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One quiet Shabbat morning in August, a long-time member comes in and says, Rabbi, I turn 93 today.\xa0 Can I have an Aliyah?\xa0 I said of course. We\u2019d love to give you an Aliyah.\xa0\xa0 Just want you to know one thing. You are a youngster.

A youngster?\xa0 I\u2019m turning 93 today.\xa0 How is that a youngster?

I pointed in the direction of a woman who was sitting with her children, grandchildren and extended mishpacha.\xa0 I said we are doing an Aliyah today for that woman surrounded by her family because she just turned 103.

Without skipping a beat, he says:\xa0 Is she single?

That\u2019s what I want to talk about today.\xa0\xa0 The good stuff.\xa0 The lightness, the laughter, the loveliness, that have been so hard to come by this past year.\xa0 There has obviously been a deep heaviness all year.\xa0 And we are not done with that heaviness. \xa0\xa0The wars are ongoing. Our worry is ongoing.\xa0 The heartbreak caused by Helene and Milton is ongoing. \xa0And yet, we are not wired to live in heaviness indefinitely.\xa0 We cannot live in heaviness indefinitely. We crave hope. We crave uplift. Even now.\xa0 Especially now.\xa0\xa0 And so I want to talk about finding hope, but with a particular angle.\xa0 How do we find hope when it sometimes feels like hope is gone?\xa0 What can I do, what can you do, what can we each do to make our world a more hopeful world?\xa0