There is the
story of the woman who goes to the rabbi and says "Rabbi your
sermon today was the most boring ever. It had no theme, no
meaning, it went on forever and lost everyone." The rabbi said
"Dear lady, do you really mean that?" She said "Oh no, I'm
just repeating what everyone else is saying." Thankfully, that
dear lady doesn't daven here. Your feedback is thankfully
positive but there are those rare exceptions.
A couple of
years ago, one Shabbat morning I sensed from a few individuals
who came to me during the Kiddush a note of disappointment in
my remarks. You can see two years later, it's still on my mind
and I remember exactly who they are. It was at the height of
the intifada. Cafes and restaurants and buses in Israel were
being blown apart, Israelis killed, tourism terminated and I
said from the Bimah what I truly felt. I said "I feel no hope
that this situation will improve." I felt it, I meant it and I
said it." Someone said to me after that service, "Rabbi, hope
is so Jewish, you can't have no hope. I also recall something
to the effect "Rabbi, of all people, you should be hopeful" I
disappointed that person that day and perhaps others. I
thought more about my comments. I was truly feeling hopeless
about the situation in Israel but I don't have to say
everything I feel from the pulpit. I don't. I have not
talked about my own sense of hopelessness since that Shabbat
morning and it turns out my lack of hope was my mistake.
Life is
better in Israel today than it was two years ago. Restaurants
are crowded, the malls are packed. I sent you the picture of
Ben Yehudah Street on a Saturday night. For months the Ben
Yehudah pedestrian mall had been deserted. This summer it was
wall to wall people. The best business to be in Israel today
is the security guard business. Every restaurant, hotel is
guarded. Getting into a mall is like getting through airport
security but you can just about find a parking space. Bomb
stiffing dogs are being trained and will be deployed at the
busiest bus stations in Israel and eventually on all buses.
Israelis are out and living. Tourism is returning. We are
planning our next Ohev Shalom trip. There is reason to hope.
One Sunday
morning this past winter, Janie and I found ourselves in a
book store in Philadelphia. Samara had been chosen as an
eighth grader to take the SATs so we took her to the same
place I had taken my SATs with other Sabbath observant kids,
the David Rittenhouse Labratory on Penn's Campus. I recommend
Sunday SATs for many reasons including scores will go up. I
promise.
There were
many books in the bookstore as there always are but one in
particular caught my eye. The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome
Groopman MD. How People Prevail in the Face of Illness. I sat
down with the book and read enough to want to read more, and
maybe even feel more hope. After all, hope is a Jewish thing
and so especially as a rabbi, as I was advised, I should feel
hopeful.
This time
last year was a difficult time for our family. We had gone
through a terribly trying year. Two years ago, I spoke about
the need to be able to hit the curve balls of life. Little did
I know what curve ball was soon leaving the pitcher's hand. A
few weeks after Samara's Bat Mitzvah, which was an
unparalleled weekend of pure happiness and celebration,
Janie's Parkinson's came on in a full frontal attack after
being kept under control for several years. Illness strikes
its host first and foremost and then it impacts every member
of the family and every relationship in the family. This
attack did just that. I shared with you in December that
Janie's birthday in September 2003 began as a terribly
depressing day for Janie, far out of character for her. "It's
only getting worse. What do I have to look forward to this
year, next year, another birthday and more limitations." The
medication Janie was taking was growing less and less
effective. In the mornings, she could barely move at all.
Janie had bouts of pain she said were worse than she had ever
experienced before (including three childbirths). As down as
Janie was in the morning of her birthday, I saw a dramatic
shift by the afternoon. In the middle of that same day, Janie
made a major life decision. She decided that she would try to
be a candidate for a relatively new surgery, deep brain
stimulation. That decision changed the entire emotional tide
of the day. The three months from that day to the surgery
became filled with doctor visits, tests, more doctor visits
and an element that had been missing... hope. Janie's
neurologist was very supportive and optimistic which gave us
more reason to hope. Our hope grew as we were told that the
neurosurgeon we would meet was one of the most gifted and able
surgeons in the country performing this new procedure. When
met with him, he said to Janie, seeing her condition, that it
must be very difficult for her to function as a rebbetzin and
then said that he knows the work of the rebbetzin can in ways
be more demanding than the rabbi. Learning this connection,
that he belonged to a center city synagogue where his daughter
was going to preschool, our hope grew even greater. Our
connection, we felt was deeper than surgeon and patient. We
continued to hope as we came closer to the date.
I wrote days
after the surgery that the procedure seemed somewhat
miraculous and it is. It is not perfect. It is not a cure and
comes with certain side effects but we have been able to
reclaim and resume living in a way we could not the year
before. That we could go to Israel in February was a wonderful
gift. Driving, going to the mall shopping with the girls is
not taken for granted. Spending a long day in New York getting
Elana situated back at Barnard was not possible last year.
There have been many days when Janie said, "I could not have
done this last year." There was reason to hope.
The first
chapter of that book I saw in the book store that morning
happens to be about an Orthodox Jewish woman who discovers she
has breast cancer. Dr. Groopman recalls her from his days as a
young resident. She was a woman totally devoid of hope. She
had put off seeing a doctor well after she sensed a lump in
her breast. By the time she was treated, it was fairly well
advanced but there was still reason to hope but she had no
hope. She even resisted treatment that could prolong her life
and this totally baffled all of the doctors. After some time,
she confided in this young resident. She had felt trapped in a
loveless marriage and could see no way out. She found herself
having an affair and had felt tremendously guilty. When she
felt the lump in her breast, she believed it to be a
punishment from on high for her transgression. She got exactly
what she deserved, she thought. She felt doomed. There was no
space in her troubled psyche for even a bit of hope. In the
face of illness, hope means a belief that I can get better, I
can be cured. I can survive. In the face of being unemployed
hope means I can again find fulfilling employment. In the
face of a divorce, hope means I can live on my own, survive
and even thrive and if/when it is right, I can enter a new
relationship. In the face of a struggling marriage, hope means
that we can work together to recapture and rekindle the love
and caring we once knew. At this season of the year we recite
the penitential psalm 27. The concluding verse of this
beautiful psalm is a directive for how we conclude one year
and enter the new year. Kavey el Hashem chazak v'yaametz
leebecha v'kavey el Hashem Hope in the Lord, be strong
and have courage, which I spoke about this past Shabbat, hope
in the Lord. Along with whatever other emotions with which we
approach the beginning of the new year, along with whatever
faces us in these days ahead, have hope, hope... hope is a
prime ingredient for us to move ahead. I would invite you to
think about that situation in your life in need of your hope
in the weeks ahead. Think about it and let yourself feel more
hope, let yourself be more hopeful. Hope is not magical nor
miraculous but it is the impetus to motivate ourselves and
move forward. We feel and express hope in different ways.
When I was in
the hospital in my early twenties, just a day after the
removal of a malignant tumor, the partner of the surgeon who
operated paid me a visit on a late Friday afternoon that I'll
never forget. He told me that there was a possibility of four
kinds of cells and he left with me, I can still see him
placing it on the shelf, a list of the expected mortality
based on each type of cell. That was his way of saying Shabbat
Shalom. I never looked at it. I thought he must be some kind
of a sadist. I asked that he never stop in to visit and uplift
my sprits again. Even though the numbers weren't so great
then, it is the survival rates that give one the opportunity
to hope. No one wants to be hopeless. When Janie read a first
draft of this she asked me if I knew that Bob Hope's original
name was Less Hope. When they would read the list of names,
last name first he was Hope Less and nobody wants to be
hopeless. So he became Hope Bob or Bob Hope and a great
success. As I try to engender hope in others today, I wonder
how hopeful I was in those days. I'm not sure but I do know
that months later, I applied to rabbinical school, was
accepted and began the five year program of rabbinical school
and graduate school. I studied and worked endless hours. As I
look back today, that speaks of a strong sense of hope. In a
little book that sits in my study that I got in the bookstore
of the Princeton Theological Seminary, called Prayer is
Good Medicine written interestingly enough by Larry Dossey
M.D. former chief of staff at Humana Medical City in Dallas.
Dr. Dossey writes on hope "Faith helps mobilize a person's
defenses and assists in getting well, and optimism leads
generally to better outcomes. Hundreds of case histories and
scientific studies affirm this observation. We ought to
acknowledge those cases in which individuals die when hope is
withdrawn or is sabotaged by medical folk. They show that hope
can sustain life and that its absence can kill." Hope is
Jewish and is in fact, very Jewish. Is there any other country
in the world whose national anthem is entitled The Hope as is
Hatikvah the Hope.Ode lo avdah tikvateynu
hatikvah bat shnot alpayim We have still not lost our
hope, the hope of two thousand years to be a free people in
our land in the land of Zion, in Jerusalem. How crazy or how
amazing were those Jews who said at the end of Yom Kippur and
at the conclusion of the Passover Seder Next year in
Jerusalem. That is a statement of a profound collective hope.
After the Crusades, after the Inquisition and expulsion from
Spain and other lands of Europe, pogroms, persecution, we
continued to hope. Three times a day we beseeched G-d to
return to Jerusalem, your city and build it and in your mercy
let us witness Your return. After how many years do you stop
asking and stop hoping? We never stopped and we finally
returned.
The biblical
readings during these days are all about hope. Abraham and
Sarah, long after they had reason to give up became pregnant
and had a child Isaac. Hannah prayed so strongly, the priest
thought she was drunk. For years, her prayers went unanswered,
it seemed, so she prayed harder and hoped more and was blessed
with a son whom she called Shmuel G-d has heard.
G-d tells
Abraham to bind that son on the alter and present him as on
offering. As they go up the mountain, Isaac says Daddy what
are we doing? When Abraham says to Isaac "G-d will bring us
the sheep for the offering my son." you can imagine the hope
Abraham had that his son's life would be spared. When Abraham
sees the ram caught in the bush, he knows that he had reason
to hope.
I was advised
that I should and in fact I do feel more hopeful about
Israel's tomorrow. I have seen the resiliency of the Israeli
spirit. After ten years, Israelis were able to turn in their
gas masks this past year because there is no more fear of a
chemical or biological attack from a madman called Sadaam.
After the horrible attack on that elementary school in Russia,
the Russian foreign minister came to Israel to pursue the
possibility of coordinating their counterterrorism work with
Israel. I just read Sunday evening that a member of the
present Iraqi interim government was attending a
counterterrorism conference in Hertzlyia in Israel. There have
been secret (and now not so secret) meetings between top
Israeli and Iraqi officials in Aman, Jordan. There are top
level Iraqis talking about a whole new policy towards Israel.
There was talk this past year of a thawing of relationships
with Libya. The Prime Minister of Ethiopia which never had any
relationship with Israel, visited Jerusalem in June.
I would
never have imagined any of this that Shabbat morning when I
said I felt no hope. The good that we could not have imagined
happens and we see there is reason to hope. Israelis see
Americans returning to visit and they feel more hopeful.
Israelis see American Jews and loving Christians investing in
their country and they feel that they are not alone. We have
reason to be more hopeful and today we have an opportunity to
give Israelis reason to feel even more hopeful. We have an
opportunity today to renew our tangible bond with Israel
through our investments in the State. In tomorrow's Haftarah,
Jeremiah, normally the prophet of doom, offers an exalted
message of hope to an exiled community. "I will build you
firmly again, O Maiden Israel! Again you shall take up your
timbrels and go forth to the rhythm of the dancers. Again, you
shall plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria man shall plant
and live to enjoy them. I will turn their mourning to joy, I
will comfort them and cheer them in their grief. There is hope
for your future. Yesh tikvah l'achareetech Your
children shall return to their land. Those children today are
indeed growing up in the land of Israel. How could I say, I am
without hope for the future? Our own children here have
returned to the land. This morning, some of our young people
who recently visited and returned from Israel will share just
a bit of their experience with us. Listen especially to how
time in Israel affected their lives as Jews in America. When
we invest in Israel, we are investing in ourselves and in our
own children and our future.
I have been
probably saying it for some years and now I am more conscious
when I sit with someone in pain, feeling afraid, uncertain of
the future and I make reference to the value of hope. It is
true that prayer and hope don't always work the way we would
like but we ought not stop hoping and praying any more than we
would give up on the world of medicine because it doesn't
always produce the cure. It is better to be hopeful rather
than hopeless. Less Hope dropped the Less, took Bob and lived
to be almost 100. There is reason to Hope. Together, let's
hope for a year of health, happiness, peace and the
fulfillment of all of the worthy wishes of our hearts.
Amen
