בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסוֹק בְּדִבְרֵי תוֹרָה:

Holy One of Blessing, Your presence fills creation, You guide us with Your mitzvot and command us to soak ourselves in the words of Torah.

קָוָה (v) heb

מִקְוֶה (n-m n-pr-m) heb

The tradition of ending on hope & consolation. We look forward, we recognize all that we are grateful for. The challenge is to hold both the reality and truth we are experiencing, as well as the hope for a better day to come.

“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what is may impact, are not things we can know beforehand...Or perhaps studying the record more carefully leads us to expect miracles - not when and where we expect them, but to expect to be astonished, to expect that we don't know. And this is grounds to act.

------

This being human is a guest-house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you

out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing and groundwork — or underground work — often laid the foundation. Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media. It seems insignificant or peripheral until very different outcomes emerge from transformed assumptions about who and what matters, who should be heard and believed, who has rights.

We are building a shared home for all those who refuse hatred and choose empathy. We won’t erase our differences, but rather believe in a true partnership based on shared interests. This is the meaning of Standing Together. We envision a society that serves all of us. A just and equal society that treats every person with dignity. A society that chooses peace, justice, and independence for Israelis and Palestinians – Jews and Arabs. A society in which we all enjoy real security, adequate housing, quality education, good healthcare, a liveable climate, a decent salary, and the ability to age with dignity.

“One of the most important distinctions I have learned in the course of reflection on Jewish history is the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the belief that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Knowing what we do of our past, no Jew can be an optimist. But Jews have never – despite a history of sometimes awesome suffering – given up hope”

To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair. Every ritual, every mitzvah, every syllable of the Jewish story, every element of Jewish law, is a protest against escapism, resignation or the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism is a sustained struggle, the greatest ever known, against the world that is, in the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet. There is no more challenging vocation. Throughout history, when human beings have sought hope they have found it in the Jewish story. Judaism is the religion, and Israel is the home, of hope.

During these years I have met people who have been weakened from constant disappointments. They continually create new hopes for themselves, and as a result they betray themselves. Others live in the world of illusions, hastily and incessantly building and rebuilding their world in order to prevent real life from ultimately destroying it. What, then, is the solution? The only answer is to find the meaning of your current life. It’s best if you are left with only one hope – the hope of remaining yourself no matter what happens. Don’t fear, don’t believe, and don’t hope. Don’t believe words from the outside; believe in your own heart. Believe in that meaning which was revealed to you in this life, and hope that you will succeed in guarding it.

Fear No Evil, pages 370-371

I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
. And I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there. 
And I believe in God,
even when he is silent. I believe through any trial,
 there is always a way. 
But sometimes in this suffering
and hopeless despair, 
My heart cries for shelter,
 to know someone’s there
 But a voice rises within me, saying hold on
 my child, I’ll give you strength,
 I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.

May there someday be sunshine
 May there someday be happiness
 May there someday be love
 May there someday be peace….

– Unknown author

Elie Wiesel, who certainly knew his share of hopeless situations, once said, “One must wager on the future. I believe it is possible, in spite of everything, to believe in friendship in a world without friendship, and even to believe in God in a world where there has been an eclipse of God’s face…we must not give in to cynicism. To save the life of a single child, no effort is too much. To make a tired old man smile is to perform an essential task. To defeat injustice and misfortune, if only for one instant, for a single victim, is to invent a new reason to hope.”

Hope is:

Seeing someone again

The sun blazing right in my eyes

Finding the other sock

Losing track of whose sweat is smeared across my body

Remembering what’s next

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5

Leaving something to be desired

Sharing a favorite song

Being proud of you

Free wifi

Making eye contact, smiling, & walking away

Big decisions

Seeing nothing, feeling everything

Pushing up a hill

Exact change

Writing to you on a cerulean colored postcard

The perfect tomato

Systems, but only in theory

Another round?

Knowing how it ends

Getting in with no reservation

Psychological capital, did you get that?

Letting the grass grow

The thing with feathers

Yes

But also no

No exceptions

Forgetting where you end and we begin

Coming back, completely different

by Moscelyne Parke Harrison