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Many people have asked how my time in Israel was. Truthfully, it can only be described as a split-screen experience.

On one screen is the wonderful celebration for the birth of our newest granddaughter. Our kids’ apartment is filled with balloons and festive foods, and with many of our nieces and nephews and their spouses and their children. There were so many children there! It was an incredible celebration of continuity and life.

And on the other screen is Sari and I catching up with several old friends living in Jerusalem, all of whom, in the intimacy of a coffeehouse or a restaurant, expressed how discouraged they’re feeling, in some cases verging on despair. These conversations happened to have happened this past Tuesday, only hours after a mob comprised of far-right and Religious Zionist protesters, including  Knesset members who are part of the government, stormed two army bases, intending to disrupt the IDF’s investigation of soldiers who had allegedly committed terrible abuses, including sexual abuses upon prisoners who were under their charge. For each of our friends, this was a Jan. 6^th moment, a violent culmination of a continuing assault on the State’s most hallowed institutions, the institutions that make the State the State. It was an event that deepened and reinforced their dismay about into whose hands the levers of consequential power and fateful policymaking had been delivered, which in turn flowed back into larger issues of deep distrust in the country’s leadership. Sari and I honestly sat there kind of stunned, and just did our best to listen empathetically.

At the end of one of the conversations, with a friend of many decades who is a deeply thoughtful and widely-admired author and journalist, my friend looked me directly in the eyes and said, “I have no hope”… and after an eternity that lasted for several seconds he added,  “but I have faith”. We only had a moment at that point before we both needed to go, leaving us insufficient time to unpack the difference. We needed to suffice with our intuitive sense that there is a distinction between the two. But I left with a strong need to think more about it, especially because it seemed that the distinction could help explain the split-screen. So here’s what I have:

Hope is exclusively about the future. One can hope that a particular event will transpire or that a particular scenario will develop. Optimists tend to be better at hoping, pessimists not as much. But even for the optimists, what they are hoping for has to pass some kind of reality-based smell test. Otherwise it is not a hope but a delusion, a fantasy.

Faith though, is something completely different. Faith is about the present. It is the acceptance of, or the belief in, a proposition that is not empirically provable, but which is so powerful that it firmly informs and directs a person’s conduct in the here and now, even when this person lacks hope.  Faith is what moves people to simply look straight ahead, and to pursue the path of the necessary and the right and the good. Faith can come in many forms. It can be the acceptance of, or belief in the not-empirically-provable proposition that there is a God in the universe, and that He has commanded us to live and to walk a certain way. Or the acceptance of, or belief in the not-empirically-provable proposition that we are born with the duty to bring forth life, and to care for the life that we have brought forth, and to be part of our people and to protect our people when we are needed to do so. Or that there is a unique meaning and significance to the people of Israel's existence, and that this existence needs to be perpetuated. Or that it is sinful to stand by silently when we see injustice or abuse occurring. Faith is a basis for remaining committed to a mode and code of conduct, regardless of whether or not you are feeling hope. 

Now I know that every person is different in their capacity for hope, and that my friends are but a small sample size. Hey, I just had a granddaughter who was named “Hope”!  But you know, on the Shabbat morning that she was named in Shul, there were also two other baby namings. And on the following Shabbat morning, there were four. And this isn’t a particularly big Shul! And when I asked our son Adin about this he said to me, very matter-of-factly, “these are all the October 7^th babies”.  There is a lot of faith going around. Just like the faith of all the people who are going back for miluim again, and again. And like our faith as we unceasingly support the people of Israel, go when we are able – it’s important to go, and to send our children – and to pray to God every morning and evening.  

As I think about this I am realizing that we, the Jewish people, haven’t made it this far along our long historical journey, haven’t arrived at this point, on the strength of hope.  We have made it here, on the strength of faith.