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In dark times, the new year calls us to unity, faith and hope
The belief that tomorrow can be better and the duty to help make it so is Judaism’s gift to the world and our legacy
September 18, 2025 14:16
2 min read
The belief that tomorrow can be better and the duty to help make it so is Judaism’s gift to the world and our legacy
September 18, 2025 14:16The year that has just passed, like the one before it, has been one of pain and anguish for the Jewish people. October 7, and all that has followed, remains the shadow over our lives: the barbarity of that day, the sacrifices and hardship of war, the families torn apart, the continuing agony of hostages still languishing in the tunnels, and the suffering of ordinary Gazans. At the same time, this war forced upon Israel has unleashed here in Britain, as elsewhere, the worst wave of antisemitism since the Second World War.
And yet. Our tradition tells us to look forward as well as back, to cling to hope as stubbornly as we cling to memory. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminded us that the unique contribution of Judaism to the world is indeed hope. Where others told stories that closed with finality, the Jewish story remained open, a future not yet written. God’s name, revealed to Moses, is thus given in the future tense: “I will be what I will be.”
Hope, though, must not be confused with mere optimism. “Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one,” Rabbi Sacks taught us. “The Hebrew Bible is not an optimistic book. It is, however, one of the great literatures of hope,” he wrote.
As the Catholic scholar Thomas Cahill noted in The Gift of the Jews, Judaism broke with the fatalism of cyclical time. It taught that tomorrow can differ from today, and that we are agents of moral change.
That hope for a better tomorrow was on display earlier this week at the Holocaust Educational Trust dinner. Hundreds gathered not merely to remember the past, but to remember with a purpose – for a better future. That sense of purpose is what has sustained us across the ages. The keynote speaker, the historian and former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, gave voice to it with striking eloquence. She recalled how a friend once urged her to visit the British Museum to see the Sennacherib prism, which records the Assyrian king’s campaign of 701 BCE against Judah. “Where are the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans?” she asked rhetorically. One could go further back still. In Cairo’s Egyptian Museum lies the Merneptah stele, the earliest non-biblical mention of Israel, dating to 1201 BCE. It boasts of Pharaoh’s military campaign and declares chillingly: “Israel is laid waste, and his seed is not.” And yet, here we are.
So we pray that this New Year will bring an end to the war, the safe return of every hostage, courage to our community here in Britain in the face of hatred, and a turn for the better in society. However heavy today’s burden, we must remember that this is still the best period for the Jewish people in 2,000 years. We have a state of our own, a source of strength and safety our ancestors could scarcely have imagined.
That is the spirit with which we enter the year ahead. We are one people, whatever our political differences, and we move forward because the belief in a better future is our legacy. In unity, in faith, and above all in hope, we wish you all a sweet and happy New Year. Shanah Tovah.
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