Hope and Liberation

As is well known, Jewish history has included many ups and downs. One of the ways that Jews have historically dealt with the tragedies they experienced was to take comfort in the Jewish calendar, with its weekly Sabbath glimpses of a better world and its annual festival celebrations which pointed both backward and forward to better times.

The lowest point in Jewish history of the past 2,000 years was the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, from 1933 to 1945. Perhaps the most central Jewish text on hope is Ezekiel 37 (1-14,) the vision of the valley of dry bones. In verse 11, the House of Israel says, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost…” This prophecy is the prophetic reading for the Shabbat which falls during the festival of Pesach (Passover,) a festival of spring, rebirth, freedom and hope. Part of this prophecy is inscribed on the gate to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial site.

A 19th century Hebrew poet in Eastern Europe named Naftali Hertz Imber used the text as a basis for his poem, HaTikvah, (“The Hope”) which later became the national anthem of the State of Israel and is seen by some as the anthem of the Jewish people. He wrote, “Our hope is not yet lost…to be a free people in our land.”

Recent events in Israel and the ongoing war with Gaza have caused many within the Israeli public and the Jewish Diaspora to lose at least some of their hopefulness about the present and future. Still, civil society in Israel has shown a remarkable strength and resilience over the past two years or so. Perhaps our faith—whether historical, theological or both--- can help provide a framework for continued hope amidst adversity.

Reflection Question:
What role does historical memory—both of tragedy and resilience—play in shaping your own understanding of hope today?

In Vienna, much of the Jewish-Christian dialogue is being carried out by the older generations, by people whose life experience was often shaped by the aftermath of the Shoah and post-war reconciliation. Yet today, as many of these figures pass away or step back from their roles in dialogue initiatives, there is a growing sense of uncertainty: will interreligious dialogue fade with them?

The Austrian coordinating Committee of Christians and Jews, as well as the ICCJ, thus tries to establish new initiatives fostering interreligious dialogue activities involving and catching younger generations.

In 2024, my colleagues and I founded Coexister Vienna—an interreligious and intercultural group for people aged 18 to 35. Our aim is not simply to preserve existing dialogue structures, but to reimagine them in a way that feels alive and relevant to us. Our meetings are in this light revolving around action - visiting sights or initiating social-aid programs.  Theological and liturgical issues are put into the background, while more activist notions come to the forefront.

Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai offers a helpful lens here (the anthropologist had to include him here). He writes that hope is embedded in the “capacity to aspire".  Hope does not necessarily lie in repeating inherited forms, but in creating new ones. In this sense, Coexister Vienna is not only a continuation of interreligious dialogue, but its renewal. Hope, then, is not found in preserving a fading tradition but in the transforming character of interreligious dialogue.

Reflection Question:
What inherited forms or traditions in your own faith or worldview might need transformation in order to become hopeful and relevant today?

Pope Francis sent a message to Catholic Christians for Lent in our preparation for the great feast of Easter. It was all about hope. He reminded us that we are on a journey of hope. He spoke about those who live without hope, with a "deficit of hope", and invited us into a conversion to hope. Essentially, Francis sees this as an act of trust in God and to God's voice that speaks to us in our world. For Christians, that voice comes through Jesus and the ultimate sign of hope is his resurrection from the death. This is the hope that our world needs--a conviction that there is life beyond the experiences of death that surround us. There is always hope.

One personal example of this experience of hope is seen in Brian, a friend. Experiencing breathlessness for a while, Brian went to his doctor to see if this was heart related. His doctor assured him it wasn't. Brian insisted on being referred to a cardiologist. After two cardiac consultations, he ended up immediately in the cardiac hospital and now awaits surgery. Investigations showed that two of his arteries were 90% blocked and a third, 70%. He is so grateful to the cardiologists that he consulted and lives with hope for a wonderful life beyond surgery. If he and his wife had gone on their planned cruise to New Zealand a day after his consultations, the plane flight getting there would have probably killed him.

Reflection Question:
When have you experienced an unexpected turn that, in hindsight, became a sign of grace or a source of hope?

As a Christian, when I reflect on the theme of liberation, the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is of central importance. It is not only that his resurrection represents a “foretaste” of the things to come; in a Christian narrative, it stands for an anticipatory realization of God’s dream and vision for creation and its completion. In addition to that, Christ’s resurrection also serves as an (or perhaps even the) interpretive lens through which a Christian looks at, understands, and relates to the world. It is in light of the resurrection that Christians undergo a transformation of their view of the way things should be in contrast to the way they are. The present status quo – the way things are among human beings at various levels as well as in their relation to the world – is challenged by a perspective offered through the story of Jesus – a story of being for and with others. The metaphor of the resurrection seeks to capture that God affirms the way of Jesus as one which is meaningful and in accordance with God’s dream and vision. In the resurrection, the future is breaking into the present.

This “breaking-in” represents a point of connection with our theme of liberation. Christian tradition suggests that it is through the Christ event, that is, Jesus’s resurrection as well as his life and his death on the cross, that we have a “gateway” to liberated life. And the liberated life, in this understanding, is not an end in itself. It should empower one to participate in God’s story of transforming all of creation. Or, in the words of Paul the Apostle, “for freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). As such, liberated life is both a gift and a task.

The nature of this liberation is powerfully portrayed by Luke the Evangelist in a scene depicting Jesus coming to his home synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath day. There, Jesus is said to read the following words from the scroll:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Lk 4:18-19)

What can be seen as a declaration of Jesus’s program offers inspiring food for reflection. Here, I am only going to touch upon a few points. First, this scene clearly shows Jesus’s rootedness in his Jewish tradition. It introduces him as an interpreter of the Scripture. A passage from the Book of Isaiah (61:1-2a and 58:6) provides an opportunity to engage in teaching and discussion. Hereby Jesus makes clear that he identifies himself as standing in continuity with God’s prophets that came before him. The captives and oppressed – regardless of whether they are suffering under the Egyptian, Babylonian, or Roman yoke – are to look for strength and hope in the promise of God’s liberating action. It is a reminder for Christians that our understanding of liberation does not make sense apart from Jewish tradition.  

Second, liberation is inherently and inseparably connected with everyday reality. While phenomena such as poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression can certainly, and inspiringly, be interpreted in symbolic terms, it would undoubtedly be a mistake to spiritualize Jesus’s claims away. They need to be seriously considered in their raw materiality. The poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed represent all those disadvantaged, marginalized, and excluded due to various circumstances shaping our current reality which are theologically understood as sin. One’s own liberation can never be regarded to be completed as long as there are those still waiting for their liberation. Liberation continues to be an ongoing and essential task.

Finally, liberation is here framed in the context of spirituality. Luke is unambivalent in presenting Jesus as the Liberator, viewing his mission as empowered by the Spirit of God. Furthermore, the Jubilee, a true archetype of liberation, is introduced as a result of divine involvement rather than purely human strategizing and policy. In this way, short-breathed activism is kept at bay. Having said that, however, it must be at the same time maintained that human agency is necessary in the process of liberation. “God has no hands but ours,” says the quote often attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila, a 16th-century Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun. The human is empowered (inspirited) by the divine to work toward liberation. Ultimately, liberation remains to be a gift.

May we as Christians and Jews – or people of other religions or none – find strength and inspiration in our respective traditions to both accept (gift) and strive for (task) liberation – not only for us but for the whole humankind and creation.

Reading Matthew 2 as a Dream of Liberation

Matthew 2 introduces the good news of the gospel from the daily experience of a birth. A careful reading allows us to observe that we are not dealing with a conventional birth. The text is full of political language; Matthew’s community longs for political, social and religious liberation, and describes the birth of Jesus as the arrival of God's reign and his saving intervention.

But from what does he save? and why tell the story of a birth? Jesus is born in the time of Herod the Great, in a hostile and adverse reality marked by the imperial oppression of Rome and the Herodian family. A period of land dispossession, militarization, economic subjection and repression. However, the birth in Bethlehem, the star that announces a divine intervention, the royal honors to the child, and the appointment of the leader who will shepherd the people, all have a subversive air: they deny the power of Herod and announce the birth of an alternative order.

The opposition between the Jewish king who lives in Jerusalem, imposed by force and violence, and the one born in Bethlehem, in circumstances of fragility and marginality, clearly represent two conflicting projects. They present us with two ways of looking at reality, of establishing relationships, and of building projects. It affirms that God is not in the grandiose centers of power, but in the silenced, excluded and forgotten places.

The text builds a new project from the conflicting image of the Messiah, rooted in the tradition that said that a “descendant of David” would be sent by God to build his kingdom. Matthew recovers texts such as Isaiah 7:14, where the king is associated with an ideal of establishing peace, rest and abundance. 1 Samuel, when narrating the election of Saul as king of Israel, says: “you shall anoint him to be the leader of my people Israel and he shall deliver my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen my people and their love has come upon me” (1 Samuel 16:9). The king must be a liberator, mediation of God's tender and supportive gaze. The Palestinian Targum to Num 24:7 indicates that the Messiah “will be stronger than Saul, who had pity on Agag, king of the Amalekites...” (Levine, 1980: 20). Thus, the expected messiah was to be an instrument of peace, mercy, and dignity.

Matthew 2 is also a clear reference to the beginning of the book of Exodus, a biblical paradigm of liberation. This midrashic exercise makes important correspondences: the child Moses is the liberator of Israel, and the child Jesus is the messiah awaited by the people; Pharaoh shows a murderous violence in the face of God's liberating project, as does Herod. In both texts God intervenes in history, and the people embrace a new hope. The text criticizes the powers of the day for their violence and plunder, announces their end, and proposes an alternative reality, announcing the arrival of God’s project in history.

Today, at the close of Ramadan, and on the eve of the Passover and Pesach celebrations, we long for, and work for, the alternative construction of the kingdom of God, of a society of dialogue, justice and hope for all peoples. We pray and work for the birth of liberation once again.

Personally, this Lent has had its hardships. On a more global level, it’s easy to see that the world has many reasons for grief and sorrow right now, as times become more troubling in different ways. As a Catholic Christian, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve done my best to face the challenges before me with a Lenten mindset, staying rooted in the idea that, spiritually, this time of suffering leads up to resurrection and liberation. I quickly realized that this year, I didn’t need to make any extra ad hoc symbolic sacrifices - like my failed attempt at a much-needed sugar-free Lent!—, but rather, I came to understand that a true Lenten attitude meant facing what was ahead of me with strength, resilience, and hope. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had an experience like that this year.

At the same time, a particular passage of the scripture kept coming to mind, almost urging me to pray with it: the clearing of the Temple, where Jesus drives out the money changers. Amidst concrete frustrations, the thought that Jesus acted decisively to purify our institutions and protect what should be most sacred brought me hope and relief.

A few days ago, I managed to finally take some time to reflect and pray with this passage and, to my surprise, I realized that —in the Synoptic Gospels— the cleansing of the Temple occurs immediately after Jesus comes into Jerusalem praised by many, as Christians remember on Palm Sunday. I must have known that, but, honestly, I didn’t have it in mind. For me, this timing made an already powerful episode even more impactful: it’s the very first thing he chooses to do upon arrival, and that carries deep meaning. In a way, it shows how strongly invested he is in this task.

I think many of us, both Christians or Jews, tend to approach these holy celebrations by focusing mainly on a spiritual understanding of what liberation might mean to us today, and that remains my primary interpretation. I am also positive that we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to hope that our more material liberations just descend from the heavens. But my experience over the past few weeks led me to reflect on our institutions, and the many things they need liberation from today—whether temples, synagogues, churches, or also our social, political, and public institutions. Local ones, regional ones. How much pain, injustice and damage happens when our institutions are taken over by people who distort their meaning and purpose and do with them as they please.

So, I’m not expecting anything magical or drastic to happen in a week or two. But this year, when I participate in next Sunday’s mass to open Holy Week for us Christians, I will keep very much in mind that when Jesus enters the city, he heads straight for the Temple to drive out the money changers. And that, I’m certain, will help me find some much-needed hope and peace. The kind of hope and peace that doesn’t drive you into slumber, but rather replenishes you and pushes you to take action.

Suffering and liberation are both central to the Exodus story, which tells of the (re)birth of the Israelites and their freedom from slavery. While suffering may not be the first thing we think of when we call to mind notions of freedom, expansiveness, and liberation, the Exodus story teaches us that these experiences are often intertwined. The Zohar draws a parallel between the Hebrew for Egypt (mitzrayim) and the word for “narrow straits” (m’tzarim). Egypt is the place where the Israelites were constricted and retrained as slaves. In Jewish tradition, Egypt is also a metaphor for any personal or collective experience of suffering, constriction, and stuckness, whether this be physical, emotional or spiritual. The Israelites are brought out of Miztrayim - the narrow straits - and through the waters of the Sea of Reeds into a new existence. In this sense, Egypt becomes the metaphorical womb or birth canal out of which the Israelites are "birthed" (and by extension, God becomes midwife, though this is not often noted).

People who give birth often say that the moment just prior to the baby’s delivery is the moment they feel most like giving up, when the pain and suffering goes beyond what they think they can handle. Similarly, the moments just before liberation can be the most terrifying and plunge people into the darkest despair. It is only after the plague of darkness and after losing his beloved firstborn son that Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites free, though he later changes his mind and goes after them. The Israelites find themselves trapped between the sea and the pursuing Egyptian army, between death and the drowning. In this moment of despair, a figure emerges in midrashic tellings – Nahshon, who steps in the water up to his neck, refusing to lose hope:

When the Jewish people stood at the Red Sea, the tribes were arguing with one other…This tribe said: I am not going into the sea first, and that tribe said: I am not going into the sea first. Then, in jumped Nahshon ben Amminadab, and descended into the sea first… And in this regard, the tradition, i.e., the Writings, explicates Nahshon’s prayer at that moment:
““Save me, God; for the waters are come in even unto the soul. I am sunk in deep mire, where there is no standing…let not the water flood overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up” (Psalms 69:2–3, 16). 
At that time, Moses was prolonging his prayer. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him: My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me? Moses said before Him: Master of the Universe, but what can I do? God said to him: “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward. And you, lift up your rod and stretch out your hand” (Exodus 14:15–16).
(Sotah 37a)

This midrash is a powerful story about how to deal with the fear that arises when we believe all hope is lost. There is a well-known song inspired by the words Rabbi Nachman of Breslov which says, “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid.” Nahshon did not freeze out of fear in the narrow place, he stepped forward in faith and called out in prayer – this opened a new path forward and made the way for liberation and life.

Faith in the face of suffering – when the waters seem poised to drown – is the key that opens the way to liberation. Nahshon’s actions teach us the power of both faith and prayer, especially at times when we are in over our heads and feel we are drowning.

It is just as Nahshon steps into the sea and calls out to God in prayer that the midrash takes an unexpected turn. At this critical moment, Moses, himself in the midst of his own prayer, is reminded by God that it is not enough to merely pray; further action is required. God chastises Moses, saying, “My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me?” God then commands Moses to tell the Israelites to move forward and for him to stretch out his rod to part the sea. It is a powerful message: liberation requires both prayer and action, even when the path forward seems impossible.

The Exodus is not only an opportunity to acknowledge the suffering of the Israelites, it also reminds us that liberation should not be achieved at the expense of ignoring the suffering of others. The story of the Exodus does not exist in a vacuum, and the pain of one cannot be divorced from the suffering of another. The Egyptian oppressors, though enemies of the Israelites, also experience agony. The very force that brings freedom to one people results in the pain of another. Just as God mourns and suffers with all those who suffer, so we too are invited to look past out own suffering to acknowledge the pain of others.

The God of Israel fully experiences human suffering. Exodus 3:7 explains that God sees the suffering of the Israelites, hears it, and knows it in an embodied sense. God’s empathy is not restricted to the Israelites but extends to all God’s creatures, human and non-human. In the Talmud, it is said that God rebukes the angels when they begin to sing in joy at the drowning of the Egyptians, saying "How dare you sing for joy when the work of my hands is drowning in the sea?" (Sanhedrin 39b). This chastisement reminds us to remember the suffering of others, even in moments of our own liberation, or indeed, in moments of our own suffering.

The embodied acknowledgment of the suffering of others is also built into the Passover Seder. The Mizrachi Jewish tradition, unlike the Ashkenazi custom of dipping a finger into wine to mark each of the Ten Plagues, takes a more sombre approach: A full cup of wine is poured out in empathy, a symbolic gesture of shared sorrow for the suffering of others, even our oppressors (the Egyptians, in the case of the Exodus). It is a recognition that suffering, no matter where it occurs, diminishes joy.

The Exodus invites us to reflect on the cost of freedom, not just for ourselves but for all. May we learn to pray for liberation not only for those we love but for those who stand opposed to us. In the end, only through shared humanity can true liberation emerge.

This year, 2025, with Passover and Easter once again in close proximity to one another, there is the chance to reflect on the theme of liberation within the context of these two great festivals.

I therefore would like to start with the image of Jesus the Jew, so easily forgotten, and so importantly recovered in recent decades, as central to the Christian appreciation of Passover. By this I mean that even though we have preserved within our Christian scriptures the institution of the Passover as recorded in the Torah/Pentateuch, we also have within the New Testament a record of Jesus, as a faithful son of Israel, observing the festival of Pesach. Of course, we must then also be honest that the Gospels and New Testament writings go one step further and interpret Jesus as the paschal lamb (cf. 1 Cor 5:7), and this is not without its problems of replacement theology and supersessionism. That said, this shows how deeply steeped our own Christian understanding of liberation is indebted to the idea of liberation and redemption that is part of the Jewish experience of Passover.

Another image, equally arresting, is one taken from the biblical account of creation, which then enters into our liturgies for Holy Week. The Exsultet, the proclamation that is sung after the Easter candle has been processed into the church during the Easter vigil in Catholic and other Western Christian liturgies speaks of Christ “Who for our sake paid Adam's debt to the eternal Father”. In Christian understanding, Jesus Christ is the new Adam who undoes the mistake of the first Adam in the Garden of Eden. So, at Easter, Christians deeply internalise the simultaneous understanding of Jesus as a faithful Jew sent “only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt 15:24) and as the one who is given for all humanity “for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22).

This simultaneity reminds me of a line from the Jewish liturgical song that welcomes the Sabbath, Lekha Dodi (“Come my beloved”): “‘Observe’ [shamor] and ‘remember’ [zakhor] (were said) in a single utterance.” This refers to the fact that the Sabbath command is recorded differently in Deut 5:12-15 and Exod 20:8-11. In Deuteronomy one must observe the Sabbath because God brought the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt. In Exodus, one must remember the Sabbath as a reminder that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. According to Jewish tradition, both articulations of the Sabbath commandment were given in a single utterance on Mount Sinai without contradiction. They are both simultaneously true and valid.

The Jewishness of Jesus is not in doubt. As Christians we ought to rejoice in recovering and cherishing this fact of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. But we must equally acknowledge that as Christians we understand Jesus as the one who in his very particularity as a Jew also embodied the universality of what it means to be fully human. Within this very simultaneity, Christians therefore understand liberation not only as freedom from bondage and oppression, but also as deliverance from sin and death. Similarly, our understanding of Jesus the Jew and the universal Christ impacts how we appreciate Jesus Christ as embodying both particularity and universality. This in turn influences our understanding of liberation as a desire that there be liberation for all humanity and, indeed, for all of creation.