How We -- As Clergy -- Handle the Issue of Hope When Despair is Imminent:  A Brief Thought, 1/21/10

by Rabbi David J. Cooper

At today’s Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) meeting, I addressed the issue of what might we as clergy offer our congregants in the wake of political setbacks such as the loss of the 60 vote majority in the senate in the wake of the Massachusetts election.

I addressed the idea of the covenant. In Deuteronomy (to be overly simple), the covenant between God and the people is one of quid pro quo: if you are good children – you get rewarded; if you are bad – you get punished.

But we know that this is not consistently true. The 20th century has showed us that the good often get punished and the evil often get rewarded. But the biblical scripture also affirms this reality in the book of Job which affirms that bad things often do happen to good people.

How does this affect our understanding of the “covenant”? Perhaps it leads us to a place where we must recognize that the covenant obligates us to assume our responsibility for doing what needs to be done to make the world a better place without any quid pro quo, that is, without any expectation that our efforts are guaranteed to be rewarded with success. In fact, to some degree, it is necessary that there be no guarantee, because if there were, we might not expend the necessary effort to bring about the results we seek because we would be operating under the illusion that our efforts – so long as they are in good faith – are sure to be rewarded.

If we seek any quid pro quo, the closest we can get to it might be the following: while we cannot expect a guarantee that a positive result will emerge from our best efforts, there is a guarantee that a negative result will be the outcome if we do not act. Also, our reward might be that should the positive result emerge, we can take credit for it and celebrate the success.

The other thing I spoke of today was about community and isolation. The powers that be would have us all stand on the idea of American individualism and self-reliance. In short, there is nothing better for upholding the status quo than each of us isolating ourselves and sitting before CNN and Fox in the confines of our own easy chair absorbing the news – which is framed to frighten or alarm us – and feeling increasingly impotent to do anything to effect the situation. But when we join in community and are engaged with each other to address what confronts us, we feel our power and are enabled to act. In short, nothing is more subversive than to join in community to resist what we must resist and build what is ours to build.

We do our work in community knowing that there are no guarantees and that it is highly unlikely that any of us will live so long as to see the fulfillment of all our dreams. But this should not discourage us. It behooves us to remember the story of Moses – just because he did not make it to the promised land did not render his efforts any less valuable.

In the writings of the early rabbis (Ethics of the Elders / Pirkey Avot of the Mishna) Rabbi Tarphon says: “It is not upon you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”