Your rabbi is in pain

Despair, simply defined, is the absence of hope. It is the sense that nothing is going to get better, that my impact is so limited as to be negligible. It feels like speaking into a void. It hurts, it is exhausting. It makes us wonder why we try so hard. It feels like endless grief, shiva without an ending.

Loss, by contrast, can be energizing. Loss can make us act, whether it’s the chores that follow a death or the intense work we experienced in COVID lockdown. Loss can contain anger, energy, motivation.

Despair has none of that. Despair, like depression, creates emotional blunting – the inability to feel much at all. We are flat, often unmoved. Even the rescue of hostages only gives us momentary joy, and then we return to despair.

In the clergy support groups I facilitate, there is lots of talk about despair. They don’t use the word initially, but it resonates when I do. Our rabbis, cantors and educators are struggling to find joy in their work. They struggle to find purpose.

“I don’t want to be a congregational rabbi anymore.” Clergy in the groups I run tell me that the work has lost its reward, and they feel like they are the only ones suffering. October 7 and its aftermath have forced many of our best people to rethink their relationships with Judaism, with Israel. How can they lead when they can barely manage themselves?

What is the source of our despair? I don’t think it’s simply exhaustion, the unrelenting battery of politics, COVID and Israel. I think it’s the loss of dreams. The death of an idealism that has sustained us.

We thought our institutions were safe and would support us. We believed in Roe and the Supreme Court and Israel as a moral country. We thought the truth mattered. We didn’t know anti-semitism could be normalized, both within the Jewish community and across our nation.

The pressures also exist within the Jewish community. Clergy feel judged and unsupported. There is infighting in their ranks and lack of trust in their congregants. They are often afraid to speak (on Israel, on our elections, on Jews who call for ceasefire) for fear of offending all sides of the political spectrum. They cannot speak their truths because of our judgment. Many feel that their jobs are at risk. We have silenced people who need to speak.

We tend to see the world as we hope it might be. We believe in democracy even as we feel it’s crashing. We see Israel as a moral light to the nations, not a struggling political entity. We think our lives have meaning and purpose, even when we can see no way forward.

On the 9th of Av, it will be 310 days since October 7. Both days brought an existential crisis for our people. Who are we without a Temple in Jerusalem? Who are we if neither Israel nor the Diaspora are safe places? I wonder if despair is always existential. Trauma changes our lives, makes us rethink our understanding of the world. Without hope, without a sense of predictable reality, we can feel unmoored.

And now. America isn’t as safe as we imagined. Israel isn’t as strong as we hoped. We find ourselves despairing. The path forward isn’t clear. Our dreams were wrong, and we are full of grief.

Grief has a long life cycle. It takes time. We don’t recover from grief. We adapt and change in the face of grief. Grief subsides and then re-emerges, often stronger than ever. It can be both physically and emotionally painful. It hurts us, body and soul. We emerge from grief changed.

I don’t have a solution to grief and despair. I don’t think there is a solution. But I want us all to know that our leaders are hurting, often hurting badly. Time is not a solution, but it may lead to resolution, the integration of a new reality. Those we have turned to for guidance need our support, now more than ever.

What does it mean to lead in times of despair? In some sense, the greatest leaders know their impact will be fleeting. They know suffering and they don’t deny it. Now we must hold each other, hold those who serve us. We must find moments of hope, of connection.

We need to recognize that we and our leaders are in pain. Our clergy needs to acknowledge their own pain. As a community, we must all care for our clergy. Whether you bring them coffee or let them speak their own truths, let them know their sorrow matters. Create spaces for compassion, not spaces filled with our needs.