Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

I had a great blog just about to go in the hopper this week. But in our present environment, decades of history seem to be compacted into weekly occurrences that change the calculus and, at the very least, make previous intended missives if not irrelevant, at least beside the point.

With that in mind, I will simply say this: Depending on where you sit within the political spectrum, the range of emotions seems to lean negative — fear, despair, anger, grievance. This is a tough space for a rabbi who consistently feels the need to engender hope.

For the first time in quite awhile, the emotion being expressed by many to me is one of hope.  I’m a fan of hope, not just because I believe hope leads to action (versus fear and despair, which lead to paralysis). Hope is central to Jewish theology. In theological terms, hope is the idea that redemption is always available, that the work we do to make the world a better place is work worth doing.

We get to have our down moments, and whatever messages of hope I provide, I also understand the need to make space for those lesser moments. Ultimately, however, we must all be messengers of hope. It is that hopefulness upon which we create community, and it is in that communal space, the space in which we find other good people — people of compassion and kindness — that we find our own hope. It is the juice that keeps us sane during these moments of insanity.