Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Laian from
Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. This past week, I read
in the news and perhaps you did too, of the
death of Ivan Kleima. He was an especially gifted writer.
About him, it says in one of his books that
he was born in nineteen thirty one in Prague. He
(00:24):
lived there most of his life. He edited a journal
of the Czech Writers' Union during the Prague Spring, and
he authored plays, stories, and essays. Some of his essays
were first published and circulated in various forms that really
were written over the history of Czechoslovakia. Clima himself witnessed
(00:47):
the horrors of Nazi occupation during the war. He began
to write and to raise in concentration camp, the Stalinist
regimes of the fifties, the celebrations of the Prague Spring,
and the despair of the Soviet invasion in nineteen sixty
eight of his own country. And as the Soviet Union fell,
(01:07):
he began to write more and often from the deep
sources of his childhood experiences and the hopes that he
had for humankind all over the world. In one of
his books, called The Spirit of Prague, which I picked
up so many years ago when it first came out.
There's a beautiful chapter written about hope. And it seems
(01:30):
so appropriate that, even as I learned about his death,
that I was inspired to return to a book that
I picked up so many years ago and referenced again
the chapter on hope. As I found the book sitting
on the shelf of my personal library, it was actually
a piece of paper stuck in the book like a bookmark,
(01:51):
and when I opened it, it was in the chapter
on hope. And reading this brief essay in the book,
I read these words again. He wrote, even a condemned
man walking to his execution probably carries with him a
glimmer of hope for a last minute reprieve or a miracle.
(02:13):
That it's precisely what gives him the strength to walk
to the gallows. And then he writes, hope is always
connected to the future. It is the capacity of a
person to imagine himself in a situation different from the
one he finds himself in. What therefore can be more
human than hope. These few words, written in part of
(02:38):
a larger but not very long essay, always stuck with
me because as a rabbi as a faith leader in
a large city and considering all the different forms of
joy but also sorrow and struggle in the human experience.
Hope is something at the core of what helps us
(02:59):
to overcome our struggles and find meaning in what is
still possible. I remember many years ago, as many of
you do too, on nine to eleven, as we learned
about the horrors of that day and the struggles that
people who were still stuck on the high floors of
the Twin Towers, they were leaping to their deaths. And
(03:24):
many people said they had lost hope and they jumped
for their lives. I said, on the contrary, it might
be difficult to fathom, to understand it, but actually it
was a leap of faith literally, because they did. Like
Ivan Kleima wrote about taking a step off the ledge.
(03:47):
Maybe they would be a miracle, maybe reprieve. They didn't
jump to their desk. They jumped with some brand of
hope and faith. So, as I'll read again, is always
connected with the future. It is the capacity of a
person to imagine himself in a situation different from the
(04:08):
one he finds himself in. Even a condemned man, perhaps
even those stuck on the high floors of the Twin
Towers as it was, as he wrote, walking to his
execution probably carries with him a glimmer of hope for
a last minute reprieve or a miracle. That's what always
stuck with me, that perhaps those who took that step,
(04:35):
that leap, and plunged to their deaths as we know
they did, held in their hearts and their souls perhaps
a little bit of hope that there might be a reprieve,
that there might be a miracle. It's an extraordinary part
of human nature that there might be that last minute reprieve.
(04:56):
And so even today, as we look around the world
and listen to the news, participate in protests, there's a
part of each of us that things that we're making
a difference, and hopefully we are making an impact to
make a change in the world for the better for
all people. At the same time, our differences are filled
(05:19):
with extraordinary hope that perhaps in our effort to make change,
that we are creating a future that is better than
the one we're experiencing now. If that's not our motivation
or inspiration, then it's an evil act, because anything that
we should be doing, if we understand our faith traditions correctly.
(05:40):
If we understand the source and purpose of our creation correctly,
then all that we do should be for the purpose
of creating a better tomorrow for ourselves and those who
are touched by our lives, and those whom we don't
even know. But if our purpose is to create evil
or destruction, then it's inhuman There's no humanity there, and
(06:03):
really is contrary to everything that we most of us
do together. In Judaism, we have been celebrating a holiday
called Sukote, in a season we call Simatanu, the season
of our joy. We finished celebrating the high Holy days,
which ended with Yom Kipur, the day of Atonement, a
(06:26):
very somber and solemn day, a day a fasting, a
day of refraining from sources of joy. But it isn't
where Judaism lives. Judaism lives with a sense of joy,
a positive outlook, not with despair. But as Ivan Kleima,
who himself had Jewish roots, spoke of and wrote about, hope.
(06:50):
Even the national anthem of the State of Israel is
called ha Tikva. It means the hope. Hope is connected
with future, as Clima wrote, and so as the holiday
of Soukota is observed, we're taught as a Torah commands
us to take up four species. One is called the etrogue,
(07:13):
sort of a lemon like citrus fruit. Another is the loulov,
the palm branch, the myrtle leaves, and the willow leaves.
And each of these four species is taken up together because,
as the Rabbis describe, they represent different kinds of people,
and each of the branches represent a person who understands
(07:36):
his Torah and does the deeds that he or she
is supposed to do. But not everybody is the same.
We're all different. But if we are held together, bound together,
if not as a community or a people, then as
a human race, then we discover that our strengths and
(07:58):
weaknesses can be combined so that those who are feeling
weak and lean on those who are stronger, and those
who are stronger can lend their strength to those who
are weaker. And it isn't that the strong ones are
always strong or the weak are always weak, but we
do have to be able to look beyond ourselves to
find the people that we need so that we can
(08:18):
stand together and accomplish what we need to do, what
we know needs to be done. And when we take
up those four branches, we're taught to hogu ladu nai
celebrate before God. We are taught to shake those four
branches and the etrogue in all the directions to demonstrate
(08:40):
that God's presences all around us. It is a source
of joy to know that we stand on an earth
in a world surrounded by God's presence. However you might
imagine God, however you might pray to God in your
own faith tradition, it is an absence of the fact
that we believe that God's presence is a part of
(09:02):
who we are and who we can be. Living in
covenant with God, we feel compelled or commanded or inspired
to accomplish something more than we are and to improve
the world from what it is into what it ought
to be. And so as I was reflecting an Ivan
(09:22):
Klima's life and that particular reading, I was so pleased
to come back to the word hope, because in this
world where we would love to see things be different,
whether you're on the right or the left or somewhere
in the middle, we all have this inclination to be
somewhere else than we are, economically, philosophically, culturally, and perhaps
(09:47):
in other ways too. But it isn't by means of war.
It isn't means of destruction of other people because of
what they think. It should be by virtue of something
more positive, education, knowledge, inspiration, and hope, because hope is
(10:08):
very very human. So when I read from Ivan Kleima,
as I did many years ago, and then we've reminded
to read again recently when I learned of his death,
a condemned man walking to his execution probably carries with
him a glimmer of hope for last minute reprieve. There
are times when we aren't literally the condemned human being,
(10:30):
but there are times when we feel condemned. We feel
stuck and place behind an obstacle that we can to
overcome very easily. And what's more, we panic because we
feel that that obstacle will never be overcome. Perhaps people
are working against us in a way that it disables
us from believing that we can't get over it, let
alone around it. But we walk in a direction where
(10:56):
we're intended to go with hope because it's all always
connected with the future. It is the human ability uniquely
to imagine ourselves in situations different from the ones we
find ourselves in. And it's in that source of imagination
and creativity that we do create with inspiration to understand
(11:18):
that the obstacle in front of us is just an obstacle,
but the human spirit and the human mind human ingenuity
is so much greater than that obstacle. And if we
employ hopefulness, then we can overcome despair and the feeling
of being stuck and mired in the situation where we
find ourselves. It might take partnership, It might be binding
(11:43):
ourselves as sou Coote Holiday teaches us to do. It
might mean compromising in important ways for the sake of
hopefulness and humanity. And Ivan Klima ends the paragraph but
not the essay, with the question, what therefore can be
more human than hope? I think in his own way,
(12:06):
he was also separating our human hope from the role
of animals and other things that exist and breathe and
live in the world around us. Human beings are complex,
they are unique, and they are created in God's image,
and hope is at the core of what tomorrow can
be if we can cling to it and let go
(12:29):
of the all of the other issues that have not
worked well for us and have disabled us from overcome
the obstacles that we have either put in front of
us or others have put in front of us. Ivan
Klima was reflective because his own childhood began with the
destruction of the Jewish community around him and his own
(12:50):
time and place in Traisin Stut and watching and experiencing
the fact of his own family's destruction in the Holocaust.
He emerged from it not a more religious person because
of the circumstances of the Communist Party and the world
in which he lived, but he did become more reflective
about the human condition. And no matter what circumstances we
(13:13):
observe or experienced personally, the human condition continues, It endures,
It is certainly permanent. But how we understand the human
condition today can help us prepare for tomorrow. I would
dare say, as I've been inspired by Ivan clean as
essay again, and I hope that you are too. That
(13:33):
hope is at the very core of what the human
experience is all about today and tomorrow. So whatever we
read in the news about the headlines and the way
things are changing in the US or the Middle East
or Ukraine. There is hope at the core of those
conversations and that's what we need to cling to as well.
(13:54):
I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation That Israel in Houston.
To listen and enter to share this message, you'll find
it in my podcast called Heart to Heart with Rabbi
David Lyon. It's at Sunny ninety nine dot com on
the iHeartRadio app. I Hope is the week unfolds. That
you will use the word hope in your sentences, in
(14:17):
your thoughts, in your imagination and your dreams, and share
the word hope with others because it isitant enough to
say we hope something will happen. Hope really is a verb.
It's an action word that enables us to see beyond
the obstacles and to see beyond what is, so that
we can appreciate and dream and actually realize what ought
(14:40):
to be for us, for all people who are touched
by our lives, and for a better future that we
all seek, no matter who we are, no matter how
we believe, there was always something more positive ahead that
all of us should seek and find. And with gratitude,
thank you for joining me I look forward to being
with you again next time. M.
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Laian from
Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. This past week, I read
in the news and perhaps you did too, of the
death of Ivan Kleima. He was an especially gifted writer.
About him, it says in one of his books that
he was born in nineteen thirty one in Prague. He
(00:24):
lived there most of his life. He edited a journal
of the Czech Writers' Union during the Prague Spring, and
he authored plays, stories, and essays. Some of his essays
were first published and circulated in various forms that really
were written over the history of Czechoslovakia. Clima himself witnessed
(00:47):
the horrors of Nazi occupation during the war. He began
to write and to raise in concentration camp, the Stalinist
regimes of the fifties, the celebrations of the Prague Spring,
and the despair of the Soviet invasion in nineteen sixty
eight of his own country. And as the Soviet Union fell,
(01:07):
he began to write more and often from the deep
sources of his childhood experiences and the hopes that he
had for humankind all over the world. In one of
his books, called The Spirit of Prague, which I picked
up so many years ago when it first came out.
There's a beautiful chapter written about hope. And it seems
(01:30):
so appropriate that, even as I learned about his death,
that I was inspired to return to a book that
I picked up so many years ago and referenced again
the chapter on hope. As I found the book sitting
on the shelf of my personal library, it was actually
a piece of paper stuck in the book like a bookmark,
(01:51):
and when I opened it, it was in the chapter
on hope. And reading this brief essay in the book,
I read these words again. He wrote, even a condemned
man walking to his execution probably carries with him a
glimmer of hope for a last minute reprieve or a miracle.
(02:13):
That it's precisely what gives him the strength to walk
to the gallows. And then he writes, hope is always
connected to the future. It is the capacity of a
person to imagine himself in a situation different from the
one he finds himself in. What therefore can be more
human than hope. These few words, written in part of
(02:38):
a larger but not very long essay, always stuck with
me because as a rabbi as a faith leader in
a large city and considering all the different forms of
joy but also sorrow and struggle in the human experience.
Hope is something at the core of what helps us
(02:59):
to overcome our struggles and find meaning in what is
still possible. I remember many years ago, as many of
you do too, on nine to eleven, as we learned
about the horrors of that day and the struggles that
people who were still stuck on the high floors of
the Twin Towers, they were leaping to their deaths. And
(03:24):
many people said they had lost hope and they jumped
for their lives. I said, on the contrary, it might
be difficult to fathom, to understand it, but actually it
was a leap of faith literally, because they did. Like
Ivan Kleima wrote about taking a step off the ledge.
(03:47):
Maybe they would be a miracle, maybe reprieve. They didn't
jump to their desk. They jumped with some brand of
hope and faith. So, as I'll read again, is always
connected with the future. It is the capacity of a
person to imagine himself in a situation different from the
(04:08):
one he finds himself in. Even a condemned man, perhaps
even those stuck on the high floors of the Twin
Towers as it was, as he wrote, walking to his
execution probably carries with him a glimmer of hope for
a last minute reprieve or a miracle. That's what always
stuck with me, that perhaps those who took that step,
(04:35):
that leap, and plunged to their deaths as we know
they did, held in their hearts and their souls perhaps
a little bit of hope that there might be a reprieve,
that there might be a miracle. It's an extraordinary part
of human nature that there might be that last minute reprieve.
(04:56):
And so even today, as we look around the world
and listen to the news, participate in protests, there's a
part of each of us that things that we're making
a difference, and hopefully we are making an impact to
make a change in the world for the better for
all people. At the same time, our differences are filled
(05:19):
with extraordinary hope that perhaps in our effort to make change,
that we are creating a future that is better than
the one we're experiencing now. If that's not our motivation
or inspiration, then it's an evil act, because anything that
we should be doing, if we understand our faith traditions correctly.
(05:40):
If we understand the source and purpose of our creation correctly,
then all that we do should be for the purpose
of creating a better tomorrow for ourselves and those who
are touched by our lives, and those whom we don't
even know. But if our purpose is to create evil
or destruction, then it's inhuman There's no humanity there, and
(06:03):
really is contrary to everything that we most of us
do together. In Judaism, we have been celebrating a holiday
called Sukote, in a season we call Simatanu, the season
of our joy. We finished celebrating the high Holy days,
which ended with Yom Kipur, the day of Atonement, a
(06:26):
very somber and solemn day, a day a fasting, a
day of refraining from sources of joy. But it isn't
where Judaism lives. Judaism lives with a sense of joy,
a positive outlook, not with despair. But as Ivan Kleima,
who himself had Jewish roots, spoke of and wrote about, hope.
(06:50):
Even the national anthem of the State of Israel is
called ha Tikva. It means the hope. Hope is connected
with future, as Clima wrote, and so as the holiday
of Soukota is observed, we're taught as a Torah commands
us to take up four species. One is called the etrogue,
(07:13):
sort of a lemon like citrus fruit. Another is the loulov,
the palm branch, the myrtle leaves, and the willow leaves.
And each of these four species is taken up together because,
as the Rabbis describe, they represent different kinds of people,
and each of the branches represent a person who understands
(07:36):
his Torah and does the deeds that he or she
is supposed to do. But not everybody is the same.
We're all different. But if we are held together, bound together,
if not as a community or a people, then as
a human race, then we discover that our strengths and
(07:58):
weaknesses can be combined so that those who are feeling
weak and lean on those who are stronger, and those
who are stronger can lend their strength to those who
are weaker. And it isn't that the strong ones are
always strong or the weak are always weak, but we
do have to be able to look beyond ourselves to
find the people that we need so that we can
(08:18):
stand together and accomplish what we need to do, what
we know needs to be done. And when we take
up those four branches, we're taught to hogu ladu nai
celebrate before God. We are taught to shake those four
branches and the etrogue in all the directions to demonstrate
(08:40):
that God's presences all around us. It is a source
of joy to know that we stand on an earth
in a world surrounded by God's presence. However you might
imagine God, however you might pray to God in your
own faith tradition, it is an absence of the fact
that we believe that God's presence is a part of
(09:02):
who we are and who we can be. Living in
covenant with God, we feel compelled or commanded or inspired
to accomplish something more than we are and to improve
the world from what it is into what it ought
to be. And so as I was reflecting an Ivan
(09:22):
Klima's life and that particular reading, I was so pleased
to come back to the word hope, because in this
world where we would love to see things be different,
whether you're on the right or the left or somewhere
in the middle, we all have this inclination to be
somewhere else than we are, economically, philosophically, culturally, and perhaps
(09:47):
in other ways too. But it isn't by means of war.
It isn't means of destruction of other people because of
what they think. It should be by virtue of something
more positive, education, knowledge, inspiration, and hope, because hope is
(10:08):
very very human. So when I read from Ivan Kleima,
as I did many years ago, and then we've reminded
to read again recently when I learned of his death,
a condemned man walking to his execution probably carries with
him a glimmer of hope for last minute reprieve. There
are times when we aren't literally the condemned human being,
(10:30):
but there are times when we feel condemned. We feel
stuck and place behind an obstacle that we can to
overcome very easily. And what's more, we panic because we
feel that that obstacle will never be overcome. Perhaps people
are working against us in a way that it disables
us from believing that we can't get over it, let
alone around it. But we walk in a direction where
(10:56):
we're intended to go with hope because it's all always
connected with the future. It is the human ability uniquely
to imagine ourselves in situations different from the ones we
find ourselves in. And it's in that source of imagination
and creativity that we do create with inspiration to understand
(11:18):
that the obstacle in front of us is just an obstacle,
but the human spirit and the human mind human ingenuity
is so much greater than that obstacle. And if we
employ hopefulness, then we can overcome despair and the feeling
of being stuck and mired in the situation where we
find ourselves. It might take partnership, It might be binding
(11:43):
ourselves as sou Coote Holiday teaches us to do. It
might mean compromising in important ways for the sake of
hopefulness and humanity. And Ivan Klima ends the paragraph but
not the essay, with the question, what therefore can be
more human than hope? I think in his own way,
(12:06):
he was also separating our human hope from the role
of animals and other things that exist and breathe and
live in the world around us. Human beings are complex,
they are unique, and they are created in God's image,
and hope is at the core of what tomorrow can
be if we can cling to it and let go
(12:29):
of the all of the other issues that have not
worked well for us and have disabled us from overcome
the obstacles that we have either put in front of
us or others have put in front of us. Ivan
Klima was reflective because his own childhood began with the
destruction of the Jewish community around him and his own
(12:50):
time and place in Traisin Stut and watching and experiencing
the fact of his own family's destruction in the Holocaust.
He emerged from it not a more religious person because
of the circumstances of the Communist Party and the world
in which he lived, but he did become more reflective
about the human condition. And no matter what circumstances we
(13:13):
observe or experienced personally, the human condition continues, It endures,
It is certainly permanent. But how we understand the human
condition today can help us prepare for tomorrow. I would
dare say, as I've been inspired by Ivan clean as
essay again, and I hope that you are too. That
(13:33):
hope is at the very core of what the human
experience is all about today and tomorrow. So whatever we
read in the news about the headlines and the way
things are changing in the US or the Middle East
or Ukraine. There is hope at the core of those
conversations and that's what we need to cling to as well.
(13:54):
I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation That Israel in Houston.
To listen and enter to share this message, you'll find
it in my podcast called Heart to Heart with Rabbi
David Lyon. It's at Sunny ninety nine dot com on
the iHeartRadio app. I Hope is the week unfolds. That
you will use the word hope in your sentences, in
(14:17):
your thoughts, in your imagination and your dreams, and share
the word hope with others because it isitant enough to
say we hope something will happen. Hope really is a verb.
It's an action word that enables us to see beyond
the obstacles and to see beyond what is, so that
we can appreciate and dream and actually realize what ought
(14:40):
to be for us, for all people who are touched
by our lives, and for a better future that we
all seek, no matter who we are, no matter how
we believe, there was always something more positive ahead that
all of us should seek and find. And with gratitude,
thank you for joining me I look forward to being
with you again next time. M.
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