In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.

The previous three questions can be found in the previous three posts

The last question the soul is to be asked is this “Tzipita l’yeshua?” do you anticipate redemption, are you living in a state of hope?

Hope:

The theologian and philosopher Emil Fackenheim wrote “to be a Jew is to hope,”

And Rabbi Jonathan Sacks added “to be a Jew is to be an agent of hope”

Future Tense – How The Jews Invented Hope by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Judaism is a religion of details, but we miss the point if we do not sometimes step back and see the larger picture. To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair. Every ritual, every mitzvah, every syllable of the Jewish story, every element of Jewish law, is a protest against escapism, resignation or the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism is a sustained struggle, the greatest ever known, against the world that is, in the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet. There is no more challenging vocation. Throughout history, when human beings have sought hope they have found it in the Jewish story. Judaism is the religion, and Israel the home, of hope.”