On a personal (hopeful) note
I was raised amidst the tension between the dream and its reality. Growing up, I took great pride in my country, its uniqueness, achievements and beauty, but the dream also came knocking on my generation’s door, demanding payment, with the Lebanon war in 1982. The daily gnawing of ‘is this really worth it’ was not a theoretical question.
Israel is being challenged daily from within and without. Doubts regarding the need for a Jewish State come up constantly. Should there be an independent state for the Jews in the Land of Israel? How will such a state, Israel, survive, asks the Newsweek of April 1, 2002, Maybe it is all futile: Why do the Jews need their own state? Other religions don’t! And must it be where it is? Now that we have “progressed” and are living in a “modern world” is there still room for Hertzel’s dreams and hopes? And what exactly is “Hertzel’s hope” a hundred years later?
Perhaps the fact the discussion around this issue is so animated and globally widespread is proof enough to the aliveness of the dream as Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and expats continue to figure out how to execute it, especially with changing dynamics in the immediate region.
But one thing is for sure: while we often think of hope as a personal quality, we can see here that it can become a joint aspiration going beyond a specific event (“we” hope we’ll win the Monde’al!!) to change the course of a people’s history. It would be thus interesting to further explore if other elements can be learned from this parallel, for example, when working to resolve and heal various national and regional conflicts. It seems that not only an individual but a people’s hope and by default, hopelessness, might be a significant if not decisive component in reaching long-term solutions, not only personally, but nationally as well.
Sources
Websites:
Ohio State University, Research: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/apahope.htm
WebMD: http://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20080818/does-hope-therapy-help-depression
Bible.org: https://bible.org/article/hope
Daniel Goleman: http://www.danielgoleman.info/
Hope in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope
Hope (Snyder – Penn University): http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/teachinghope.htm
Books:
The Social Animal, Aronson, ninth edition, Worth Publishers, 2004
The Complete Practical Concordance to the Holy Scripture, Arranged by Rabbi Wachsman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem / New York, 1989
The Principle of Hope – Block (studying etopin principls – how to nurture in families, transmit through generation, through music, song,
House Calls – by Patch Adams, San Francisco CA, 1998.
