Hope, Regardless of How It Turns Out

by Rabbi Bridget Wynne

November 3, 2026 • 23 Heshvan 5787

Today is Election Day. Whatever the results, the months leading up to it have been frightening. Political leaders have spread claims of voter fraud with no basis in reality and attacked candidates with lies and racist insults. Many of us watch the news, bracing ourselves for what we will find.

Lately, when I ask people how they’re doing, I often hear some version of “I’m trying not to lose hope.” That reminds me of the difference I see between hope and optimism.

Optimism is a belief that things will turn out well in the future. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the UK, put it this way: “Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one” (“Optimism Is All Very Well, But It Takes Courage to Hope,” The Times, April 30, 2010).

Václav Havel, the Czech dissident who was imprisoned under communism and later became president, described hope like this:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. …

It’s an orientation of the spirit. …

Hope … is not the same as joy that things are going well, …

but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. …

It is … NOT the same as optimism. …

[it is] the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

(Adapted from Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 1990)

This kind of hope doesn’t ask us to predict what will happen in the coming days, or to pretend that what we have been hearing isn’t disturbing. It asks us to do what is good even when we don’t know what difference it will make. That can mean not sharing a dramatic post or headline, such as a report of ballots being thrown out or a shocking quote from a candidate, until we’ve checked whether it’s true. It can mean speaking up when someone repeats a racist insult. And it can mean reaching out to people who are being targeted: a neighbor who is an immigrant, a Muslim coworker, a friend who is angry and frightened by how their trans child is being treated.

We do not find hope. We create it.

Hope doesn’t mean ignoring our pain and fear. We can carry them all with us. Jewish tradition offers an example. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai and saw the Israelites dancing around the Golden Calf, he shattered the tablets of the Ten Commandments in fury. Yet he didn’t give up on his people. He went back up the mountain and carried down a new set. The Israelites brought both the shattered and the new tablets with them during their 40 years in the desert (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Brachot, page 8b). They didn’t push away the reminder of their worst moment in order to move forward with hope. They carried both.

We can do the same. We don’t have to pretend this has been an ordinary election season. There is always a gap between what is and what should be, and right now, for many of us, that gap is painfully wide. Even when it feels hard or pointless to do anything, we can take a small step toward what should be. The future is not determined. It will come from many moments, many choices, and many actions that haven’t happened yet.

Creating hope is also far more possible when we do it together. Some of us have gathered with friends to write postcards to voters. Some volunteer with or donate to local organizations that support immigrants and other people under threat. And here at Jewish Gateways, our Coffee & Conversation session, “What Can One Person Do? Three Jewish Answers” (Sunday, November 22, 11:00 am – 12:45 pm, register here), will be a chance to be with people who share our concerns, so we don’t have to carry them alone.

Whatever the election brings, may we, like the Israelites, carry both our fear and our hope, and may our fear not keep us from working, one step at a time, toward a country that is kinder, fairer, and more grounded in truth.