The Roadmap of Hope

Presented by Rabbinical Intern Morgan Tobey

One of the little gifts of 5785 for me has been a daily Facebook video series from one of my teachers, Rabbi Reuven Greenvald, the director of the Year in Israel program at Hebrew Union College, the Reform Movement’s seminary. In the last few months, he’s embarked on a new project. Every morning he goes on an extensive run all throughout Jerusalem. Somewhere along his route, he stops, props his phone up on a trashcan, and records a word of Torah.

This summer, he made a video responding to a question someone posed to him. The question was, “how could you still pray to God when in 2,000 years God has failed to answer the Jewish people’s prayers?” It’s a heavy, but pertinent question; one that I’ve heard so many Jewish people- religious and non-religious alike- struggling with lately. In fact, we can take the question out of the realm of prayer and it still stands. How often can you be let down before you give up hope and give into despair? 

I have also been struggling with this question. There have been a lot of moments throughout this year that have tested our capacity to hope. When I stood up here last Erev Rosh Hashanah, on the brink of the first anniversary of October 7th, I was hopeful that all of the hostages would be home by now. I was hopeful that the violence would have ceased. I was hopeful that we’d be well underway in building the more peaceful tomorrow we long for. The failure to see those hopes realized naturally leads to despair, and it can make many of the prayers in our prayerbooks, like Oseh Shalom Maker of Peace, feel out of reach, contradictory, maybe even a little hollow this year. 

However, Rabbi Greenvald’s questioner notes something important for us: We are not the first Jews to live through dark and frightening times. We are not the first Jews to open our prayer books and wonder how we could possibly recite the words on the page. We know that over the last 2,000 years our ancestors faced extraordinary cruelty and more attempts than we can count to wipe us out. We know the joke: Most Jewish holidays can be summed up as “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!” Let’s not forget why our people and our tradition survive. It’s because of our hope.

Dr. Jerome Groopman is a hematologist-oncologist who has dedicated much of his career to studying the “biology of hope.” He’s looked extensively into research and clinical trials on the placebo effect, and the results are extraordinary. Trials have shown that, in many cases, saline injections produced the same amount of endorphins and enkephalins as actual morphine; saline inhalers opened up the bronchi as effectively as real albuterol; placebo pills released as much dopamine as actual medication for Parkinson’s patients, helping to lessen the tension in their clamped muscles. These patients had hope that the “medicine” would make them feel better. And that medicinal hope by and large worked. Dr. Groopman concludes that while we can’t yet say that hope is causative, there is no question that there is a correlation between hope and improved physical outcomes and a higher quality of life.

Dr. David Arnow, a psychologist and Jewish scholar, notes, “Even without science to prove it, Jews know in their kishkas that if their ancestors had responded to their circumstances with despair instead of hope, the Jewish people would have vanished from the earth long ago.” Most of us are sitting here tonight because someone in our lineage had hope that life could be better, and the promise that awaited here was worth the risks and challenges along the journey. The founders of the State of Israel felt that hope on a national scale- that something better could still be crafted. It’s no coincidence that they selected a poem entitled Hatikva, “The Hope” as the national anthem. 

They heard the words: Kol ‘od ba-le-vav pe-ni-mah/ Nefesh Yehudi homiyah… Od lo avdah tikvatenu “As long as within the heart the Jewish soul yearns… Our hope is not yet lost.” And they truly believed them.

All of this is not to say that we’re not allowed to feel despair. Quite the contrary. Our texts provide us with numerous examples of individuals struggling to find hope- Job, Kohelet, Jonah, Moses. About 40% of the 150 Psalms are laments- poems that cry out in anguish and distress. We are allowed to feel despair. Sometimes, we need to. The person who posed this question to Rabbi Greenvald is grappling with a valid and age-old dilemma. I don’t begrudge any individual struggling with prayer right now. But as a collective, it’s not time to give up on hope. There’s another way to look at the last 2,000 years. The Jewish story is not one of endless, unanswered suffering. I see it as a long road trip. Yes, full of frightful twists and hairpin turns, flat tires in the desert, and long stretches through the darkness of night. But our forebears plodded on. How did they have the hope to do that?

They possessed a roadmap that led them to rest stops, where they could refill their depleted tanks with hope, to aid them as they journeyed through the obstacles. Those rest stops are various rituals and texts that we have handed down from generation to generation. They have passed that map along to us. It’s sitting in your laps right now. We, too, can use these rituals and texts to refill our emptied tanks with renewed hope for the future. 

There’s no better time for this journey than now. The 10 days between tonight and Yom Kippur, the Days of Awe, are the key stretch of the road trip. Think of these 10 days as a journey through the Grand Canyon. It’s vast and winding; the consequences of getting lost would be steep; we will need to stay focused and motivated to get through. On top of it all, we arrive at the edge of the canyon having already put many miles on our car this year. We’ve driven through massive thunder storms and hail. The car is a little banged up, the tank's getting empty, and we haven’t been our best to the other drivers on the road, let alone to those in the car with us. 

To get through to the other end, we have to do teshuvah. We translate Teshuvah as repentance; literally, it means “turning.” It’s a prayer- process by which we crack through the hard shells we’ve built around our hearts, acknowledge our faults, ask forgiveness, and return to the Divine spark within us. Teshuvah is an inherently hopeful process. It’s an affirmation that we are capable of growth and of effecting change. As Rabbi Greenvald responded to his questioner, prayer is not a passive hope that God will show up in a sea-splitting miracle; prayer is the active hope that changes and repairs us from within. 

Teshuvah changes our capacity to make better choices and our ability to face hardship. Engaging in reflective and penitential prayers is not going to shorten the trip through the canyon or control the weather. But it will improve our outlook each day, help us to stop and see the miracles of life thriving in that canyon, and improve our relationships with our fellow travelers. There is no question that the road ahead is daunting. Teshuvah is difficult and requires raw vulnerability. That is why our tradition provides us with 5 essential rest stops throughout these 10 days that will help us, like the generations before us, restock on hope for our journey. Let’s explore those 5 ritual stops.

Stop #1: The Torah service on Rosh Hashanah morning- the Akeidah, the binding and very near sacrifice of Isaac. This story is one of the darker and more troubling stories in the Torah. The great forefather Abraham, who is supposed to be a model for us all, is commanded to kill his child, and he sets off without complaint or argument. Which makes Dr. Arnow’s interpretation of this story all the more shocking. He suggests that there are clues in this text that offer us the opportunity for a hopeful reading.

The story opens with God commanding Abraham to take his son, Isaac, and lech lecha el eretz Moriah, “go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt sacrifice.” God spoke those famous words lech lecha before. 10 chapters earlier God told Abraham to lech lecha “go forth” along with a promise that Abraham would become a great nation and the land would be given to his seed. Abraham faced many roadblocks on his journey that must have caused him to doubt God: he suffered through famine, his wife was kidnapped, his nephew was taken hostage, and just when things seemed to settle down, his wife struggled with infertility. But, ultimately, God came through and blessed him with Isaac. So when Abraham hears the command lech lecha this time around, he has hope that this dark and terrible situation will likewise work out for the better. He didn’t know. Nothing was certain. There’s no hope in certainty. 

When they reached Mt. Moriah, Abraham said to his servants, “You stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go further on. נִֽשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֖ה We will worship וְנָשׁ֥וּבָה and we will return. He was not certain, but in the face of unimaginable horror, Abraham had hope. We read this story to remind us that we, too, can have hope in the darkest of moments. That fuels us to drive on.

By Yom Kippur afternoon, our road trip has gotten really tough. We’re deep into the canyon, we haven’t had a snack in hours, and we’re so desperate to see the canyon open wide before us. Just when we start to lose hope that we can ever make it through at all, let alone make it through changed for the better, we reach Stop #2- the reading of the Book of Jonah.

The hope here lies in God’s transformation throughout the course of the Hebrew Bible. Let’s start God’s journey with the story of Noah and the flood. In that story, God וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם regretted ever making humans and determined to destroy the earth. Humanity did not get an opportunity to do teshuvah. Apparently, God did not believe then that people can change and grow.

But, jump ahead to the Exodus. God was understandably enraged following the Israelites’ choice to worship a golden calf, and threatened to destroy them. Moses appealed on their behalf and this time God וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם regretted plotting destruction against the Israelites. God felt badly, repented, and made a different choice. God did teshuvah! That might sound a little weird- not how a lot of people talk about God- but in fact, Judaism presents a God who makes mistakes, and then learns and grows from them. So can we.

Back to our road trip: In Jonah, we get affirmation of God’s evolution. The people of Nineveh have been engaged in wickedness and the city is set to be destroyed. But here, God affords the people the chance to do teshuvah. When they sincerely do, once again, God וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם regrets the punishment and does not carry it out. Now, not only Israelites, but all humanity are afforded the opportunity to repent, change, and grow. The wrongs of the Noah story are made right. We read the Book of Jonah on the Day of Judgement as a reminder that the judge has made this internal transformation. We, who are made in this judge’s image, should have hope that we are also capable of this journey.

We continue driving through the canyon, feeling more and more desperate and urgent. We’re nearing the end, but the walls of the canyon are closing in like giant gates. Will we make it through in time? We’ve missed the mark and we know it. The sound of the wheels grinding on the rocky path is deafening. We’re determined to do better. Rain begins falling on the windshield. Our bodies ache with exhaustion as we hit the pedal to the floor. We need one more burst of hope to push us over the edge. We need something to break through the chaos-

Stop #3: we slam on the horn- T’kiah G’dolah! The shofar rings out that long, unbroken blast reverberates through our tired bodies and our raw, exposed souls. We open our mouths to declare, “Hear the shofar! Hear its cry of freedom, its call of courage- cherish its promise of hope.” We open our eyes to see the light shining through the clearing- we’ve made it through. 

With the sound of the shofar still ringing in our ears, we look up and see an oasis right up ahead- Stop #4: 7/11 fully stocked with snacks and slurpees. We crawl forward like a newborn and take our first bites. We nourish our bodies to match our newly nourished souls. We feel that spark of energy again and we begin, for the first time in 10 days, to see beyond ourselves.

With renewed strength of body and soul, we reach our final stop: we pitch a tent. It’s not a perfect tent. It only has 3 walls and there’s holes in the roof that let rain in. But now, having learned and grown from our teshuvah journey- it’s good enough. Now, we can accept the rain. Now, we can see the rain as an opportunity to plant. Now, we know that the rain might slow our acts of restorative creation, but it won’t stop them. 

We entered this sanctuary tonight, ever aware of our deeply broken world. Perhaps, like Rabbi Greenvald’s questioner, that sad reality has left some of us feeling deeply broken too. It some way, it almost feels fated that this day has arrived in such a tense and difficult moment. These High Holy Days are our people’s embodied practice of hoping. It has sustained us for generations. I have hope that they will sustain us too. 

We’ve gone through 5 key sustaining rituals that we’ll mark together. But there are many more that I hope you will explore in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when you are on your own. Perhaps you’d like to try the tradition of reading Psalm 27 each day. Maybe you want to try Reboot’s 10Q, a daily email reflection prompt that you’ll get to revisit next Rosh Hashanah. Maybe you want to meditate for a few minutes each day. 

Our forebears left us a roadmap of hope. We will leave this roadmap to our descendants. May the prescribed ritual stops along the route refill your tank. May you ink new ritual stops on the map. May we all hold onto the hope that we will bring about a better year this year.

Shana Tova.