A Concrete Case for Hope

Over the last few weeks, Americans and Israelis voted in elections that are consequential to the characters of both countries. For many, these elections represent inflection points, where the outcome signals the directions their respective societies will take moving forward. If that direction conflicts with the hopes people have for their country, it may be tempting to opt out, whether that means disengagement or, in more extreme cases, physical emigration. Indeed, on top of the record number of Israelis who have left Israel over the past three years, a poll this summer reported that 23% of Israelis would consider leaving (or have a relative who would) if Bibi is reelected. The temptation to opt out is not confined to national elections — American Jews are increasingly withdrawing from other projects, whether Zionism and the Jewish communities of their youths on one side or progressive causes and the Democratic Party on the other. 

The urge to leave, whether it is acted upon or not, points to deeper tensions that cut across multiple arenas of Jewish life. This past summer, during the Hartman Institute’s Wellspring Educator’s Summit, questions surfaced around the disaffected stance of young American Jews toward Zionism, fraying associations between Jews on the progressive left and mainstream Jewish institutions and American Jews’ anxiety around their place in America and bonds with other Americans. 

While the educators at the summit came from diverse parts of the North American Jewish educational ecosystem, a thread that ran through many of the discussions was how to navigate ambivalent relationships with projects that seem to be failing and groups who disappoint or even betray us. It struck me that Jewish educators have a crucial role to play in teaching their students how to remain steady in the face of their ambivalence about Israel, the American Jewish establishment and even American democracy. Working in a range of settings, educators are distinctively positioned to help answer the question of why it is important to maintain these relationships, even as they seem to be broken.

This insight crystallized during a session on Jewish obligations to America where we studied an extraordinary midrash from Eichah (Lamentations) Rabba. The midrash provided a model of relationship that encourages steadfast commitment even as it allows for exit, and in doing so illuminated the significance of textual study as a tool to confront disillusion. The midrash is structured as a parable (mashal) accompanied by an explication of its meaning (nimshal). As we learned together, our group extended the parable to the complicated relationships American Jews have with projects ranging from Zionism to American higher education.

The midrash starts by citing the biblical verse it is interpreting: “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:21). In the context of the sixth century BCE destruction of Jerusalem and exile to Babylonia, the author of the biblical text grasps onto God’s everlasting love and infinite compassion, even (or especially) when it is undeserved by Israel. In the parable, however, the rabbis offer a more concrete grounding for the hope Israel can latch unto:

Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: What is this like? A king who married a noblewoman and wrote her a large ketubah and told her: “I shall make you this number of canopies, give you this number of gowns of purple wool.” The king left her and went overseas and was delayed there. Her neighbors came by and teased her, saying: “The king has left you and gone overseas. He won’t return to you.” And she would cry and sigh. But when she went into her home, she would open and take out her ketubah and read it and see in her ketubah “I shall make you this number of canopies, give you this number of gowns of purple wool,” and immediately she would be comforted. Eventually, the king returned and said, “My dear, I am shocked. How did you wait for me all those years?” She responded: “My lord the king, if not for the substantial ketubah you wrote for me and already gave to me, my neighbors would have caused my demise.”

The midrash goes on to explicate the parable by identifying God with the King; Israel with the noblewoman or wife; idolaters with the neighbors; and the Torah, containing divine promises of Israel’s redemption, with the marriage document.

Biblical and rabbinic analogies comparing the relationship between God and Israel to that of spouses conventionally insist that Israel is the unfaithful partner. This midrash, however, radically depicts God (the king) as the one who left Israel with no presumption that Israel (the wife) had done anything to deserve this abandonment. Notably, this also cuts against the grain of the straightforward reading of Lamentations, in which Israel’s sins explain God’s furious rejection of her. Here, however, God’s delay in returning to His bride appears wholly unavoidable or, more shockingly, unjustified. 

Even as the conventional biblical and rabbinic message is that repairing our human ways would repair the relationship, the parable completely ignores the underlying reasons for why God (or the King) left in the first place. Perhaps, the midrash sees God as carrying some share of the blame for the distance, suggesting that both parties in a relationship carry their own narratives and ultimately need to interrogate their own behavior and biases. More likely, the message seems to be that hope for the future of the relationship requires something more than explaining and justifying the demise of that relationship and offering an acknowledgment of the hurt, missteps, and neglect. Rather, there is a longer and larger story than the rupture of the immediate present. Hope and continued investment in the relationship must be grounded in the origins and promises of the relationship itself.

In contrast to a parent-child relationship characterized by unconditional bonds of love or a king-subject relationship characterized by loyalty and obedience, the midrashic use of a spousal analogy allows for the possibility of divorce or exit. Indeed, the rabbis here are empathetic when it comes to Jews who decide that they cannot remain in relationship with the God of Israel, their spouse and, consequently, sever the covenant, their marriage contract. They depict God as astonished at the extreme devotion of those who stay, acknowledging that leaving or opting out is a rational course of action. There are circumstances when staying faithful is misguided, futile and even dangerous: sometimes the neighbors are right.

Simultaneously, the message of the parable is that it is possible to stay in problematic relationships, and the rabbis provide a crucial tool for doing so. The wife in the midrash is on the brink of relinquishing hope and capitulating to the taunts of her neighbors when she “goes home, opens, finds, reads and sees in her ketubbah” the king’s promises of abundant provisions, a symbol of his abundant love. In the wake of God’s retreat from the land and people of Israel and the neighbors’ threats that God is not returning to them, the Jewish people enter their study halls and synagogues, read the Torah’s account of divine promises, find reassurance and stay steady in their temporarily one-sided relationship.

The midrash suggests that, on the one hand, it is not prudent to leave a relationship, even when one has been hurt, since that means sacrificing the potential promise of that relationship. Neither is it sufficient to rely on nostalgia for what was or romantic aspiration for what could be. Rather, the presumption here is that to maintain their fealty, the wife and the Jewish people must have the skills to identify the relevant texts of the relationship and to read, analyze, interpret and infer from them accordingly. The message is that hope must be grounded in the concreteness of a textual promise that can be read and understood. In the biblical verse that prompts this midrash – “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:21) – the subject “This” is the simple conceptual or affective recollection that “the Lord’s steadfast love has not ceased” (Lamentations 3:22). The midrash, however, recognizes that merely thinking or pining for something is insufficient to generate hope. Rather, it is necessary to turn to a document testifying to the foundational relationship and project, whether it is a marriage, whose terms are outlined in the kettubah, or the covenant between God and Israel, whose terms are outlined in the Torah.

The same is true for our political moment. Without hope, there is no reason to stay committed, and our disappointments transform easily into despair and disengagement. But for hope to be effective, it must be grounded in something concrete. We must have facility with the core documents of the societies, countries or communities of which we are members, which outline the possibilities of the relationship. This facility requires certain skills that are not acquired overnight but rather must be inculcated from an early age. It is these skills that will ultimately allow us to stay committed to our collectives and projects, even if it means fighting internally for things to change, or, alternatively, that will enable us to make the informed decision to leave.

These skills – the skills essential for staying committed to a political project in moments of challenge and upheaval – are built in the classroom. The classroom is where we each develop the skills to access, read and understand the core texts of our communities and societies. Educators are the catalysts for this critical work.

What is the skill set necessary to commit to relationships and projects that are far from perfect, even failing? The midrash, as I read it, identifies three components. First, like the bride who returns home despairingly from her neighbors’ taunts, but then “takes out” her kettubah, we must identify the canon of texts that ground our relationship with the larger project. These might be foundational and classical texts, written many generations ago, or more contemporary versions and rereadings of these texts. In other words, there is a curriculum, and educators play a crucial role in determining what is in it. When I read David Ben-Gurion’s words “If [equality] obligates the entire world in its attitude to us, then it obligates us [as well]. It makes no difference whether we are the minority and others the majority or we are the majority and others the minority,” I am reminded that Zionism’s foundational ethos centers human dignity.

Second, educators are responsible for providing students with the skills necessary to read these texts from the vantage points of history, literature and civics. When I read about marriage documents from the Cairo Geniza between Karaites – the great “schismatics” of the Middle Ages – and Rabbanites, I am reminded that our Zionist and antizionist Jewish communities can cooperate on certain projects and that our Jewish community need not collapse under the weight of difference.

Third, and finally, knowing which texts are core to a collective project and having the ability to access those texts paves the way for making these texts usable and useful through interpretative exercises. The bride reads her kettubah critically and infers that her husband will return, and the people of Israel read their Torah and understand the obstacles and opportunities of redemption. Our students must learn how to read foundational documents critically and creatively, with the objective of instilling them with a commitment to stay in relationship with even a failing project and to improve it. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address begins “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” When I read these words, I am reminded that the project of American democracy was wildly imperfect in its inception, and only partially ameliorated by the Civil War nearly a century later. Lincoln implores his listeners at Gettysburg to take up the “unfinished work,” implicitly asking us to do the same.

Returning to our covenantal texts – whether those are the classical texts of our Jewish tradition, or visionary texts from the leaders of Israel or America – will remind us of our founding visions, ground our hopes in their promises and allow us to stay steady and continue working on their behalf. It is education that gives us the tools to pull these texts off the shelves, read them, analyze them and use them. The project of education assumes that there is a longer story than what is transpiring in the immediate time and place, and it is educators who are equipped to let us see backwards and forwards. My colleague Deb Barer recently outlined the distinctive benefits of approaching citizenship as a type of covenant, and wrote, “patriotism has always depended on an ability to love through disappointment.” The midrash of Lamentations Rabbah 3:7 provides a roadmap for the skills we need to love through disappointment. As the elections come and go, along with the possibility that they will bring our visions for a better future to a grinding halt, it is worth recalling that we entrust our schools and teachers with the responsibility for transmitting the skills necessary to love through disappointment. Our ability to hope for and work toward a stronger future is in their hands. 

Dr. Sara Labaton is Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she serves as a conduit between the Kogod Research Center and program directors, overseeing programmatic excellence and ensuring that research topics and content are informed by the realities of the field and experience of program participants.