For the past many years, Randy, the girls and I have been very fortunate to spend part of our summer at my in-laws vacation home in southern Vermont.  The Green Mountain State is undeniably God’s country; lush, green pastures beside cool, meandering streams, below, and clear, dark blue skies, above.

Yet, its permanent residents are dogged and feisty individualists.  I’ve always maintained that you could study a person’s character - at least, partially - by driving behind them. In Vermont, there’s no shortage of politically correct and incorrect rear-bumper stickers affixed to old, dilapidated cars!

I was driving behind one such car earlier this summer: it sported a predictable red, white and blue Obama/Biden election ticket and another intriguing blue and white sticker (that, I’m quite sure, many of you have seen) proclaiming the word “COEXIST” with all the letters drawn to approximate the universal symbols of the world’s major religions.  But this Vermonter chose to add a third sticker, one that I hadn’t seen before: large black capital letters against a white background: “GOT HOPE?” Got Syrup? For sure!    But…Got Hope? 

In his inspirational book, The Power of Hope: The One Essential Of Life and Love, Rabbi Maurice Lamm writes of a famous teacher of mysticism who illustrates the spiritual power of hope in the following very intriguing way.  Take the letter “M”, he said as in the word “Me”. It’s a selfish letter because its two legs face downwards, anchored in the here-and-now, temporal world of the self.  Now, take the letter “W” as in the word “We”. Its two sides face upward as if reaching for the heavens above, indicative of a desire to share the fruits of the spiritual world with others.

“Be guided in life by “W” ”, writes Rabbi Lamm, “and not by “M”….Believe in the power of hope because it is a positive, clear, critical, necessary part of the human apparatus. Not only does it enable us to survive bad times, it helps turn them around.”
Dear friends, it’s true that in many synagogues, tonight, rabbis will use their bully pulpit to eloquently and persuasively extol the virtues or the vices of current political debate at home and abroad, particularly in Israel.  There are, admittedly, many topical issues that should and must concern us. But tonight, if only for tonight, on this Great Sabbath of the Soul, I want to offer far more personal, reflective and introspective remarks.

Rabbis and Cantors invariably take stock of their own lives at this hallowed time on the religious calendar but we are also keenly aware of what our congregants have had to endure as well this past year.  Some of you, who feel very much at home here and feel more comfortable with us and, come to think of it, comforted by us, will have shared your problems and your pain.  Others of you, for reasons best known to yourselves, will probably have remained silent or absent but will, no doubt, have suffered just as much if not more.  We want all of you to know that this is your sanctuary, this is your refuge, your haven in and by which you can feel free, as the late Rabbi Sidney Greenberg so eloquently put it, “to harbor your complaints against the management of the universe.”  Truth be told, we all do, whether we stand behind this pulpit or we sit in the pew.  We all do!

I cannot tell you why bad things happen to good people.  They just do. I have come to accept that “why” is not a very productive or useful Jewish question to have to ask!  However, “when”, is!  I can try and tell you that when misfortune befalls you, as it does each and every one of us, what to try and do about it. For therein lies the portal to faith and yes, Rabbi Greenberg was surely correct when he avowed, “…the garment of faith often shrinks in the waters of adversity.”  You know that as well as I do.

I cannot tell you why Rabbi and Elise Waintrup’s beloved daughter, Debbie, who gave the very gift of life; namely, her own kidney, to her son Michael was then stricken with ovarian cancer from which she finally succumbed nearly four years ago.

I cannot tell you why Rabbi and Becky Sernovitz’s beloved son, Samuel (or as I insist on calling him, “Shlomo Yisrael”!) was born with Familial Dysautonomia, a devastating, genetically inherited disease.  Nor can I explain why my dear colleague and friend, together with the members of his immediate family, had to then suffer the injustice of losing his cherished mother.

I cannot tell you why our oldest daughter, Hayley, as many of you know, suffers from a highly unusual and rare series of chronic and debilitating neurological, autonomic, genetic and metabolic illnesses that have essentially robbed her of her teenage years and her capacity to live and to lead a normal life. 

Dear friends, I cannot tell you why all three of your rabbis – and their families - have had to endure such pain and affliction, such torment of body and soul.  A cruel twist of fate?  An uncanny coincidence?  Has a plague of ill health and misfortune fallen upon us; a sick, demented, demonic evil that accepts no boundaries?  Don’t think that I haven’t thought about such things.  I’m only human after all but I steadfastly refuse to succumb to such temptations for otherwise my entire theology of a good, just and benevolent God would simply crumble before my very eyes.  And where, quite frankly, would that leave me?

I cannot tell you why a relatively young, healthy and beloved member of our congregation very nearly lost his life at the beginning of this year but made nothing short of a miraculous recovery.  Perhaps more to the point, I cannot tell you why a prominent member of this congregation just happened to be visiting him and his wife that very day and, recognizing that something was terribly wrong, immediately took matters into his own hands and drove him to the nearest ER. Would he be with us here tonight if not for his fellow Beth Amnik’s unexpected visitation and quick thinking?

I cannot tell you why an otherwise healthy, hard-working member of ours whose professional expertise we so value, suddenly became very critically ill several months ago, fell into a relatively long coma from which we thought he would never awake but is here with us tonight, hale and hearty, as if nothing ever happened to him.

I cannot tell you why three otherwise fit, robust congregants, in the prime of their respective lives, each succumbed very quickly to their totally unforeseen and unexpected misfortune; one, our late beloved Executive VP, Dr. Josh Uram, whose sudden death on none other than December 7th of last year dealt such a bitter blow to both his immediate and congregational families; another, to a sudden, incurable brain illness that spread so rapidly that he died just four weeks after being diagnosed; yet another, to a catastrophic and irreversible head injury after falling in the path of a bus just a few blocks away from where he worked and each of them leaving behind distraught, young widows and each, two grieving children.

I cannot tell you why our President’s daughter, confined as she is, for life, to a wheelchair, became gravely and critically ill just a few months ago but eventually made nothing short of a miraculous recovery.  Nor can I tell you why the beloved wife of our VP, Religious Practices suddenly developed, just several weeks ago, an extremely rare form of lymphoma, and is currently undergoing an aggressive and exhausting regimen of chemotherapy thus preventing her from worshiping with us tonight.

And for the life of me, I cannot tell you why a precious, beautiful young daughter, sister, granddaughter, great granddaughter, niece and cousin was so cruelly taken from her loved ones last year, all members of ours.  I simply cannot begin to fathom the depth of their endless grief, their bitter sorrow, and their heartbreaking lament.  If I did, I’d be lying to you.

How does one adequately respond to those who see no end in sight to their pain, whether it be physical or emotional? What do you say to those who cannot seem to extricate themselves from walking through the valley of the shadow?  How do you begin to help those who seem to be constantly beset by a series of never-ending misfortunes?

What could I possibly say to my 80 year-old friend in England who recently lost her cherished soul mate to illness and then, exactly one month later, was told that the older of her two sons had committed suicide because he simply couldn’t bear the thought of living without his father?
Equally, how does one adequately respond to those on the other side of the equation who, to quote Rabbi Lamm, “…are overcome with compassion fatigue and simply cannot take bad news…they will deny it, but people like you more when you suffer less!” 

Yet the good Rabbi reminds us that none of us are spared the indignities and the cruelties of this life.  At some point in time, we are all tested; how we dust ourselves off, begin to pick ourselves up and rise to meet the challenge of life’s adversities is the very stuff out of which hope is born!
“No one sails through life on a serene sea, oars shipped, with a gentle breeze at our backs.  We experience at some point in our lives – if not more often – a severe loss of hope, numbness in the face of a staggering problem, disappointment in ourselves.  We search for some solution, a key, a way out, a glimmer of good news.  How will we manage, after we have exhausted our resources?  We turn to God. We place our hopes on God’s shoulders…There lingers inside all of us a ray – a single stray beam – which diffuses our souls, our hopes, with a faint glow. “Maybe. Just maybe.” ”

Maybe, just maybe, a cure for Familial Dysautonomia will be found.
Maybe, just maybe, a cure for Hayley’s Mitochondrial Disease will be found.
Maybe, just maybe, a cure will be found for one or more of the many different forms of cancer that currently afflict all too many of our Temple’s families or their loved ones.

Good, kind and decent people ask me how Randy and I cope living with a child who suffers from constant pain and chronic illnesses of one kind or another.  They recognize, quite correctly, that the entire family matrix is drastically altered to make the necessary concessions or accommodations on one level or another.  They understand, albeit only to a certain extent, that both the immediate and extended family of their loved one is adversely affected.

I answer quite simply and with the only God-given tool that I have at my disposal: Hope! Tikvah! I have to believe in the inherent power, in the quiet dignity, in the limitless ability, in the gentle leap…of hope. I hope that the uncertainty of tomorrow will be better than the routine of today. I hope that instead of always moving around in circles, we might, just for a change, move forward.  I hope that instead of taking one step forward but always two or three back that for once, just for once, it might be the other way around!

Never be afraid to hope, friends. Never! Fear throws us into submission, it paralyses the human capacity to dream, and it robs us of courage. It prevents us from moving forward. But miracles do happen, they abound and we don’t even realize it!  Not all the time, to be sure, but more often than we would otherwise believe.  And I know that more than just a few of you sitting out there tonight can attest to that, personally.

Rabbi Lamm exhorts us: “Our destinies, our careers, our marriages, often grow out of miracles that we never call by that name…Don’t let anyone talk you out of hoping for one.  Hope for the best; hope for a miracle.  Hope works magic on us all….Hope for the future empowers the present…it remains the loyal servant of our better lives.”
In his latest book, Always Looking Up: The Adventures Of An Incurable Optimist, Michael J. Fox describes an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos who, in turn, made a reference to Rush Limbaugh: “One of the things he says is that when you’re talking about all these cures, you’re giving people false hope and that is cruel.”
“Which is crueler,” I responded, “to not have hope or to have hope?  And it’s not a false hope. It’s an informed hope.  But two steps forward, one step back, you know?  It’s a process.  It’s how this country was built.  It’s what we do.  It seems to me that in the last few years, eight, ten years, we’ve just stopped.  We’ve become incurious and unambitious.  And hope, I mean, hope is...” My enthusiasm had now carried me to a patriotic reference that would make Emma Lazarus twist in her grave, “…I don’t want to get too corny about it, but isn’t that what the person in the harbor with the thing -?” I made an emphatic flourish with my arm and held aloft an imaginary torch indicating the Statue of Liberty, and then finished my point.  “To characterize hope as some sort of malady or some kind of flaw of character or national weakness is, to me, really counter to what this country is about.”
Michael J. Fox knows what it’s like to hit rock bottom, to reach the depths of despair.  I presume that that’s what full-blown Parkinson’s Disease will do to a person. But he also realized that, in order to move foreword, he had no choice but to embrace the reality, the truth of his illness, look up and start, slowly but surely, to climb out of the pit. That’s when hope begins to manifest itself as a shining beacon. 

On the one hand Rabbi Lamm reminds us that one of the truly extraordinary qualities of hope is its ability to reinvent itself by adapting to new and changing conditions but, on the other hand, he also warns us that there’s one aspect about hope that never changes: it has never been found in the gutter!  “You will only find it by looking upward.” And that is precisely the reason why, my friends, when we are dealing with hope we are not dealing with science but rather with spirituality.

Listen, if you would, to the remarkable words of a 17-year-old girl whose autonomic nervous system malfunctions causing a multitude of symptoms that dramatically interfere with her daily life:
“One would think it would be hard to forgive something that has such a negative impact on my life, but I must never forget that this is also the system that continues to sustain my life despite its many problems.  I do not believe that I have ever had to forgive anything or anyone for what I am going through.  I cannot blame my ANS. I cannot blame God for this.  I simply can’t find it in my heart to blame the One who created me and gave me life.  I believe that God cried with me when I passed out and went crashing into my window.  I believe that God cried with me when I woke up.  I do not believe that God turned away from me after my diagnosis.  I do believe that God comforted me in my grief and denial and then gave me the strength to get back up again and face my life.  God is here with me, and always will be.  Of course there have been moments when I have gotten angry with God and I have struggled with God many times throughout my illness.  The outcome of these struggles has been a very positive experience for me and has taught me many valuable lessons…I pray I can always see the blessings in my life no matter how hard things become as I continue my journey.” 

What an incredible outlook! What character! Such, dear friends, is the limitless power of hope!  It’s the very ‘stuff’ out of which hope is born and slowly, ever so slowly, nurtured!

Yom Kippur, if you come to think about it, is the antidote to hopelessness and despair.
Gently, elegantly, lovingly, we are led through a clouded tapestry of human failure and fallibility only to re-emerge, chastened but renewed, into the bright sunlight of tomorrow.  The signs are everywhere: white, the color of the shroud.  The grave and awesome chant of the Unetaneh Tokef deciding who will live and who will die. The Viddui confessional of sins and wrongdoing.

Tomorrow afternoon’s Yizkor Memorial Service in which we acknowledge our losses and look death in the face.  We remember what was.  We weep for what might have been.   But then we remember that bright beautiful rainbow of hope, the words attributed to the late Rabbi Sidney Greenberg, z”l, which I have shared with so many of you:

God is in the compassion and kindness shown to us by so many people.
God is in the amazing strength that is given to us in our heavy pilgrimage through the valley of the shadow.
God is in the healing that is binding our wounds, ever so slowly but ever so surely.
God is in the extraordinary gift our loved one embodied.
God is in the power to keep our beloved a living reality in our hearts, minds and souls.

As the Yom Norah v’Gadol, the great and awesome Day draws to a close, we enter the territory of death.  Our bodies tire through lack of food and water, our strength is greatly diminished and we sense that the gates are closing.  Time is of the essence, now.

We recite, one last, final time, the Shema, that watchword of faith, just as we surely will when we summon our last, mortal breath. Finally, when all is said and done, there’s nothing left but to listen to the call of the Shofar, that echo of eternity, which summons us back to life. And then, miraculously, with God’s providential help and our stubborn will to survive, we return to life, to feed our aching bodies and replenish our spent souls.
Renewed and refreshed by the light of faith, the love of family and the support of friends, we confidently yet humbly greet the dawn of a new day.  

Dear friends, please forgive me if you have found my words this evening to be too morbid. That was never my intention.  On the contrary, I have tried to emphasize the importance, indeed the necessity of accessing the power of hope even when we feel we are least capable of doing so. I have always believed that this particular human condition lies at the very heart of the Jewish historical experience.  Perhaps, if you come to think of it, that’s precisely why the title of the State of Israel’s national anthem is known by one word and one word, only: HaTikvah.  “The Hope”.

Our ancestors, despite danger and destruction, pogrom and persecution, exile and extermination, never gave up hope.  Never! Od Lo Avda Tikvateinu! Our hope is not lost, the hope of 2000 years.
Whenever we turn to that flag, we don’t simply sing of a dream, a destiny, a mission, a vision. No, instead we emphasize the centrality, the universality of Tikvah, of HOPE! And that, come to think of it, is my hope and my prayer for each and every one of you, for us all.

“All human life has its seasons and no one’s personal chaos can be permanent; winter after all does not last forever, does it?  There is summer too, and spring, and though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, that summer, but they do, and always.”
(Truman Capote).