Judaism-Hope and the Impossible Dream – Rabbi Jan Goldstein
RH Morning 5786/2025
Two Rabbis are on a bench during WW 2. One is reading the Jewish Times and the other is reading Der Sturmer, the German newspaper of that day. The Rabbi reading the Times looks over and sees what the other is reading and says, “How can you read that?
“What do you mean?”, replies the Rabbi.
“That paper is full of antisemitic garbage!”
“Well in your paper, we are getting killed, our property stolen, our very existence under threat! But in THIS paper??? We own the banks! We own the media. Apparently, we run the world!”
Our Jewish world desperately needs hope right now. Open virtually any Jewish publication, newspaper, or social media account, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the seeming hopelessness of the news in this moment. Jews around the world are encountering heightened levels of antisemitism, discrimination, and even violence. The war in Gaza rages on, 48 hostages remain in captivity some alive and some dead, and conflicts within Jewish communities spark extreme disagreements over how to move forward, both within the diaspora and Israel. Some Jews are moved to question what are our Jewish values, what does it mean to be Jewish with attacks from the outside and the images that gut many Jews to their soul…like the red sea we are often split, even within ourselves-what does it mean to be Jewish, to be part of the Jewish family and people, 2 truths can coexist within us.
I am going to attempt to explain the tension that lives in me and maybe somewhere along the way you will connect to part of it, hear yourself in part of it or clarify your own sensibilities and give voice to the tension we live under while at the same time underscoring my powerful belief that this exact crossroads moment calls us to both hope and to dream, both essential elements of who we are and have always been. Thankfully as Jews, we are blessed with thousands of years of wisdom and evolved practices that have guided and sustained Jewish communities through the ages.
I have to begin by acknowledging how impossible that task seems right now. So hard to do in the ongoing face of this war that challenges us with increased antisemitism and for some causing us to reexamine our belief system, while for most, challenging our sense of security.
When I was studying to be a rabbi, the first year was In Isreal and I met Jerry and Maggie Goodman Jerry had been in the same school as me a year or two earlier had attended his first year in Jerusalem and then dropped out of the program and made Allie together with his wife Maggie, who had grown up Catholic in Oklahoma and chosen to become Jewish And Israeli so together they were raising at that time 13 year-old daughter Divora, who played with our three year-old daughter Yaffa and we also had our one year-old Batcsheva at the time and we became close, our families and when the Yom Kippur War broke out, we went through that wrenching experience together. Some years later, I would come back to visit and Jerry would invite me over for Shabbat and while I was sitting there, with a little smile on his face, He asked me to give a drash, an explanation of the weeks Torah portion and I went along gave a little explanation of the portion and then he turned with that same little half smile to his nine-year-old son Meecha or (Micah in English) and say to him, “Well Micah, do you have anything to add to what the Rabbi had to say? And that little nine-year-old would go on about the Torah and weave together an incredible drash about that the parasha meant, quoting rabbis and verses from the Torah and put me to shame, which of course gave Jerry great nachas. That boy today is president of Beit Prat, one of the leading organizations in Israel for young adults, and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The author of Catch67, he is considered one of the most original and influential public intellectuals in Israel. I have been listening to him on the War being waged after Oct. 7and wish to share his take on it.
This war, he points out, was designed as a tragedy. Hamas designed the war in Gaza as a tragedy. When I say a tragedy, it means creating a situation where there are only bad options,, attacking with an army of terrorists which attacks civilians and then it hides among civilians. Now, Israel has two bad options. Bad option number one is not to attack Hamas, which means Hamas developed the perfect murder. You could murder and get away with it if you hide beneath civilians. Option number two is to destroy Hamas, which means you have to cut through civilians. Morally, both bad options, which is a tragedy. Israel didn’t choose the bad option over the good option but the bad option over what they considered the worse option. That’s why it’s a tragedy. But in planning this war which they did for at least 2 years, Hamas understood something about asymmetric war. That is the question of legitimacy. Meecha explains, “Let’s say a war is a car and victory is the destination, and the fuel, the gas tank is international legitimacy. And while you’re driving to your destination, you’re running out of legitimacy, you’re running out of gas. Like while we’re trying to destroy Hamas, we have to cut through civilians. And that helps destroy the legitimacy for the war. And here’s the big question, what will happen first? Will we reach our destination before we run out of gas? Or will we run out of gas before we reach destination? And Hamas’s whole idea was that Israel will run out of legitimacy before destroying Hamas.”
And whatever you think about Israeli strategy, two things can be true at the same time-Israel is our family and I would do anything for my family. Israel’s attack in ’73 came when I was there with my wife and two little daughters. I stood there in the stairway with Israelis urging me to take Yaffa and Batsheva into the bomb shelters beneath our deerah, our apt. building. One held out a gun and discussed using it should anyone break through and enter our building. I have often thought what I would do with my daughters in one arm and an Uzi in the other hand on the stairs of our apt building on Rehov HaPalmach with Yaffa and Batsheva, 3 and 1 inside-And I can tell you today: anything-anything-and I think you would too and still, STILL, at the same time, the images of starving or dead children, no matter what you think of the complicity of Palestinians population with Hamas or the fact that Hamas has placed such fear amongst its people and treats them with such disregard that allows for their fear to serve their own terrorist purposes…yet…yet…I struggle…those images do not align with my view of Judaism…they test our view of Judaism. How can the world not sympathize when you see those pictures almost every day on the front page of your newspapers? That I understand! But this I don’t understand: at the same time all this has been going on, in Sudan’s civil war, it is estimated that 400,000 people have died and over 12 million have been displaced. Mass atrocities are unfolding. Children are dying not only from bullets but from malnutrition, disease and despair. 25 million Sudanese face extreme hunger. And yet, have you seen any pictures of this on the front page of your newspapers? – And why, when Israel put up a security fence, it was condemned, but while Hamas spent years building tunnels for terror, no one had a word to say?!
What am I saying? ..I know Israel must do everything it can to defend itself and at the same time the suffering of children is anathema to me and is in opposition to other Jewish values-yes, both can be true at the same time-and if you think the suffering and killing of innocent children no matter where they live is not against Jewish values you do not understand Judaism-at the same time, if you think self-defense and protecting one’s way of life is not inherently Jewish, go back and study Bar Kochba’s guerilla war against the Roman’s or the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the War of Independence after Israel accepted barely defensible borders from the UN only to be attacked the next day because others wanted all of it….and all I’m saying and acknowledging here is that this war right now is striking at the very core values of the Jewish people— it was set up like that from the start— and one can be a lover of Israel and a hater of violence to children and both can sit in the Jewish psyche where they do battle with one another multiple times a day and it is relentless and
suffice it to say I feel a kinship with Edna ST. Vincent Mallay the poet in her poem Dirge Without Music, where she writes about burying your dead: “ Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Of the suffering children -whether Jewish or Palestinian- I can say with absolute clarity—I do not approve and I am not resigned.
At the same time, I would here caution my fellow Jews and allies to not allow your disagreements with the current Israeli government if they do exist to become weaponized against your family or give succor to our enemies….parenthetically I would also question those who protest and hang kaffiyas round their necks like some college age warriors who believe they are upholding human rights -including some Jewish kids— I would suggest they look around cause these are some mighty strange bedfellows being formed I mean…queers for Palestine-are you kidding me-do you know what sharia law does to homosexuals? whether you intend to or not you are marching not to give defenseless people a country but in essence to enlarge the voice of terrorists who would not do a thing to protect you but would, like the innocent young people dancing at a music festival, cut you down and yet you join them? I would ask a simple question, do you know the history even a little bit? Just the basics. Do you know that many of the Arab governments and countries you see in the middle east today were born exactly around the same time as the modern state of Israel? Most came into existence in the early to mid-20th century just like Israel and yet only Israel is on trial here? The Republic of Lebanon in 1943, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946, the Kingdom of Libya in 1951, the Kingdom of Egypt in 1952, the Kingdom of Morocco and Tunisia in 1956, the Republic of Iraq in 1958-There were Jews in all of those countries…what happened to them? Close to a million were displaced and driven out with persecution. Did they have rights? Who took them in? Many by Israel. Some to France, South Africa, England, the U.S.
I ask again? Do you know even a little history? The Palestinians, even after having much of their territory swallowed up by the new country Jordan, were not brought to any of the 20 odd surrounding Arab countries, in the region including Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen .Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia. Once again, the basics of history, the bare minimum here: Do those protesting or agitating or tearing down kidnapped posters of little Israeli children off the streets in NYC and elsewhere, do you know that the Palestinians were offered an independent state for themselves in 1937? And they rejected it. In 1947, 1948 and they declared war. And the Palestinians are stateless today not because of Israeli aggression, but rather because of Palestinian refusal. Do they know that? As recently as 2000 Camp David Summit (July) U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met with PLO Chief Yasser Arafat to reach a permanent peace agreement. core points included: A Palestinian state proposed on roughly 92% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem as a capitol. Arafat walked away from that deal and the failure contributed to the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000.
It boggles the mind. Yes, it can all seem impossible. I can’t solve the problem of not knowing history or making up your own facts, or why people hate as they hate or foster antisemitism but I have a choice this RH, I can choose despair or I can choose what has always been the impossible dream of hope- As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains, “Hope is the struggle against the world that is — In the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet.” And it’s very, very Jewish.
Rosh Hashanah is the embodiment of hope for each of us individually, and as a collective Jewish people. In the Rosh Hashanah prayers we find a recipe for hope: When we sing zochreynu a prayer of “Remembrance” – it helps us appreciate the robust arc of Jewish history, as we have persisted through seemingly insurmountable challenges time and again; Babylonia exile and destruction of 1st temple, how did they go on? If I forget thee o Jerusalem…that was 586 BCE, more than a thousand years before the birth of Islam, more than a thousand years before any form of Arab nationalism existed, much less talk of an Arab-based country alongside the land the Jews lived in as long ago as 1500 years before the Babylonian exile. 2500 years before Islam in all.
Then there was 70 CE, The Roams destroyed the 2nd Temple and once again Jews were scatterd without the center of their worship and life. What did they do? They codified the TaNaCH, the Torah, prophets and Writings which make up the Jewish Bible so it could be portable, carried anywhwere. They created the commentary, the Talmud, adapting in impossible conditions, dreaming of return to Israel yet also establishing Jewish life elsewhere, then the growth and what became in many places, the antisemitism of the Catholic Church, evidenced in the crusades where entire villages of Jews were ended, on to the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, later the ghettoes in venice and elsewhere and onto the Cossacks, and then, skip with me to only 80 years ago, not so long in the history of a 400 year old people, and the greatest evil the world has seen, Nazi Germany, and still, still Jews have walked an impossible path and found a way, and not just a way, they have thrived and grown and helped repair the world. Yes, a little history on that last point-Jews though they make up 2 % of America and .2% of the world‘s population, that’s 2 tenths of 1 single per cent, have won over 22% of the Nobel prizes. How? Might it be the emphasis on reading and education, the Jewish value of helping repair the world, maybe???
We find hope in the custom of the blowing of the shofar which we do today In the Shofar we find a clarion call to awaken our souls to pursue what’s good and right in the world. The Talmud points out, says Rabbi Ben Newman, that the blasts of the shofar are meant to remind us that we all have in our lives various kinds of heartbreak, those things that happen to us in our lives that break us, in small and larger ways.
“The four notes of a shofar echo four different aspects of the human experience. The first, Tekiyah, represents innocence. times in our life when we feel no pain or suffering, The next sound of the shofar is the Shivarim. Three broken notes, represent those times in life that things don’t quite go exactly the way we expect and we feel a bit broken,
The third blast, Teruah. nine broken notes, ways in which we’re completely shattered, broken apart from grief or suffering,
The fourth and final sound of the shofar is called Tekiya Gdola, the big blast, meant to include all of the others. The TaNaCH, the Jewish Bible, teaches that after the tablets of the covenant were broken by Moses at Mt. Sinai, the Israelites carried around the broken pieces of the tablets, along with the whole pieces of the new tablets. IN such a way, we carry around our wounding experiences in life. Balancing that out, is the hope that is part of who we are as Jews, our history, our culture, our way of life.
As you hear the shofar, I invite you to think about the ways in which you’ve been challenged this year, The ways in which you’ve been completely shattered. Bring awareness to them. Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you. Your feelings need you. Your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.” This clarity, says Newman, “this acknowledgement of where we are today is a path to wholeness. Being present. coming home. Returning to the land of our soul.”
The journey of the Jewish People is one of defying odds, of bringing into existence dreams that are impossible. My colleague David Wolpe tells how, in the thick of moments these past couple years where things looked darkest to him ,especially right after Oct. 7, when he was a visiting lecturer at Harvard, that he found hope in an imagined conversation with his great great grandfather who he never met. In this intefchange with a man whon who lived 3 generations ago at a time when Jews could not enter certain schools and the modern state was was still a dream, Wolpe says, “Great great, zayde, I am so so worried about the protests here at Harvard and the impact on its Jewish students. His great great grandfather answers in shock: There are Jews at Harvard?!
Yes, Wolpe says, and the protests could impact the future of Israel!” And his great great zayde replies, “Are you telling me there’s an Israel?!”
Yes, they were all once dreams. So, dream with me. We are in desperate need of dreams, an essential part of Jewish life.
- A dream where every child feels held, safe, and welcomed.
- A dream of a world where differences are celebrated instead of feared.
- A dream in which people listen deeply until old wounds soften.
- A dream of forgiveness, not forgetting, but transforming pain into compassion.
- A dream where kindness is the first language everyone learns. A dream of hands reaching out before fists can form.
- A dream that every voice matters, where truth and kindness are louder than hate.
- A dream of teachers who ignite curiosity, not fear. A dream that each person discovers the spark only they can bring to the world.
Now say to yourself” What part can I play? What word or deed can bring us just a smidgen closer?
The world needs its Jews and allies.
So don’t ask yourself what kind of person do I want to be this year, instead ask – what kind of person do I need to be in the world of which I dream.
Be proud as a Jew, as an ally, be alive to your values and your family. Yes-this is a time for renewing dreams, even the impossible ones, especially, the impossible ones.
Come, dip your apples and honey and make the wish that Jews have made for 4000 years-
for sweetness,
for health,
for our families,
our community,
for Israel and our world.
Ken Yehi ratzon.
Amen V’Amen.
