Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #Vayeshev. You can read it in full here: bit.ly/2TVEZYy & download the accompanying Family Edition here: bit.ly/2TVFF02. #ShabbatShalom

#Jews are the people who refused to be comforted because they never gave up #hope. Jacob did eventually see Joseph again. Rachel’s children did return to the land. #Jerusalem is once again the #Jewish home.

All the evidence may suggest otherwise: it may seem to signify irretrievable loss, a decree of history that cannot be overturned, a fate that must be accepted.

Jews never believed the evidence because they had something else to set against it – a faith, a trust, an unbreakable hope that proved stronger than historical inevitability. It is not too much to say that Jewish survival was sustained in that hope.

And that hope came from a simple – or perhaps not so simple – phrase in the life of Jacob. He refused to be comforted. And so – while we live in a world still scarred by violence, poverty and injustice – must we.