Clergy Sermons

At the end of a big Jewish community event last fall - the Z3 conference - all of us community rabbis were invited up on the stage to lead the singing of Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. 

Hatikvah, as many of you know, means “the hope”. The song describes the two thousand year-old hope of the Jewish people, that someday we would return to our homeland. 

עוד לא אבדה תקוותינו – Our hope is not yet lost

My colleague, Rabbi David Booth, introduced the song with these words: “Hope is the Jewish superpower.” 

I liked that description. Because it’s true. We could not have survived 2000 years of exile and oppression, if we had not, somehow, managed to cherish hope.

This summer, I had the revitalizing experience of studying for a week at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. There I heard Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum teach a long session about hope. She said:  “To be Jewish is to stand at the abyss, and then to ascend.”

Hope is different from optimism. It’s not naive. It’s not blind. It’s not cognitive. You might be optimistic that x-y-and-z good things will happen, and then shield your eyes from the possibility that actually a-b-and-c bad things might happen instead. 

Hope is much less specific. Hope is a feeling, not an idea. 

It is a feeling of possibility.

Even when you are standing in the pit of darkness, hope leaves you open to the possibility that there is light ahead.

Michelle Obama described “the contagious power of hope.” Because feelings are contagious. Anger is contagious, Fear is contagious. But laughter and joy are also contagious. And so is hope.

Sivan, you chose for your Tsedakah Project an organization that for me epitomizes the power of hope. 

For those who came in late and missed Sivan’s spectacular drash - she talked about Complete Picture, a non-profit that is working to humanize our criminal justice system. They create short documentary videos about defendants for non-violent crimes. The judge views the video before issuing a sentence, and invariably the sentences issued are far more humane as a result. 

The founders of Complete Picture, Rebecca Grace and John Gray, were CBJ members for many years. Their daughter went through our Religious School. Although their family relocated to Oregon a couple years ago, they still feel very connected here, and I personally remain very involved with their work. 

Let me tell you, starting a non-profit is not easy. And starting a non-profit to reform our criminal justice system - ooph, that is possibly the most difficult thing any person could aspire to. 

There are few abysses in this country more deep than the criminal justice system. But John and Rebecca are determined to ascend. They never seem to lose hope.

Where does that hope come from? I want to share some of their story with you, because I want us all to benefit from its contagious power.

It starts with John and Rebecca’s relationship. Rebecca is a gifted documentary film-maker. But she’s also a patient teacher, and she was working as an art teacher in a public school. John’s son - from a previous marriage - was a student in her class. John volunteered to chaperone a field trip, and that’s how they met. Rebecca knew right away, he was her soul mate. 

Not every partnership is so blessed, to be connected at that deep level of soul.

But John had a past that haunted him, and influencers that were not good for him, and he was pulled into a very bleak situation. He became addicted to crack. 

Drug addiction is an illness, as surely as cancer or Covid. It decimates the body. John became a ghost of himself. His teeth fell out. He was skinny as a rail. 

Even worse than what the drug did to his body is what it did to his mind. He behaved in ways that were alien to the person Rebecca loved. But she never lost sight of who John really was, underneath the illness that had overcome him. She knew his soul. As we say every morning in the daily prayers - the soul God gave him was pure. 

In the midst of all this, Rebecca became pregnant - with their daughter - the one who would later attend CBJ Religious School, and who today is an incredibly talented writer and artist and empathic young person. But back then, John would steal her baby formula, so he could return it to the store and use the money to buy crack. Such is the evil power of addiction. 

He committed worse crimes, and eventually he was arrested. Here is how John describes that time: 

“It was a spiraling insanity. I felt like I was stuck in quicksand and there was no way out. I was hopeless. But Becky never gave up on me.”

In Rebecca’s words: “I knew that if John went to prison, he would die. And I was determined to stand in front of something that had come to devour a good soul.”

They had no money. John was assigned a public defender, who barely gave him the time of day. Rebecca wrote out an impassioned, personal plea, begging the judge to take pity on her husband and on the father of her daughter. She had no one else to watch the baby, so she went to the courthouse wearing her in a front carrier. But when she arrived at the courthouse, no one could tell her where to deliver the letter. She began wandering around, looking for the right office. The security guards started giving her dirty looks, so she ducked into the elevator to get away from them.

She spent the entire day in the courthouse building, dodging the security guards, riding up and down the elevator, knocking on office doors. The whole time, carrying the baby, and a bag of diapers and baby food. She felt humiliated, and exhausted, and desperate. But she could not give up. Finally someone took pity on her and said he would give the letter to the judge. 

She doesn’t know if the letter actually helped. John was released on house arrest, but that might only be because the LA prisons are so overcrowded. He was not offered any rehab services. And breaking a crack addiction without medical support is almost impossible.

But the most amazing part of the story is that John did break the addiction. Their tiny apartment had a little porch, with a rocking swing. He spent three months doing literally nothing but rocking on that swing. Well, it looked like he was doing nothing. But inside, what he was doing was ridding himself of the illness. 

Today, those of us who know John can hardly believe this story. He is a gentle, devoted father. A dedicated, strong partner to Rebecca. And the two of them together are saving souls and giving people hope, through their non-profit, Complete Picture.

Rebecca’s story gave me a new understanding of Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum’s teaching. To be Jewish is to ascend, not despite the abyss, but because of it. To know suffering, and to actively choose to reject it, in favor of love and hope.

Rebecca is very clear - her hope emerged from her love. She could NOT give up on this man, because she knew the beauty of his soul. And now, each time she creates a sentencing video, she channels those feelings into the scared, broken person before her. She looks them in the eye and tells them they can survive this. She gives them hope.

Look again at the verse Sivan taught us:

נָת֤וֹן תִּתֵּן֙ ל֔וֹ וְלֹא־יֵרַ֥ע לְבָבְךָ֖ בְּתִתְּךָ֣ ל֑וֹ כִּ֞י בִּגְלַ֣ל ׀ הַדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֗ה יְבָרֶכְךָ֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ בְּכָֽל־מַעֲשֶׂ֔ךָ וּבְכֹ֖ל מִשְׁלַ֥ח יָדֶֽךָ׃

Give readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return your God יהוה will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings.

Sivan - you raised an excellent question about that verse. A question I had never considered before. Is the Torah commanding us to not have regrets? I loved your answer. I’m going to offer another answer, because that’s power of Torah. Each question has 70 good answers. This one only came to me after talking to Rebecca this week.

If you understand Hebrew, you will see that there are multiple ways the first part of the verse can be translated. An equal valid translation is something like this:  Give readily, and you WILL have no bitterness in your heart. 

It can be read as a promise, rather than a demand.

If you give, the giving removes the bitterness from the heart. It’s the giving that banishes the abyss, and creates the hope.

In these dark times, how can we feel hope? 

Rebecca’s answer is this - let your love overwhelm your fear. Love for Israel, love for America, love for peace, love for humanity, love for our planet. Rebecca said she could not NOT fight for John, because she “saw his genuine beauty and his goodness.”  Can we say any less for the countries we love?

John’s answer is the inverse: ”Hope is having someone who believes in you.” 

He’s right, too. We hear repeatedly from Israelis that our hope for them, our belief in them, helps them to hold on to hope in this time of hardship.

I’ll close with one last little anecdote. When I called Rebecca this week, the first thing I told her was that one of our bat-mitzvah students had remembered Complete Picture, and chosen it for her Tsedakah Project. Do you know what Rebecca said? Her tone of voice was flooded with gratitude, and she said, “That gives me hope.”