People often overlook the connection between faith and hope. Obviously, since this wonderful piece of writing is in KOACH’s E-zine, faith here is a reference to Judaism. However, the faith I’m talking about (for now) is the simple, basic idea that something more powerful than us might be able to control things. When I mention faith, that is what I’m talking about: this simple idea. I will come back to explain how hope and faith are connected.

First, let me tell you what I think hope is. To me, hope occurs when things grow to a state of: horribly bad, utterly chaotic or just not quite perfect. At this point, there is nothing you can do beyond what you are already doing. Hope is the feeling that, even though your attempts are not working, if you keep trying it might work this time. That voice in your head that cries out "just tough it out, everything works out in the end!" - that is hope. Hope is that out-of-nowhere, crazy idea that something will change and you will be able to succeed, even if your task is to write something on hope and have gone through three bad starts and are about to give up!

That is hope!

Hope carries with it the assumption that something unexpected will happen. This mysterious occurrence must be brought on by an outside party that up until the present has not been involved. After all, if the conditions were repeated exactly, over and over, it only makes sense that nothing would change. That is where faith comes in.

To be hopeful, one must have faith that, some outside positive party exists, if only one. Not only does that outside party exist; there is also a chance that it might become involved in the situation. If the outside party does not get involved, its existence is virtually irrelevant. Basically, to experience hope, one must have faith that some unseen force will get involved to help. Now that I have laid out the canvas for my point, it’s time to paint. My color of choice is Judaism.

Judaism is a religion that is built upon faith in one God, and hope. Every prayer is based upon the hope that God, our beloved "outside party," will step in when needed, fix the wrong, improve the good, punish the wicked and help us win the lottery. Not to say that any other religion does not have a sense of faith, but the difference is that Judaism has had a history requiring hope. I doubt I have to go through the list of tragedies.

The scary part is that now, Jews feel that we can relax. We have a homeland, with the USA backing it. Granted we have a long way to go before Heaven on Earth, but historically, we are better off now than ever before. My hope is that we do not get too comfortable in our present conditions. It is easy to have hope and faith in times of need. What concerns me is that the Jews could lose our strength of identity because we do not have to fight for it as fiercely today. In a sense, I hope that we do not need God to step in and rekindle our faith and hope. I hope that the Jews in Israel fight the urge to say: "We are in Israel, so we do not have to practice our religion. Living here is enough."

I hope that Jews understand that being Jewish is more than thinking you can get away with telling those "Jew jokes" which non-Jews can not. I want Jews everywhere to celebrate and enjoy our progress. Yet, we need to keep our history in mind, and use what we have learned to fix the wrongs of the present. Hope and faith are connected for a reason. We cannot hope for God to aid us in the future, if we lose our connection with our faith now.