How do you get from heartbroken to hopeful? 

So many rabbis and Jewish scholars I respect are imploring us to remain optimistic about a resolution to the Middle East war. They remind us of a myriad of  challenges to the Jewish people’s survival throughout history and how our people withstood those existential threats and rebuilt what was lost. Of course, it’s heartening that we still exist. But it does not stop me from being heartbroken about Israel’s predicament today and the suffering its people are enduring in a war that I’d venture to guess nobody thought would still be going on.

I’m heartbroken that Israel’s weary soldiers must fight on so many fronts. I’m heartbroken because on what was already a bittersweet Independence Day in the midst of war, forest fires blazed, marring the celebration even further.

Ironically, on that day an article about the fires from an Arab website appeared on my iPhone. “Israel Helpless Against Wildfires, Rushes to Blame ‘Terrorism,’  the Moroccan World News.com proclaimed. The article went on: “The state with bombs for Gaza lacks firefighting planes at home, desperately seeking European rescue as flames advance unchecked.”

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The author’s undertones of glee at Israel’s suffering also were heartbreaking. I asked myself, “How can one people fight this cascade of ill will?”

And then on Sunday, May 4, a missile hit in the vicinity of Ben Gurion Airport and airlines started canceling flights—some for a few days, others for a few months.  As CNN reported that day, “The Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack saying it was carried out ‘in rejection of Israel’s crime of genocide’ against the people of Gaza.”

I know Israelis are resilient, but a voice within me asked, “How much unwarranted upheaval can one country endure?”

Our rabbis ask us to have faith, to look to God when things are tough. I’ve always maintained that whatever injustices befall our world, I cannot become an atheist because I can’t prove that God does not exist. And so I choose to tell myself that God’s choices as to whether, when, and how to intervene in the happenings of this world are a mystery beyond my comprehension. In the same way, could I tell myself that I should remain optimistic that the war will end and all will be ok, even though a solution is beyond my ability to envision?

It’s asking too much. I can’t go from heartbroken to optimistic that we Zionists will soon witness the peace and global acceptance we yearn for. But what about having hope? Is having hope the same as being optimistic? Not for the renowned late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the Commonwealth of England. It just so happens that he recorded a brief video in 2010 addressing the topic “Optimism vs. Hope.” I always seem to come across his words of wisdom when I do an internet search of moral questions that are plaguing me.

Rabbi Sacks explained:

“People often confuse optimism and hope. They sound similar. But in fact, they’re very different. Optimism is the belief that things are going to get better. Hope is the belief that if we work hard enough together, we can make things better. It needs no courage, just a certain naivety to be an optimist. It needs a great deal of courage to have hope.

“No Jew, knowing what we do about history and our own past so often written in tears, can be an optimist. But no Jew, who is a true Jew, can ever give up hope. And that is why Judaism is for me the voice of hope in the conversation of humankind.

“And hope is what transforms the human situation.”

In listening to this one-minute video, you can hear the eloquence of his wisdom.

Rabbi Sacks’ analysis leads me to realize that optimism is a Pollyanna choice and that’s why I can’t magically transition from heartbroken to blindly optimistic. First I have to acknowledge the current reality and my fear of the unknown in this Mideast war and then summon the courage to hope for a palatable resolution. I know I have to push away the surges of gloom and doom that overwhelm my mind. I know I have to put aside pessimism and have faith and hope that creative and compassionate minds will take center stage and the forces of the universe will coalesce to bring a resolution that all involved can abide.

And as Rabbi Sacks implies, I can work hard together with others to “make things better.”

I don’t have delusions of grandeur as to what I can do as an American Zionist. But I can promise myself that I will continue to join proudly with my fellow Zionists in Hadassah and the synagogues I belong to in standing with Israel, with love and empathy — and money. I will do what I can to dispel disinformation that fills the airways and social media by telling whoever will listen the true story of how our Jewish homeland came into existence through a legitimate majority vote of the United Nations; I will try to get them to empathize with the unwarranted existential threat Israel faces over and over; and I will remind them of the many ways Israel has, indeed, been a valuable citizen of the world.

But as I wrote those words, a memory from many moons ago  resurfaced to haunt me. It is a comment from a college student in my family, who said to me, “Until you are ready to value a Palestinian life as much as an Israeli one, no one is going to care what you have to say.”

Do some of us have some soul searching to do?

Of course, we Jews find all the loss of human life in Gaza extremely painful. We don’t internalize it lightly. But Israel is fighting a brutal terrorist enemy that wants to eliminate the Jewish state. To achieve that end, these terrorists choose to put their own people in harm’s way. How is Israel to avoid the loss of innocent Palestinian lives while ensuring the continued existence of its homeland?

Whatever our deep-seated feelings or inner struggles, whatever we believe to be the truth with a capital T, a huge leap of faith seems indispensable. That leap, combined with small, heartfelt moral actions may help us transition from heartbroken to hopeful.

Lonye Debra Rasch of Short Hills is a past president of the Northern New Jersey region of Hadassah and a member of Hadassah’s national assembly and the Hadassah Writers Circle. Married to an international attorney and the mother of two daughters and grandmother of three small children, she is a big advocate of yoga, book clubs, and time with family and friends.