Dear Temple Emanuel,
This week we celebrated Purim, a story set in Persia about a malevolent power-hungry man who set out to kill all the Jews and who ordered the building of gallows…the very gallows where he would hang at the end of the story. Seems like a very familiar story, one that beginning of the week seemed as if we might be in the middle of the Book of Esther, and by the end we arrived at a Purim of our own.
There is a definition of despair which is that every day is the same and that hope is the belief that somehow, someway tomorrow will be different. I wonder if this applies to generations and ages of Jewish communities. Is it our lot (pun intended) to constantly face down someone would destroy us, or is there a time and a day we can hope for when we will awake to find a different story and a different challenge? I don’t know.
When the founders of Israel picked words for a Nation Anthem, they decided upon a poem entitled ‘The Hope.’ I hope for a day when we do awake to challenges of making this world better for everyone, a shared hope with others. Perhaps this seems beyond the realm of the possible, but isn’t dreaming of such the reason we have a work like hope?
L’Shalom
Rabbi JIm