Cohen held that the possible moral price of an ethical discourse based on unity is the danger of nullifying the different, thus ignoring the weak, minorities, etc. When despair is the guiding force behind the political endeavor (as in Zionism), the result can be unethical. According to Cohen, the possibility of acting politically and religiously requires hope. I believe that we can better understand Rosenzweig and Buber—as well as a long and revered line of other thinkers—in light of this view of Hermann Cohen.

It is worth responding here to Mittleman, and emphasizing that hope is not a clear matter that refers us directly to the political; for this reason, the establishment of hope in the human consciousness in general and the religious consciousness in particular is extremely difficult. The willingness to act politically out of hope and not despair requires a change in our perception of reality itself. This cannot be brought about through an observation of history, which is directed toward the past. It can be brought about only through a different way of thinking about the history of Israel and the history of humanity; one that is directed toward the future and the messianic age.

It is only appropriate to mention here Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook’s interpretation of the words of Ben Zoma and the sages in the Mishna and the Passover Haggada: “The sages say: ‘The days of your life’ are your days in this world. ‘All the days of your life’ include the messianic days.” Indeed, the whole point of remembering the exodus from Egypt and retelling the story again and again in this world is to change human consciousness and guide us toward making an effort to bring about the messianic age. Religious thinking, then, is good, and changes national politics if it succeeds in making people act out of hope and ethical-religious intention.

A reading of the works of Buber should take into account Cohen’s concept of hope, in light of which we can also understand Buber’s ethical expectations of Zionism. Buber’s challenge to the Jewish national movement was his assertion of the possibility of establishing an ethical and just society in Cohen’s terms. The concern that guided Cohen’s approach to Zionism was that a “Jewish state” was liable to lead to non-religious ethical action in the name of Judaism, in effect despairing of Jewish messianic hope.

Is the hope of politics the hope of leveraging the present into the future, to make us act in a world that functions as we would wish it to? Or is the role of hope, perhaps, to introduce new dimensions of the future into the present, causing us to act in the real world in light of the messianic hope?

I think that the question of hope raised by Mittleman can be presented in the Israeli discourse as a real political question: On the deepest level, are we acting out of a despair that harnesses the language of hope? Or are we acting out of a hope that seeks to introduce metaphysical ethics into reality as we perceive it?

Hanoch Ben Pazi
Bar-Ilan University