Are Jews a hopeful people? Certainly our history gives us little reason to be hopeful.
Slavery, exile, the loss of our homeland, oppression by cruel empires, destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (twice), pogroms, blood-libels, show-trials, Holocaust. Not a great deal of cause to be hopeful about the nature of man or about what may lie ahead.
Then I thought about our humour. Humour, after all, is reflective of culture, inner stirrings and world-view. Jewish humour is known for being decidedly neurotic and pessimistic.
As Woody Allen said: “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
But then what is hope?
I define it as a belief in a better future. A belief that better days are possible. And where there is hope, we see action to bring about the change that is necessary for that better future. While in the absence of hope, we accept our condition and do nothing to change it.
The Jews have always been change-makers, which means we have fundamentally believed that a better world is possible. We have never been prepared to accept the world as is. We feel a compulsion – it is an inherent almost frenzied stirring – to seek to improve our lives and our world.
Read the full article by Alex Ryvchin, Public Affairs Director for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, at ABC.