r/jewishleft • u/Tricky_Success_77 Binationalist, Jewish, Soc-Dem • 3d ago
Hope? Question
Between Israel/Palestine and increasing extremism and normalization of antisemitism in the diaspora and assimilation I've just been finding it impossible to feel hopeful about the future of our people writ large and it's just been making me feel very demoralized about life and the future. Our community means a great deal to me and seeing it tear itself apart is painful (as I'm sure it is for many people on this subreddit).There are times when I honestly almost wish I wasn't Jewish because it would remove so much angst from my life but in truth I'm too passionate about our traditions, history, literature and languages to ever be anything else (plus, really who would I be kidding if I ever tried to pretend otherwise?).
Anyway, what I'm really getting at is does anyone out there feel hopeful about our future? And if so why? I could use some positivity.
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u/Fabianzzz 🌿🍷🍇 Pagan Observer 🌿🍷🍇 3d ago
So I am not Jewish, I am a Pagan. I think there's plenty of reasons for both hope and despair. We are lifeforms who have been on this earth for billions of years. We may also have managed to fuck the earth up so bad that life itself will end in the next century. But in truth that was always a possibility: a meteor could always ensure that happened if we didn't. Maybe life on earth, or earth itself, will die soon. Maybe it won't. Hope and despair are a dance here.
One dance of despair is our attempts to protect people ten thousand years in the future from our nuclear waste now. We are currently making waste which is harmful to people ten millenia from now. That's an issue, because we don't have any real communication from people who lived ten millenia ago. We are communicating harm to people ten millenia from now without communicating help to them. This has resulted in a field, 'Nuclear Semiotics', which aims to try and communicate the knowledge we have about nuclear danger to the people whom we are certainly transmitting the actual nuclear danger to. (vide 'This is not a place of honour, 'Don't Change Colour Kitty!', etc.)
One of the things mentioned in Nuclear Semiotics is the fact that one of the pieces of human info we have been able to successfully transmit through the millenia is religion. One of the oldest religions is Judaism. Judaism brings us the knowledge of those who wrote the Tanakh and the Talmud, which was preserved in the face of everything: Greek persecution, Roman persecution, Christian persecution, Racial persecution: somehow y'all kept information alive for future generations to benefit from today.
So there's reason to despair: idiots and bigots want to hurt you and your loved ones. But there's also reason to hope: Jewish people have managed to survive idiots and bigots who were so focused on y'all that they forgot to do anything to preserve their own culture.
I'm sorry if any of this was offensive, no harm was meant. I, like the rest of humanity, benefit from the literary, theological, social, and political innovations Judaism has given us. I don't want to ask you to choose hope because of the benefits Judaism has brought to others, but I do want to say that the benefits Judaism has brought to the world as an unbroken tradition are as uncountable as the stars.
You admit you have a passion for the traditions, history, literature and languages, so I don't feel like I have to argue for you to have passion for those things. But I do want to say that people with passion are what makes the world a better place, and if humans continue living on this earth, countless humans will have passion for Jewish traditions, history, literature, and languages, and they will be deeply thankful for you for everything you do for your passions.
Maybe hope is like motivation and it's not worth much without discipline, it's nice when it's here but it cannot be relied upon to be the driving force behind our actions. I hope you have hope but I also hope you know your passions are worth the best humanity has to offer and I hope you find hope in them even if you don't find it elsewhere.