Today, I have feelings of fabulous optimism.

There are plenty of good reasons for this. Yet, if you were to live only in the world of news, or amongst those otherwise inclined, you may think me deluded, at best naïve.

A large part of this morning’s optimism is, of course, thanks to our Bat Mitzvah and her family. You see, being able to see you and to ask God to bless you when you were young, and now to do so again when you are 13 at your Bat Mitzvah, being a constant presence in my life as a rabbi—you are what will henceforth be known as a rabbi’s dream.

I learned something new this morning. I learned it, unusually, out of studying so that I could teach later on for our Exploring Judaism class around Jewish practices of death and mourning.

So why optimism about the end of life?

Well, because it is the way that we sometimes work with people that brings incredible faith amongst us for community and our well-being.

There is a phrase which I hadn’t come across before: chesed shel emet, literally “the truest act of kindness”. This means kindness to a person who has died, usually used to describe the work of the Jewish burial society or, afterwards, to the gravestone itself. It is kindness with no expectation of reward. The dead cannot thank you.

Loving-kindness, as we normally translate it, although it’s difficult to exactly pinpoint its meaning, is so much needed in our world. It makes it very difficult to find truth. To be a devotee of it—we know that word best, most of us who are not Jewish as well, from the Hebrew word chasid. A chasid is someone who is a devotee, an enthusiastic follower or worshipper, derived from chesed—a free-flowing love that knows no bounds.

Special devotional groups have been called chasidim throughout the ages. In the time of the Mishnah, around 200 CE, they refer to the chasidim of early times. Pirkei Avot describes a chasid as one who says, “What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is yours”—one who is generous without a thought of self.

The same source warns, however, that an ignorant person is no chasid. Typically, in Judaism, a measure of learning needs to be added to the simple joy of giving that is the chasid’s lot.

Whilst the term Chasidim is most usually attributed to the mid-18th-century movement identified especially with the charismatic mystic Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, literally “Master of the Good Name”, I fancy reclaiming it.

At The Ark, we also offer joy and beauty through music, a set of values that we promote through actions, not through a mere manifesto.

What does it mean to focus on chesed shel emet, a loving-kindness born out of truth? What does it mean to be able to live simply, joyfully, to be able to worship in freedom and to allow other people their freedom as well?

Interestingly, in our community, I find that—not because I’m the rabbi, but in you as the members, in you as the congregation, in the people who come through these doors, and in you as the guests who are here today to come and share joy, to come and share—maybe, interestingly, maybe you find it a bit boring, I’m not sure—parts of this special community and this special people.

I love the characters of Caleb and Joshua: the two who were optimistic, the two who saw that the future was difficult and, at the same time, had faith that together, together with community and together with the support of the Divine, whatever they understood that to mean, they would be able to prevail.

Now, in our moment of time, it is good to be optimistic. To be pessimistic means that we probably will stand still, doing nothing. To be optimistic, with chesed shel emet, with a bit of truth, to understand the reality of the world that we’re in, but to put ourselves forward nonetheless.

You have grown so much in these last few years, being engaged with LJY-Netzer through our youth movement, finding new friends in other congregations, sharing with them your joys today as you do with your classmates from our Religion School.

To see you and your family today coming into our sacred sanctuary to celebrate life brings a huge amount of joy to us all.

May you live your life with chesed shel emet, not expecting any kind of real reward, but just knowing that somewhere along the line you have the confidence in knowing that you are blessed: blessed in the family that you were born into, blessed in the community that you were born into, and also blessed in the world that you were born into.

May we all have the strength of optimism to look forward and to play our part in the future, creating goodness, creating chesed shel emet.

Amen.