-less after all.
Shana tova
