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I refuse to fall into dispare. Our prophet Elijah, seeing that corruption and cruelty was winning, went into the woods to lament that he alone was left and that there was no way forward. For this he was relived of his role as prophet.
I refuse to turn away from my fellow human and my fellow American, to believe they are cruel or hateful or unsalvageable. We are not commanded to dispare or turn away in times of strife, instead the instructions can be found in Isaiah 58:6–7:
We are to “unlock fetters of wickedness, untie the cords of the yoke…share your bread with the hungry, take the wretched poor into your home, when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin.”
This is my planned response. To feed those who ask for food, to care for those in my community I can care for, to refuse to relinquish my belief that people are good and worth fighting for.
I take comfort thinking of how the Israelites hearing the news that they were to wander the desert must have felt that all hope was lost. They must have felt again while waiting alone at Mt Sinai that all was lost. Those alive at the fall of the second Temple could not have imagined the building of the second, those alive at the fall of the second Temple and the start of galus could never imagine we would still be here and still thriving. No matter what comes next, we will persevere. We are not to dispare, we are to deepen our connections and our community, to care for one another despite everything pushing us to hate and fear. Through that we can ensure that we will still be here long after this empire falls.