Jewish optimism and joy beat doom and gloom - The Jewish Chronicle

I was in Golders Green last Sunday and saw people wearing sandals. At first I thought it was just one of those eccentric north‑west London fashion moments, breathable footwear as a community project, and then it dawned on me it was Tishah b’Av.
A mea culpa moment. I should have known. This isn’t just another date in the diary, it’s the day when millions of practising Jews gather together and fast in grief, remembering every destruction, every exile, every time history turned against us. Cue me, standing in Carmelli bakery with an egg bagel, suddenly feeling like the least observant Jew in NW11 and guilty, not for what I was buying but for forgetting what day it was, briefly wondering if I should atone by buying everyone a tray of rugelach.

This year, that grief felt heavier than usual. The WhatsApp groups, those anxious, late‑night lifelines every Jew seems to belong to now were in overdrive. Endless news links, unverified rumours and people fighting about what any of it means. Inevitably, someone breaks the tension by posting an ancient Jewish meme; the one about “Two Jews, three opinions,” or the rabbi who answers every question with another question. It’s always like that; tragedy, panic, and then (because we can’t help ourselves) a joke about our own worrying.

I was preparing to host breakfast telly the following morning wading through my briefs and trying to memorise which minister was resigning this week when my phone buzzed. Another WhatsApp notification from one of the approximately 6,000 Jewish groups I seem to be in. It was a mega doom‑tweet. Not just gloomy but apocalyptic. The kind of message delivered with the quiet triumph of someone who loves being first with bad news. You know the type: the head‑tilter. “I hate to tell you this,” they say, with all the sincerity of someone who’s absolutely thrilled to be telling you this. The digital equivalent of someone knocking on your door just to announce, “Things are even bleaker than you thought.”

I get where the fear comes from. We are living through terrible times; horror in Gaza, antisemitism rising in places where we thought it had been house‑trained out of existence. We come by our anxiety honestly. Jews are the evolutionary winners of worry: the people who saw trouble coming and prepared early. The ones who heard, “It’ll all blow over by Chanukah,” and thought, Better pack a bag anyway, those optimists didn’t make it to see Chanukah.

But here’s the truth: we don’t just have anxiety fatigue. We have apocalypse fatigue. The loudest voices seem addicted to it. As if every headline must be framed as Holocaust 2.0, every incident proof that the world is against us. It isn’t only exhausting; it’s corrosive. It flattens history, steals our perspective and robs us of something essential: joy.

Jewish joy is not naïve. It is not Pollyanna optimism. It is, in fact, radical. The rabbi I loved most used to say that a Jewish joke was the highest form of prayer because finding light in darkness isn’t frivolous, it’s sacred. It’s tikkun olam: the stubborn belief that the world can be healed even when it looks beyond repair.

So what do we have to be optimistic about? For a start: we are still here. After every exile, pogrom and genocide, we gather for Friday night dinners, more people than ever, and frankly, with better smoked salmon. Jewish life is thriving in ways our grandparents could not have imagined; from schools and synagogues full of children, to cultural renaissances in film, food and music. We have allies: extraordinary non‑Jewish friends who step in to defend us, often more fiercely than we defend ourselves. Most importantly, we still laugh – properly laugh – even when the world outside seems as if it’s burning.

Optimism isn’t ignoring reality. It’s refusing to surrender to it. Woody Allen famously said Jewish history is “one long, unbroken chain of disasters interrupted by occasional miracles”. I’d put it differently: Jewish history is one long chain of disasters survived and then turned into stories, songs, festivals and food. It’s a refusal to let the worst thing be the last thing.

That doesn’t mean turning away from suffering. We fast on Tishah b’Av for a reason. We mourn what we’ve lost. But the day ends deliberately with a turn towards hope because despair is forbidden. It hands victory to our enemies before they’ve even arrived.

So the next time someone sends you the ultimate doom‑tweet, resist the urge to join the pile‑on. Reply with something else; not false cheer, but stubborn joy. A reminder that being joyful isn’t a luxury or a distraction, it’s Jewish defiance. And right now, it may be the most radical act of all.

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Tishah b'Av