doing hope
sholem aleichem,
this shabbos — shabbos chol hamoed pesach — we’ll read a section of torah including shemos 34:6-7 (loosely referencing Everett Fox’s translation)
and hashem crossed before moshe’s face and recited: hashem! hashem! compassionate and gracious kel! slow to anger and great in loving-kindness and truth!
preserving loving-kindness to the thousandth [generation], bearing iniquity, transgression, and sin, but not completely erasing iniquity, calling-to-account [Fox’s translation] iniquity of fathers upon sons, upon son’s sons, to the third and fourth [generation]
it’s really hard to have hope right now.
the present-day impacts of the genocide in gaza, to pick one of many current crises, are already enough to challenge any sense that things will be okay. and for those of us who understand the reverberations of these actions through history, as our pasuk does, the challenge becomes even higher.
for myself, i fear that the account of this iniquity will be called far beyond the third and fourth generations.
but (as i have learned from my teacher r’ jan salzman), hope really isn’t something to have. it isn’t something we attain by looking at the world and seeing positive signs for the future. that’s optimism, not hope.
hope is something we do. hope is something we live.
and we must act as if gemilus chasadim — acts of chesed or loving-kindness — are b’emes preserved far beyond acts of iniquity. that our own chesed will echo through the generations far beyond our sins.
at my seder last monday night, everyone at the table was asked to share “one thing that gives you hope”. but i think this may be the wrong question to ask.
let us ask instead “what do you do that is hopeful?”
what loving-kindness do we do in this world, despite our pessimism and fear?
in this week of chesed in s’firas haomer we get to experience so many dimensions of loving-kindness:
loving kindness is loving-kindness
the discipline of showing up is loving-kindness
the beauty of care is loving-kindness
preservation is loving-kindess
weakness is loving-kindness
support is loving-kindness
shechinas hashem is loving-kindness
dr paul farmer zy’’a used to talk about his work as “fighting the long defeat”:
Kidder: Your [employee was only saying] that it was a shame you had to spend so much [on a medevac flight for one patient], given what else you could do with twenty grand.
Farmer: Yeah, but there are so many ways of saying that [...] For example, why didn't the airplane company [...] pay for his flight? That's a way of saying it. Or how about this way? How about if I say, I have fought for my whole life a long defeat. How about that? How about if I said, That's all it adds up to is defeat?
Kidder: A long defeat
Farmer: I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I'm not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don't dislike victory.
[...]
Kidder: I like the line about the long defeat
Farmer: I would regard that as the basic stance of [the Preferential Option for the Poor]. I don't care if we lose, I'm gonna try to do the right thing
Kidder: But you're going to try to win
Farmer: Of course!
or as rasha abdulhadi said on death panel recently, quoting abdaljawad omar:
in this particular kind of informal resistance engagement with a settler colonial state, all Palestinian resistance has to do is not lose and not give up in order to win.
i think that fighting the long defeat is hope. bringing friends into the fight is hope. breathing in and out just one more time is hope.
we’re not gonna stop just because we’re losing. we’re gonna try to do the right thing. that’s hope.
and sometimes i think we might win. that’s nice, but it isn’t hope.
moadim l’simcha,
ada