Hope is a Warrior

Hope is a Warrior
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

This week in Parashat Sh’lach L’cha the Israelites
are poised to enter the Promised Land.
God tells Moses to send twelve scouts, leaders from each tribe,
to survey the land and its inhabitants and prepare to enter.

But when they return, ten of the twelve bring back not only large grapes—
but big fear. “The land is inhabited by giants,” they cry.
“We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes,
and so we must have looked to them.”
And just like that, the people despair.

But Caleb steps forward—perhaps the most underappreciated hero
of the Torah—and says simply: “Aloh na’aleh.
We can surely go up. We can do this.”
He sees the same landscape everyone else does. The same giants.
But he chooses to respond with faith, with agency, with courage.

This is not a story about what the scouts saw–everyone agrees on that.
It’s about how we see ourselves in relationship to it.
Ten scouts give in to their fear.
Only two—Joshua and Caleb—have hope –
that the world they want to inhabit is worth fighting for, and they can succeed.

It is hard to hear this ancient story and not think of Israel in this present moment.
They know the giant before them –the whole world sees it!
It has terrorized and threatened destruction for decades.
But they took an enormous risk, to fight for a safer Israel, and a safer world,
trusting that they can succeed. Hoping that this war is ultimately for more peace.

Our own situation here feels like a different kind of battle.
In the past many months, we have seen rising antisemitic hate
and political violence, distrust in government and institutions—
and damaging divisions within our people and across the ideological spectrum.

These days it’s hard not to identify with the ten scouts.
To say: we are too small. The giants are too many. The world is too broken.
And just like that, we despair.

I recently heard the musician and writer Nick Cave,
who tragically lost 2 sons and had reason to despair –talk about hope–
and he sounds like our Caleb:

“It took devastation to find hope.
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard earned,
makes demands upon us
and can often feel like the most indefensible place on earth.
Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial.
It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.
Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like…
keeps the devil down in the hole.
It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending.
It says the world is worth believing in.
In time we come to find that this is so.”

What makes Caleb different? The Torah hints at the answer.
Later in the Book of Numbers, God says of Caleb: “v’ruach acheret imo—
he had a different spirit.” That phrase has always moved me.
Caleb had a different spirit. He had the warrior spirit of hope.
He’s telling us what the ten scouts could not grasp:
that hope is not naive, it’s brave.

That to believe in a better future—in a world worth crossing a wilderness for—
is not denial of reality. It is an act of defiance.

And that hope is not a feeling. It is a spiritual discipline.
It’s work! Something we must practice—like prayer, like love, like justice.
And the way we practice hope is not by waiting for some grand rescue or leader.
Often, it’s by doing the smallest, most human acts of care and presence:
reading a book to a child, showing up for someone, a random act of kindness.
Sometimes it is found in civic acts of agency, protesting an injustice,
or exercising your vote, which I implore each of you to do this week.

During the week of the Boulder attack, Bishop Matt Heyd’s short email of care
kept the devil in the hole for me.
On July 1, his Diocese is kicking off an interfaith campaign called #OneSingleAct.
This campaign invites every person to exercise their warrior hope
with a single act of care, courage, or connection - big or small -
to share it online - and invite one other person to do the same.
I will be part of this campaign of hope, will you join me?

I have to tell you something that happened to me today.
A woman was waiting at Central’s security desk
when I happened to walk outside.
You probably don’t remember me! She said with her thick Israeli accent.
She had the familiar look of every older Israeli auntie, but I couldn’t place her.
She said: “14 years ago, you stayed in my house in Auburn, Alabama
when your clergy were making visits to small congregations down South
that didn’t have rabbis. And you stayed in my home.
Your earring fell under my guest bed. And when we moved to Atlanta I found it.
And now I have a new grandchild in New York so I am here –
and brought it to you.”

It was indeed my earring, one that Jacob had gifted me
and never had the guts to tell him I lost.
Here it is, honey! 

Talk about keeping the devil in the hole!
That small mitzvah just restored my faith in humanity.
One Single Act.

This is exactly what Judaism has always insisted.
Every mitzvah, no matter how small,
is a vote for the world we want to live in.
Each kindness we do, each blessing we say, each dollar we give,
each injustice we resist—it’s a refusal to give in to despair.

Judaism never guaranteed that the world would be good.
Only that we are called to make it better.
We are not permitted to be indifferent.
And we are not permitted to be cynical.
Even when the task feels overwhelming – maybe especially when–
I return to the quiet insistence of hope—
not as a luxury, but as a necessity.

And I see it every day. In the mother who packs her kids’ lunches
even as she worries for her family in Israel.
In the young adult who still comes to Torah study,
seeking purpose amid disillusionment.
In our 10th graders who stood on this bimah just weeks ago
to confirm their Jewish pride,
even in a world that has made them feel afraid.
That is warrior hope.

This Shabbat, we stand with Caleb. We choose that different spirit.
We look at the world—not as it is, but as it could be.
Because we must fight fiercely and tenderly, for the future we want to live in.
Because we cannot afford to see ourselves as grasshoppers,
but must see us as God does –
as God’s partners in redemption.