54. Mark Weiss, “Netanyahu’s Likud Party Hits Back at President over Criticism,” Irish Times, October 24, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/netanyahu-s-likud-party-hits-back-at-israel-s-president-over-criticism-1.3267572.
55. Barak Ravid, “New Israeli Organization Aims to Be First Right-wing Palestinian Rights Watchdog,” Haaretz, March 14, 2013, https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-rightists-want-to-safeguard-human-rights-too-1.5233945.
56. Hendel, Sichot al Tikvah Yisraelit, 9.
57. “A people that dwells alone,” Num. 23:9; “A light unto the nations,” Isa. 42:6, 49:6.
58. BT Yoma 9b.
59. Here’s another example of such integration. In July 2019, for the first time, Bank Leumi, Israel’s oldest bank, appointed Samer Haj-Yehia, an Arab, to serve as its chairman. See Michael Rochvarger and Tali Heruti-Sover, “In First, Arab Israeli Appointed Chairman of Board at Israel’s Biggest Bank,” Haaretz, July 2, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-in-first-arab-israeli-appointed-chairman-of-board-at-israel-s-biggest-bank-1.7428366. And, in June 2021, Ra’am, an Arab party, was the first such party invited to serve in the government. In the 1950s the Arab Democratic List participated in ruling coalitions, but did not actually serve in the government. See “Parliamentary Groups,” Knesset, https://www.knesset.gov.il/faction/eng/FactionPage_eng.asp?PG=85, accessed June 18, 2021.
60. For more on this economic development plan, see “Government Resolution 922 (GR-922): Five-Year Economic Development Plan for Arab Society 2016–2020,” published by the Inter-Agency Taskforce on Israeli Arab Issues, https://www.iataskforce.org/sites/default/files/resource/resource-1976.pdf, accessed June 14, 2021. 1976.pdf. For a parallel government plan addressing the Negev Bedouin, see “Government Resolution 2397: Socio-Economic Development Plan for Negev Bedouin: 2017–2021,” published by the Inter-Agency Taskforce on Israeli Arab Issues, March 3, 2017, https://www.iataskforce.org/sites/default/files/resource/resource-1500.pdf.
61. “Dr. Eilon Schwartz’s Opening Remarks from the Shaharit Local Elections Conference,” Shaharit, https://www.shaharit.org.il/dr-eilon-schwartzs-opening-remarks-from-the-local-elections-conference/?lang=en, accessed June 11, 2021.
62. Ephraim Urbach, one of the last century’s greatest scholars on Rabbinic literature, argues that the famous debate about whether it would have better for the world not to have been created (BT Eruvin 13b) really pertains to the specific case about a person who studied Torah with no intention of observing it, or to other circumscribed sins: “The expression ‘it were better for him not to have been created’ in the aforementioned sources does not embody a pessimistic philosophy.” See Urbach, Sages, 254.
63. “The Population of Ethiopian Origin in Israel: Selected Data,” media release by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, November 11, 2020, https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2020/358/11_20_358e.pdf.
64. Gili Cohen, “Israeli Military to Scrap Preparatory Course for Soldiers of Ethiopian Background,” Haaretz, November 13, 2015, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-idf-scraps-course-for-ethiopian-troops-1.5420982.
65. Tamara Traubman, “Feminist Alice Shalvi Wins Israel’s Top Prize for Lifetime Achievement,” Haaretz, March 26, 2007, https://www.haaretz.com/1.4813047.
66. In a mid-1980s meeting with all ten of Israel’s female members of parliament, Geula Cohen, a far-right-wing member of the parliament, suggested that IWN aim for what then seemed like a radical goal: women should comprise 30 percent of the Knesset. See Shalvi, Never a Native, 4930, Kindle.
67. For more on these struggles, see the chapter entitled “Israel Defense Forces” in Shalvi’s Never a Native.
68. Tamar linked this expression to Yosef Haim Brenner, one of the early pioneers of modern Hebrew literature. He used the expression to describe his support of Zionism, which he affirmed despite certain doubts. Not in the context of hope, the expression also appears frequently in Rabbinic literature, as early as the Mishnah, c. 200 CE.
69. Buber, “Renewal of Judaism,” 34–55.
70. OJPS.
71. “Rav Menachem Bombach Commemorates IDF Remembrance Day,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsaJXHKF5Cg, accessed June 14, 2021.
72. For more on this issue, see “On Culture and Poverty in Haredi Society,” Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, June 2017, https://machon.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/On-Culture-and-Poverty-in-Haredi-Society-Kaliner-Kasir-and-Tsachor-Shai-June-2016.pdf.
73. Rebecca Harvey, “Arab Bedouin Volunteer Center Receives Award for Excellence,” Coop News, July 5, 2016, https://www.thenews.coop/107007/sector/community/arab-bedouin-volunteer-center-receives-award-excellence/.
74. For a list of Eran’s publications, see https://www.eranhalperin.com/publications, accessed June 14, 2021. Most of these are available to read or download on this site. For anyone interested in research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of hope, despair, fear, and so on, this is the place to go!
75. Goldberg et al., “Testing the Impact and Durability of a Group Malleability Intervention,” 696–701.
76. Goldberg et al., “Making Intergroup Contact More Fruitful,” 3–10.
77. “Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?,” https://israel.co.il/.
78. For an overview of the reconciliation process, see Megan Specia, “How a Nation Reconciles after Genocide Killed Nearly a Million People,” New York Times, April 25, 2017. For a deeper look, see “Rwanda Reconciliation Barometer,” Republic of Rwanda National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, https://www.nurc.gov.rw/fileadmin/Documents/Others/Rwanda_Reconciliation_Barometer_2015.pdf, accessed June 11, 2021.
79. Lopez, Making Hope Happen, 213, Kindle. Futurist Jamais Cascio coined the term SEHI in his March 24, 2008, blog post, “Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals,” Open the Future, http://www.openthefuture.com/2008/03/superempowered_hopeful_individ.html, accessed June 11, 2021.
80. Makom: The Jewish Agency for Israel Education Lab, https://web.archive.org/web/20191026194105/http://makomisrael.org/israeli-ngos/, accessed June 11, 2021.
1. Lipman, Laughter in Hell, 10.
2. Paul Whitington, “From the Marx Brother to Seinfeld—How Jewish Comedy Has Dominated Hollywood,” Independent.ie, February 29, 2020, https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/from-the-marx-brothers-to-seinfeld-how-jewish-comedy-has-dominated-hollywood-38997386.html. The ubiquity of American Jewish comedians both reflects and contributes to the centrality of humor in American Jewish identity. In the Pew Research Center’s 2013 “Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 42 percent of respondents said “having a good sense of humor” was an essential part of what it means to be Jewish to them, placing “humor” between “caring about Israel” (43 percent) and “being part of a Jewish community” (28 percent). Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” October 1, 2013, 14, https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2013/10/jewish-american-full-report-for-web.pdf. By contrast, only 9 percent of Israeli Jews say that having a good sense of humor is an essential part of being Jewish. See Michael Lipka, “A Closer Look at Jewish Identity in Israel and the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, March 16, 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/03/16/a-closer-look-at-jewish-identity-in-israel-and-the-u-s/. A 2020 study of Jewish millennials found 58 percent describe themselves as “funny,” just behind the top item, “intellectually curious” (60 percent). See Atlantic75, “Unlocking the Future of Jewish Engagement,” March 2020, 18, https://www.jewishdatabank.org/content/upload/bjdb/2018_Unlocking_Future_of_Jewish_Engagement_Final_Digital_Report_Mar_2020.pdf.
3. Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, 186.
4. Vilaythong, “Humor and Hope,” 79–89. For the study on humor and optimism, see Ford, McCreight, and Richardson, “Affective Style, Humor Styles and Happiness,” 451–63, available at http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/766/html.
5. Horowitz, “Effect of Positive Emotions on Health,” 201.
6. From the catalogue of exhibit Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany, 1982. See also Phaidon Editors, Art Is the Highest Form of Hope.
7. Gimbel, Isn’t That Clever, 3.
8. Snyder, Psychology of Hope, 1034–39, Kindle. Philosopher and professor of religion John D. Caputo comes to a somewhat similar conclusion: “A smile is a diminutive form of laughter, laughter with discretion, without disturbing anyone else with our outburst. The smile is a silent affirmation of life, a subtle embrace of life, a weak force strong enough to sustain life and give it hope. To smile when it is impossible to smile—what greater strength is there than that? . . . The smile gives us grounds for hope, albeit groundless grounds, for hoping against hope, for smiles can turn into frowns, and laughter into tears, which means that hope, an audacious hope, knows how to smile through our tears.” See Caputo, Hoping against Hope, 40, 41, Kindle.
9. Cohen, Jokes, 29, Kindle.
10. Scioli and Biller, Hope in the Age of Anxiety, 5333, Kindle.
11. This volume is considered a landmark because it is the first comprehensive classification of psychological strengths—that is, positive psychology—as counterpoint to the weaknesses or pathologies addressed by most diagnostic manuals. This handbook lists strengths of transcendence as the last of the six strengths.
12. Peterson and Seligman, Character Strengths and Virtues, 519.
13. For Erikson on hope and basic trust, see Childhood and Society, 247–51, and “What Is Hope?” under Resources at choosinghope.net.
14. For more on peekaboo, see Fernald and O’Neill, “Peekaboo across Cultures”; Martin, Psychology of Humor, 230–34.
15. Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 211, 215. Brackets were added by this author to create a more gender-sensitive text.
16. Whedbee, Bible and the Comic Vision, 1904, 1905, Kindle. Also see Adele Berlin’s comments about Esther as farce in Berlin and Brettler, Jewish Study Bible, 1623–24.
17. Barack Obama, author of The Audacity of Hope, knew something about humor as well. Many called him “the Comedian in Chief.” See, for example, Timothy Egan, “A Farewell to the Comedian in Chief,” New York Times, November 25, 2016.
18. Exodus Rabbah 43:6. The midrash is based on Exodus 32:11: “But Moses implored (va’yichal) YHWH his God, saying, ‘Let not Your anger, YHWH, blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with Your great power and with a mighty hand.’”
19. Martin, Psychology of Humor, 6.
20. William Barrett, “The Promise and the Pale,” Commentary, September 1, 1946, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-promise-and-the-pale/. The Pale refers to the region in western Russia in which Jews were allowed to settle between 1791 and 1917. Jewish residents lived in extreme poverty and were subject to intermittent violence and harsh persecution.
21. This version of the story is a slight paraphrase of that found in Dresner, World of a Hasidic Master, 79, 80. The connection between God’s tefillin and the verse from Chronicles is found in BT Berakhot 6a.
22. A number of writers on Jewish humor have commented on this. See, for example, Berger, Genius of the Jewish Joke, 32–35; Cohen, Jokes, 52, Kindle.
23. Based on Onkelos’s Aramaic translation of the Bible, Rashi (on Gen. 17:17) distinguishes between Abraham’s laughter, which he interprets as rejoicing, and Sarah’s, described as sneering. For our purposes, the point is that Abraham and Sarah use the same Hebrew words when they speak of laughter. For a good treatment on humor and hope in the stories involving Isaac, see Kaminsky, “Humor and the Theology of Hope: Isaac as a Humorous Figure,” 363–75.
24. Note a subtle incongruity: Sarah first refers to her aged husband, but in the subsequent verse when God paraphrases Sarah, God has her refer to her old age alone. Genesis Rabbah 48:18 explains: Had God reported Sarah’s words accurately to Abraham, it could have resulted in marital strife. God therefore shades the truth. The midrash concludes, “Even scripture spoke untruthfully to preserve peace between Abraham and Sarah.” God seems to understand how fragile the male ego can sometimes be; even the centenarian Abraham may take umbrage if his ninety-year-old wife impugns his virility. Anything to keep the peace.
25. Genesis Rabbah 48:19. The Hebrew involves a play on words. When referring to their ability to fashion locks and human beings, the smith and God say, ani yakhol, “I can.” Affirming their capacity to make repairs, they conclude with an interrogative exclamation, aini yakhol, “I can’t?!.” “This I can do! That I can’t?!” It sounds like the punch line of a Yiddish joke.
26. The term for the two parts of a lock, kuplayot, is ambiguous. Jastrow, 1338, indicates that the term can mean a padlock, which suggests the possibility that one of the two parts the man holds in his hand is the lock, and the other the key. The simile also echoes many biblical references to God’s having shut fast the wombs of women unable to bear children. One such reference occurs just two verses before Sarah gives birth to Isaac.
27. Cohen, Jokes, 55, Kindle.
28. Wiesel, Messengers of God, 96–97, Kindle. Wiesel’s reference to Isaac having been marked by the Holocaust reflects the fact that God tells Abraham to offer up Isaac as an olah, a fully burnt offering (Gen. 22:2), and in Greek “holocaust” refers to precisely such an offering.
29. Ezrahi, “After Such Knowledge, What Laughter?,” 306. For all its skepticism about when the Messiah will come, Judaism doesn’t rule out the possibility. Others have viewed the concept of the Messiah as a promise that can never be fulfilled in the present. This second view prompted the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot to tell a joke about a man who meets the Messiah at the gates of the city and asks, “When will you come?” For a discussion of this, see Currie, The Unexpected, 91.
30. This appears in Avot de Rabbi Natan, a minor tractate of the Talmud, chap. 31, version B.
31. BT Gittin 56a and 56b relate the story of Ben Zakkai’s escape from Jerusalem and encounter with Vespasian.
32. See chapter 7, note 53, p. 259.
33. Encyclopedia Judaica, 8:1164.
34. The epigram appears in many secondary sources. This version comes from Pinsker, Schlemiel as Metaphor, 6. For a slightly different version, see Dubnow, History of the Jews, 743.
35. Reik, Jewish Wit, 93.
36. Quoted in Pinsker, Schlemiel as Metaphor, 2.
37. Quoted in Epstein, Treasury of Jewish Inspirational Stories, 128.
38. Maimonides, On the Regime of Health, 84. For Maimonides’ sense of humor, see Kraemer, Maimonides, 322, Kindle.
39. Recounted by Robert P. Imbelli, in “The Coming of the Son of Man,” Commonweal, November 17, 2012, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/coming-son-man.
40. Wisse, Schlemiel as Modern Hero, 117, 5.
41. Alter, “Jewish Humor and the Domestication of Myth,” 26.
42. Howe, “Nature of Jewish Laughter,” 21.
43. Cohen, Jokes, 91–93. I’ve condensed Cohen’s original version.
44. Howe, “Nature of Jewish Laughter,” 23.
45. Pinsker, Schlemiel as Metaphor, 178–79. When asked how he could possibly write his doctoral dissertation on the schlemiel, Pinkser told this joke.
46. Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Hell, Canto 3, 13.
47. Quoted in Dournon, Dictionnaire des Citations Françaises.
48. Lipman, Laughter in Hell, 10.
49. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 43.
50. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 42.
51. Lipman includes the story of this play in a powerful chapter called “The Humor of Optimism.” Lipman, Laughter in Hell, 71–73.
52. Howe, “Nature of Jewish Laughter,” 17.
53. BT Bava Metzi’a, 59b.
54. BT Avodah Zarah, 3b.
55. For the material on Soloveitchik and Kaplan, see Daniel Feldman, “Does God Have a Sense of Humor,” Jewish Action, May 23, 2013, https://www.ou.org/jewish_action/05/2013/does-god-have-a-sense-of-humor/.
56. Cox, Feast of Fools, 157.
57. Kishon, Funniest Man in the World, 145.
1. Luzzatto, Otzrot Ramch”al, Drush B’inyan Ha-Kivui, 246–47, HB 51264.
2. Wiesel, “A Meditation on Hope,” last page, pages not numbered.
3. Yerushalmi, “Toward a History of Jewish Hope,” 6277, Kindle.
4. Midrash Lekach Tov on Song of Songs 5:6. Also see Midrash Lekach Tov on Leviticus 22:33.
5. This verse follows OJPS.
6. This verse follows Alter.
7. Midrash Lekach Tov on Song of Songs 5:6.
8. Marcel, 53.
9. Snyder, Psychology of Hope, 3732–34, Kindle.
10. Cox, Feast of Fools, 157.
11. Kishon, “The Brilliant Career of Professor Honig,” in More of the Funniest Man in the World, 131.
12. See Long and Carney, A Hard-Fought Hope.
13. As a meditation on the theological conundrum of innocent suffering, Job does not promote the solution advocated by Daniel, and later by most sages of Rabbinic Judaism: that the righteous will receive their due reward through resurrection and a blissful afterlife. Job hoped for vindication in this world, even if he wondered if he’d live to see it.
14. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 143.
15. Matthew Choi, “Warnock Pledges to Be a Senator for All,” politico.com, January 6, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/warnock-ahead-georgia-455289.
16. Genesis Rabbah 11: 6.
17. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 107.
18. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 9:2, in MR, 83.
19. Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb,” New York Times, January 21, 2021.
20. Snyder, Psychology of Hope, 153–269, Kindle; and see “What Is Hope?” under Resources at choosinghope.net.
21. Alas, the scholarly literature on Judaism and hope remains painfully thin. A 2020 book edited by Charles van den Heuvel, Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope, with chapters on hope in ancient Greece and early Christianity, says very little about Judaism, although it does contain a wonderful chapter by psychologists Oded Adomi Leshem and Eran Halperin on hope as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (179–96). The book can be downloaded at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-46489-9.
22. Rycroft, “Steps to an Ecology of Hope,” 4.
23. Marcel, 51.
24. Yitzchak Blazer, a leader of the nineteenth-century Musar movement, which concentrated on personal ethics and piety, wrote a commentary on Deuteronomy’s injunction to “choose life.” It begins: “For the love of life is in your hands. For God has opened before you a ‘gateway of hope,’ petach tikvah [Hosea 2:17].” See Salanter and Blazer, Or Yisrael, 16, HB 14564, BI.
25. Technically, the verb l’kavot, “to hope,” does not exist in the form used in this expression, although it does for the verb l’hikavot, which means “to flow,” “gather,” or “form a body of liquid.” Both verbs have identical roots, kof-vav-hey. Hebrew speakers familiar with the expression chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek understand the meaning of kaveh, kaveh, v’nitkaveh perfectly well.