Student Rabbi Rebecca Heisler’s Rosh Hashanah Sermon

Shanah tovah.

As we stand here on the precipice of the new year, I want to invite you to join me in inviting hope into the room. I want to invite each and every one of you to welcome in hope for the year that lies ahead.

Though it has been a year blessedly studded with personal celebrations and milestones, with creating beauty here together as a community, with personal growth and learning, it has also been a hard year. I don’t need to bring you the litany of all of the ways that it’s been a challenging year, because this is a community that holds the pain of the world, that can really see it, and feel it. And today, I want to bring our collective gaze towards hope, whether it feels within reach, or far afield. We’ll start wherever we are.

Psalm 27, which is customarily added to daily liturgy starting at rosh chodesh elul, the first day of the month leading up to high holidays, and for the following 49 days, through yom kippur. Some of you have heard me speak about Psalm 27 over the past weeks as a psalm of longing, of yearning for closeness to the divine. It is also a psalm of strength, closing with a bold message:

קַוֵּה אֶל־יְהֹוָה

חֲזַק וְיַאֲמֵץ לִבֶּךָ

וְקַוֵּה אֶל־יְהֹוָֽה׃

bring your hope towards g-d

let your heart be strong and bold

and bring your hope towards g-d.

The phrase “kaveh el hashem”, to hope, or anticipate, towards g-d, appears twice. Most  interpreters of biblical texts are in agreement that there are no superfluous words in Torah. Repetition, all the more so, is regarded as having deeper meaning.

Many commentators across time and space have made different claims about what the repeated words of this psalm mean when they say “bring your hope towards g-d”, but most relate back to an explanation in the talmud:

אִם רָאָה אָדָם שֶׁהִתְפַּלֵּל וְלֹא נַעֲנָה

יַחְזוֹר וְיִתְפַּלֵּל

If a person sees that they prayed, and their prayer was not answered,

they should go back and pray again.

This is a simple statement—to reach for hope means to cling to prayer; and when our prayers are not answered, we are to go back and pray again and again and again until they are. This would be an extraordinary expression of faith—believeing that prayer alone can change the world. But, the psalm includes that middle line—chazak v’ya’ametz libecha, make your heart strong and bold—for a reason.

Jewish prayer is visionary. This vision can be beautiful, and inspiring, and can instill hope in us as we say the words—hope for a future that is more caring, more loving, more connected, more whole. But, when we see the world changing every day, in ways that are discouraging, disappointing, and even terrifying, moving us further away from this vision of wholeness, it can be challenging to return with hope, day after day or week after week.

Rashi, commenting on the Talmud in the 11th century, writes:

קוה

והתחזק ולא תמשוך ידך

אלא חזור וקוה

hope is

to strengthen oneself, and to not withdraw one’s hand,

and only then return to hope.

So, the rabbis tell us: in order to return to hope, one should pray even when their previous prayers have not yet been answered. And rashi is saying: in order to return to prayer, you might need to take some steps first. You might need to actively cultivate that strength in your heart, because it isn’t always easy to hold onto in the face of grief and disappointment.

Hitchazek, to strengthen oneself, is to become emboldened to pray, to take on the daring task of stepping towards possibility, to have the courage to hope amidst fear, doubt, or disillusionment. To hope in these times is vulnerable, even risky, and to strengthen oneself towards hope is to cultivate bravery.

Lo timshoch yadecha, do not withdraw your hand: this is to stay in loving relationship with the world. To not withdraw one’s hand is to continue to engage with life wholeheartedly, not to withdraw into fear, or dismay, or shutdown, or into the kind of disappointment or exasperation that prevents one from truly living.  It is to stay connected to desire, aliveness, and creativity.

Joanna Macy, a Buddhist ecophilosopher, activist, and scholar has been a great teacher of hope for me.  In her aptly named book Active Hope, Joanna differentiates between what she calls Passive Hope, and Active Hope.

Passive Hope, she says, is “hopefulness, where our preferred outcome seems reasonably likely to happen.” This is not the kind of hope you need to strengthen yourself for, that you pray for over and over again. It is simple, it is attainable, it is likely already in motion.

Active hope, on the other hand, is much more courageous. Joanna brings a story about a person who felt hopeless—a person who I can relate to, who I imagine many of you can too. This person was burnt out and exhausted, asking questions like: “‘What’s the point of doing anything if it won’t change what we’re heading for?”

This person’s hopelessness is a case where Passive Hope just won’t cut it—hopefulness might serve us when things are already on the up-and-up, but it can’t keep us afloat in times of despair.

This is where Active Hope comes in. Joanna writes that Active Hope “is about desire. When [this person] was asked what she’d like to have happen in our world, without hesitation she described the future she hoped for, the kind of world she longed for so much it hurt. It is this kind of hope that starts the journey…Active Hope is a practice.”

Macy’s words are a guide to how we might live into Rashi’s appeal that

hope is

to strengthen oneself, and to not withdraw one’s hand,

and only then return to hope.

We strengthen ourselves towards hope by believing in a vision, reaching towards the world we long for so much it hurts. This strength, this emboldening, doesn’t come from optimism; rather, it comes from steadfastness, and commitment.

And by living in commitment to these sparks of possibility, no matter how small, we choose to not withdraw our hand from the world, to stay engaged despite the mess, the challenge, the lack that is always there.  Joanna writes, “Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world.” By choosing hope, we choose to be part of the web of life that reaches far beyond human society, far beyond our lifetimes, even if our influence and our capacity for change may only reach our small corner of the world.

This work isn’t easy, and I would never stand up here preaching as if it were. But Hope isn’t about limiting ourselves to reasonably attainable goals, it’s seeing ourselves as part of a collective effort that may stretch across generations.

Active hope is being willing to ask ourselves:

“what is my most beautiful aspiration for how this might play out?”

even when a situation has turned ugly;

Active hope is asking: “what would it take for me to believe that there’s another way this could go?”,

even when we feel we’ve reached a dead end;

Active hope is asking: “what do I long for so much that it hurts?”,

and to feel the pain of that longing.

Hope requires imagination, tenacity, and grit, along with a willingness to dream.

So we return to our psalm with fresh eyes:

kaveh el-hashem

we invite hope into the room

chazak v’ya’ametz libecha

we strengthen ourselves, we embolden our hearts,

we cultivate desire and imagination,

we cultivate our love for the world.

v’kaveh el-hashem

and when our audacious prayers aren’t answered with immediacy,

we return to Hope,

as a practice of loving the world.

May this hope carry us through the days of awe,

to enter into the new year with courage, with vision,

with dreams bigger than what we’ve allowed ourselves to dream of previously.

May 5787 be a year of giving Hope a seat at the table.