Hope and Solidarity: Renewing a Covenant of Destiny in America
In The Hope Study, M2 shines a light on the continued resilience of Jewish professionals amidst a pervasive loss of hope, ignited by the events of October 7th. As the founding executive director of Na’aleh: The Hub for Leadership Learning, I spent the last few years helping professional and lay leaders across greater Baltimore address their personal suffering and respond to the intertwined crises of communal fragmentation, rising antisemitism, and the growing precariousness of our covenant with America. The return of the hostages, while bringing forth a long-awaited sense of joy and relief, has not resolved the increasing challenges of Jewish life in America.
Every Yom Kippur, we read from the book of Jonah, about a Jew who heard the Divine call to prophesy judgement to the city of Ninevah, filled with over a hundred and twenty thousand non-Jews. At first Jonah refuses, seeking hopelessly to escape by boarding a ship bound for Tarshish. Only after being swallowed by a great fish, lamenting his fate “from the belly of Sheol,” does he make teshuva and declare “what I have vowed I will perform.”(2:3,10) At the end, Jonah prophesizes, the people of Ninevah repent, and the Divine renounces their punishment, just as Jonah had feared.
As we listened to the reading, I pondered our increasingly fraught situation in America. I wondered how through teshuva (repentance, turning) we may begin anew to address these challenges. And, what transformative role might service to non-Jews play in changing our communal fate?
I turned as I have done in the past to the writings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, this time his Kol Dodi Dokek(Listen My Beloved Knocks): a contemplation on teshuva and covenant grounded in the books of Jonah, Job, and the Song of Songs.[i] For Soloveitchik, the correct response to personal suffering is not to ponder its cause, but to use it as an opportunity for personal transformation. “Woe unto the man whose suffering has not precipitated a spiritual crisis in the depths of his being, whose soul remains frozen and lacking forgiveness.”(9) When we apply this to a community: woe unto one whose despair has not precipitated a spiritual and political crisis in the depth of its civic being.
We have recently spent months and perhaps years bemoaning our fate and trying to understand its causes, perhaps instead “We [should] ask neither about the cause of evil nor about its purpose, but, rather, about how it might be mended and elevated?”(8) And, what is the path of teshuva that Soloveitchik offers? “When God endows a person with wealth, influence, and honor, the recipient must know how to share his joy and prominence with his fellows, how to take the divine hesed that flows toward him from its infinite divine source and utilize it to performance, in turn, deeds of hesed for others.”(10) Thus, our communal response to persecution might need to become compassion toward and care for others, to act with grace and mercy, not demanding contrition and passing judgement. Rather, “to identify with his pain, to feel responsible for his fate.”(13)
If we follow Soloveitchik’s advice, we could transform a fixation with fate into a striving toward destiny. Soloveitchik articulated two models of covenant. In a covenant of fate, we are bound up in together in an inescapable history of suffering and (yet) mutual responsibility. In contrast, in a covenant of destiny, we become a holy community through our deliberate choice (our “vow”) to pursue our unique mission. In the former, we are at the mercy of history and seek at best to defend ourselves. In the latter, we act upon the world, seeking to bring forth “a world which is wholly good and beautiful.”(59)
Crossing from the covenant of fate and into a covenant of destiny, which is our task as Jews, happens through the acknowledgement and embrace of arevut (mutual responsibility). Yet, this cannot be carried forth through abstract pronouncements or filled solely through gifts. Arevut happens in the immediacy of our response in the moment of seeing in the other a need to be fulfilled – an immediacy that only comes in the context of local community.[ii] We engage in hesed (deeds of lovingkindness) not because of our fated suffering, but in pursuit of becoming an edah (a virtuous community). Most importantly, it is the hope embedded in this project of community-building that can renew our sense of communal solidarity.
Yet, the well-being of our Jewish communities in America relies upon the continued freedoms and virtues of American civic life – on ongoing covenantal project in which (in the words of the African-American poet Langston Hughes) “never kings connive nor tyrants scheme, that any man be crushed by one above … But opportunity is real, and life is free, equality is in the air we breathe.”[iii] In towns and cities that have grown inhospitable to pluralism and do not embrace the dignity of the other, we are at best fated to suffer behind fragile walls. Jews thrive only where civic democracy thrives. Moreover, the project of renewing the American covenant can only succeed if we work in collaboration, even (or especially) with those with whom we don’t agree on other issues.[iv] Following from all this, in our communal pursuit of destiny, we cannot only be concerned with our own well-being. All who share our towns and cities are our fellow citizens whose well-being is intertwined with our own.
In the recent M2 research, the authors note that “hope emerges from feelings of belonging, active participation and contribution, rather than from feelings of being protected or included. In this context, hope is less about safety and more about active connection and responsibility.”[v] In this vein, the report delineates four paths that we should pursue in our local communities:
- Cultivate principled, communal leadership.
- Provide dialogue and conversation training (so that we can be there for one another in mutual responsibility despite our different viewpoints).
- Make the impact of our work more visible.
- Strengthen Jewish identity and belonging.
All four paths are vital and work I have pursued leading Na’aleh and now working for the Center for Small Town Jewish Life. Yet, they are incomplete if they only focus us inward.
Hope is renewed when the dialogues we engage in and the work whose impact inspires us go beyond the narrow borders our Jewish communities. Jewish solidarity is revitalized when the destiny we long for and pursue is as concerned with the well-being of our neighbors as it with our own. As Soloveitchik reminds us, Job suffered and initially sought futilely the reasons for his plight. It was only “when he prayed for his friends [fellow citizens]” that his suffering was lifted (42:10). It is when we are most fearful that the moment comes for us to reach beyond our comfort zones and renew former alliances. We cannot afford to turn inward and bemoan our fate, when the historic Covenant with America (that ensures our freedoms) is precarious. Rather, the path forward is to “take the divine hesed that flows toward [us] from its infinite divine source and utilize it to performance, in turn, deeds of hesed for others.”
In so doing, we should in our local communities:
- Cultivate virtuous leadership who lead with both religious and the civic purpose.
- Engage in dialogues and difficult conversations with those (in our Jewish communities and across our towns) with whom we don’t always agree but share a commitment to common places we call home.
- Make visible the impact of our work renewing of American civic life (and other social, economic, and ecological conditions that underpin the well-being of our common places).
- Strengthen Jewish identity and belonging through weaving our stories (even in the context of Jewish rituals like Sukkot) with the stories of our fellow citizens, creating a tapestry illustrating our mutual destiny.
Jonah seeks to escape the Divine by boarding a ship to Tarshish, concerned only with his own welfare. The Divine sends a powerful storm, and Jonah is confronted by the sailors with questions whose answers might well guide us today (1:8): “What is thine occupation? And whence comest thou? And of what people art thou?” Job reluctantly answers (1:9): “I am a Hebrew. I worship the ETERNAL, God of Heaven”.
Like Jonah, we are Jews and yet we worship the same God as our fellow citizens. Our destiny is to be found not only in the well-being of fellow Jews but in the particularly Jewish pursuit of a virtuous civic life for all. Through turning toward a covenant of destiny will hope among Jews be rekindled and Jewish communal solidarity revitalized.
The voice of the Divine is calling us to act in this moment. As Soloveitchik brings to our attention, the woman in The Song of Songs awaits longingly for her lover. Yet, when the knock is heard upon the door and her lover calls, instead of leaping with rekindled hope, she hesitates and proffers rationalizations for not acting at this crucial moment: “I had taken off my robe, shall I don it again? I had bathed my feet, was I to soil them again?”(5:5) We have reasons aplenty not to reach across widening divides and to be concerned overly with our own welfare. Yet, if we wait, if we don’t leap brazenly to let in the opportunities which are aplenty,[vi] we may find ourselves further divided and lost, wandering through unwelcome towns and cities. Let us not lose this moment.
[i] Quotations are taken from the English translation, entitled Fate and Destiny: From Holocaust to the State of Israel.
[ii] This arguably goes beyond Soloveitchik’s focus in Fate and Destiny on the contrast between the individual with the national, though it picks up on his distinction between camp and congregation (edah). Following my teacher Arnie Eisen (and others), Jewish life and obligation emerge in the context of actual, lived community.
[iii] From Let America Be America Again, by Langston Hughes.
[iv] In the spirit of Soloveitchik’s student and my teacher, Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, I extend this notion of edah to a civic community that includes our religious brethren in our towns and cities.
[v] The Hope Study – https://ieje.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The-Hope-Study-Report-FINAL-3.pdf
[vi] Notably, two recent responses to the M2 article, published in eJewishPhilanthropy, speak to this point and illustrates the Jewish possibilities for civic repair: disaster relief (https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/from-devastation-to-hope-the-power-of-shared-values/) and building interfaith bridges (https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/working-to-build-interfaith-bridges-gives-me-hope/).
