Am I a Jewish optimist?

The indomitability of the Jewish spirit gives us every reason for hope.

“I have to be an optimist,” James Baldwin once said, “because I’m alive.” From a man as frequently angry and bitter as the renowned black American writer, this is no small thing.

A few years ago, I encountered a similar sentiment from Zalman Shoval, a founding member of Israel’s Likud Party and former ambassador to the United States. When I pointed out that, despite our extensive discussions about the various challenges facing Israel, he sounded like an optimist, he replied, “I think Jews have to be optimists.”

One cannot discount such sentiments coming from such men. With everything they’ve seen and been through, the persistence of their optimism does say something. It forces us to ask whether we have any right to be pessimistic at all.

This is true of the Jews in general. Indeed, it is quite remarkable that, despite our utterly horrendous history and its ample evidence of humanity’s inherent cruelty and depravity, we have never embraced pessimism in any form. By and large, we continue to believe that things will get better. We do so even though, quite often in our history, they haven’t gotten better—to say the least.

This insistence on optimism is encapsulated in the messianic hope, a fundamental aspect of Judaism. Maimonides summed it up as: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. Though he may tarry, I will wait each and every day for his arrival.”

It seems, then, that Jewish optimism is a decision of the will, a leap of faith, and a refusal to accept the world as it is. There is a great deal to be said for that.

Diaspora blues

I think of all this because, at the moment, there is reason for pessimism—of a particularly apocalyptic variety—regarding the future of Diaspora Jewry, especially American Jewry.