Summary: <p>In his final podcast of 'For Heaven’s Sake' for the year 5783, entitled “Farewell 5783,” Donniel Hartman said something that really stuck with me. He said: “I don’t do pessimism.” Despite all the drama and tension in Israel, the many articles and voices talking about how the country is deeply divided, how this is the greatest domestic crisis in Israel’s 75 years, a cold civil war, Donniel does not do pessimism. He goes to demonstrations every week; learns; teaches; advocates; gives public speeches; does podcasts. But he will not surrender to pessimism. Donniel here channels the spirit of the late Shimon Peres who famously observed: “Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives!” Do Jewish texts have a position about pessimism? Are there circumstances when pessimism is not only okay, but even called for? On the one hand, there is no shortage of texts in the Donniel/Shimon Peres tradition of eschewing pessimism. Hagar crying at the well when she and Ishmael were banished and thirsty; Jeremiah buying real estate in Anathoth even though he is in jail and the Babylonians are coming; Nehemiah telling the returnees to Jerusalem after the exile “You must not mourn or weep…Do not be sad, for your rejoicing in the Lord is the source of your strength.” On the other hand, there is a whole other tradition called prophecy, which is not infrequently saturated by deep pessimism of sin, national failure, exile, and destruction. The same Jeremiah who bought the house from prison also is the source of our Tisha B’av morning Haftarah: I will make an end of them, declares the Lord: No grapes left on the vine, No figs on the fig tree, The leaves all withered; Whatever I have given them is gone. Why are we sitting by? Let us gather into the fortified cities And meet our doom there. For the Lord our God has doomed us, He has made us drink a bitter draft, Because we sinned against the Lord. How do we put all this together? Is there ever a time for us to be pessimistic, or not?</p>
