Leap of faith: The Jewish value we need now is hope

Rosh Hashanah is the festival of beginnings. We stand at the threshold of the new year, dipping apples in honey and praying for sweetness. And yet, to speak of hope in this moment feels daunting. The weight we carry is immense: hostages still in Gaza, a population facing starvation and devastation, deep division across Israel, and a rise in antisemitism here in Britain. These burdens come with us into synagogue – they cannot be left outside.

Still, Judaism insists that despair is not an option. The Talmud teaches, “Even if a sharp sword rests upon a person’s neck, they should not withhold themselves from mercy” (Berakhot 10a). This is not naïve optimism, but a call to resilience, to insist that even at the edge of despair, we continue to believe in the possibility of change.

This past year, that teaching guided us as we made our own leap of faith, the creation of the Movement for Progressive Judaism. Liberal and Reform Judaism each carried proud histories, often walking side by side, sometimes apart. To weave those stories into one has required courage, trust, and compromise. But above all, it has required hope. Hope that together our communities are stronger, that our children will inherit a Judaism that sustains them, that our collective voice will be clearer and more compelling in the world around us.

The Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah tells of Hagar and Ishmael cast into the wilderness. When the water runs out, Hagar turns away, unable to watch her child die. Then God opens her eyes, and she sees the well that was there all along. The rabbis remind us, the desert is real. The suffering is real. Hope does not deny reality, but it does open our eyes to new sources of life.

Rabbi John Rayner z’l put it simply: “To affirm God is to affirm that humanity can live in peace and harmony, and become a society of liberty, justice, compassion and love.” That is what it means to live with hope, not to ignore the world as it is, but to act as if it can yet be remade.

Rosh Hashanah is not only about new beginnings in the abstract, it is about the work of renewal here and now. Each morning we say that God “renews creation daily in goodness”. To be Jewish is to believe that the world can be renewed – not someday, but today.

Our prayer in this season is for vision. For the return of the hostages. For an end to suffering in Israel and Gaza. For leaders with the courage to choose peace over war. For our communities here, that we may hold one another in strength and compassion.

This Rosh Hashanah, may we find the courage to hope, and the resolve to act on that hope. May we see the wells in the wilderness, and drink deeply from them together.

Shana Tova.

Rabbi Josh Levy and Rabbi Charley Baginsky are co-leads of Progressive Judaism