Yom Kippur: Finding hope in times of uncertainty

Sapir Cohen, who was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza last November, has been traveling around the world telling a story about Psalm 27. In a bizarre twist of fate, Sapir, a young secular Israeli woman, began saying this psalm 30 days before the war broke out, in an attempt to quell an irrational existential sense of unease about her well-being.

She and her partner, Sasha Alexander Trupanov, had traveled to Kibbutz Nir Oz to spend Simchat Torah with Sasha’s family. When the missiles fell and Hamas terrorists entered the kibbutz, Sapir describes how she hid under the bed, holding Sasha’s hand, and saying the psalm over and over until it infused her with a sense of calm.

When she was thrown into a truck and taken to Gaza, she felt that the psalm accompanied her into captivity and gave her strength to survive the unthinkable.

Sapir’s story has stayed with me since I heard it, particularly now as we are back at the time of year in which we are again reciting Psalm 27 every day, from the month of Elul until Simchat Torah.

The psalm is filled with allusions to enemies, war, and divine protection. While it starts confidently, it ends on a note of uncertainty. However, the last line echoes with the following message: Hope in the Lord; be strong and of good courage! Hope in the Lord!

But how do we find hope this year as we enter Yom Kippur?

The answer may come from Lamentations. In Chapter 3, verses 18-22, the author screams aloud his pain over the devastation, destruction, and loss all around him. He is sure there is no way to emerge out of the darkness.

My life was bereft of peace,

I forgot what happiness was.

I thought my strength and hope

Had perished before the Lord.

To recall my distress and my misery

Was wormwood and poison;

Whenever I thought of them,

I was bowed low.

But this do I reply to my heart

Therefore I have hope.

The kindness of the Lord has not ended,

His mercies are not spent.

They are renewed every morning –

Ample is Your grace!

“The Lord is my portion,” I say with full heart;

Therefore will I hope in Him.

... Let him put his mouth to the dust –

Perhaps there may be hope.

Within the midst of destruction, death, and exile, there is a moment in which the author suddenly reveals to himself, and us, that there is a different way to respond to such trauma. He can choose to activate a sense of hope by replying to his heart that God’s kindness, despite everything, is renewed daily in the world.

The midrash (Lamentations Rabbah parshat 3) points to self-reflection as key to the hopeful process, with a commentary on the verse “But this do I reply to my heart, therefore I have hope.” It brings a parable in which a king signs a hefty marriage contract for his bride, promising much wealth to her to show his commitment to the marriage.

When he disappears for many years, her neighbors taunt her about her husband’s absence. At these moments, she goes into her home, takes out her contract, and reads it over and over to reassure herself that her husband, the king, will indeed return.

Upon returning, he expresses surprise that she has remained faithful for so long. She tells him that it was his own commitment to her, tangibly expressed in the marriage contract, that allowed her to keep faith.

The midrash then presents an analogy:

“So too, idolaters provoke Israel and say to them: ‘Your God has concealed His face from you and caused His divine presence to depart from you. He will never return to you.’ They cry and sigh. When they enter the synagogues and study halls, read the Torah, and find that it is written ‘I will turn to you, and make you fruitful... I will place My sanctuary in your midst... I will walk in your midst’ (Leviticus 26:9, 11–12), they are comforted.

“Tomorrow, when the end of the redemption comes, the Holy One, blessed be He, will say to Israel: ‘My children, I am astonished over you, how did you wait for Me all those years?’ They will say before Him: ‘Master of the universe, were it not for Your Torah that You gave us, the nations would have caused our demise.’”

THIS PARABLE, and the analogy, reveal deeper meanings. The idolaters call out God’s concealment and departure from His people. In response, Jews enter the synagogues and study halls that they have built and read from the Torah scrolls that they have written.

While the bride is completely dependent on the king to build her home and write the contract, the Jewish people are partners in creating space for God’s presence to rest in this world and write the scrolls that contain the divine covenant, which reassures them of God’s commitment to them.

Furthermore, the verses that we read, according to the midrash, are found in the preamble to some of the harshest punishments God will unleash if we abandon His ways. There, in the juxtaposed verses – the blessings alongside the curses – we find comfort.

Finally, God returns to His people and is astonished that after all of the suffering and pain inflicted upon them, they have remained faithful to His word. The people answer that it is because He gifted them the precious Torah, which gave them the strength to have hope in a brighter future.

The midrashic author ends with this connection between the verse in Lamentations and a verse in Deuteronomy: “This I will reply to my heart.”

“This” refers to the Torah, as it is stated: “And this is the Torah” (Deuteronomy 4:44).”

Even as hopelessness prevails, the midrash reminds us that we are symbiotically connected to the Torah from within each of our hearts. By invoking the word “this,” we can choose to see God’s renewed kindness daily, regardless of whatever state we find ourselves in.

Nonetheless, the Talmud’s Rav Ami is not comforted. In the Talmudic tractate Hagiga, he focuses on the last verse cited above:

Let him put his mouth to the dust –

Perhaps there may be hope.

The description of a mouth touching dust indicates that the person can fall no lower and yet, says the author of Lamentations, perhaps there may be hope!

How do we read that “perhaps”? Is it hopeful? Cynical? When Rav Ami read that verse, he cried out, “All of this, and only perhaps!?”

In other words, where is the certainty that there will be a happy ending? He seems to be saying, “I want to know that we are going to get through terrible suffering and there will be redemption, salvation, and reward! Only perhaps?! It is not enough!”

RAV AMI is echoing what many of us have felt this year: When will we be on the other side of this? When will the hostages return? Will there be redemption and an end to suffering? Despair is found in the uncertainty of “perhaps”!

This passage from the book Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit, offers some insight into these difficult questions:

“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone, or in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable... It’s the belief that what we do matters... And this is grounds to act.”

If there is one message with us from Psalm 27, looking back over this long, dark, terrible year, and forward to the future, it is the ability of the Jewish people to rise up and act. To embrace, simultaneously, the unknown alongside the knowable has indeed given us the strength and courage to find hope. ■

The writer teaches contemporary Halacha at the Matan Advanced Talmud Institute. She also teaches Talmud at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, as well as courses on sexuality and sanctity in the Jewish tradition. She recently published her first book, Uncovered, Women’s Roles, Mitzvot and Sexuality in Jewish Law (Urim).