Neilah Sermonette: Give It Up! The Cry of Despair
- rabbirobynashworth
- Oct 3
- 5 min read
Last night, which now feels like a world and time away, I promised I would bring us another conversation partner to talk to the feeling of despair which we may have been experiencing. Or, if not you, people around you.
Before we look at a very short story by the writer Franz Kafka, building upon the stories by him we have already read this Yom Kippur, I’ll remind us about the feeling of despair, according to the work of Brené Brown. She writes that despair includes hopelessness which arises out of ‘a combination of negative life events and negative thought patterns, particularly self-blame, and the perceived inability to change our circumstances.’* Maybe, now we’ve re-read the Book of Jonah we can understand his journey to be one of despair and hopelessness.
Let’s turn to Kafka’s story, as we enter the last service - Neilah and soon proclaim that the gates of heaven are closing. This story, called ‘Give It Up’ by Kafka was written between 1917 and 1923 and was published after the author’s death. I was introduced to it by Rabbi Judith Rosen-Berry during a Tikkun Leil Shavuot this year. The story’s themes are resonant for us today. Typical to Kafka’s writing this story is strange, winding - it takes a while to understand and discern what is happening and what it all means. Here it is:
It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was walking to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized that it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me unsure of the way, I did not yet know my way very well in this town; luckily, a policeman was nearby, I ran up to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: “From me you want to know the way?” “Yes,” I said, “since I cannot find it myself.” “Give it up! Give it up,” he said, and turned away with a sudden jerk, like people who want to be alone with their laughter.
I warned you! Really, if we had time, we’d sit with this story for a long time. And if you do want to spend longer with it, you can find a video of Rabbi Judith teaching this story on the website of the Voices for Prophetic Judaism.**
Here’s how I understand this story today. Someone, you or I maybe, is walking with purpose

to the station, presumably to travel, or to meet someone. They decide to look at the tower clock and realise the time doesn’t match the time on their watch. As someone pointed out to me, at this moment the protagonist looked outside of themselves for direction and at that point became lost. They were detached from their sense of self and groundedness, looking outwards for answers and reassurances. The person is shocked and starts to hurry, becoming unsure of the way. They sees a policeman, an authority figure - assuming they will tell them where to go. The policeman smiles and says ‘give it up! Give it up’. This is the voice of despair - suggesting to the person to give up, there is no hope in finding their way. Offering no support, no answers, the policeman separates himself from the person before him. According to Brené Brown despair is the ‘belief that there is no end to what we’re experiencing.’***
This is what the policeman is asking the person to believe - that there is no end, no redemption, no hope - so give up.
When I first heard this story, I cried. I realised that the voice of despair I had been hearing was not my own, or from Judaism. It was a voice of those who wanted me to give up. It was an indicator that I was looking for reassurance and hope outside of myself rather than from within.
Of the many words we have recited and sung over the past few hours, we have been reminded, time and time again, of the commitment of our people, through dark times to carry on and not give up. This story also reminded me about a conversation we had on the Rabbiting On podcast, when I and Rabbis Debbie Young-Somers and Miriam Berger interviewed two men determined to talk about and imagine peace - Magen Inon, an Israeli whose parents were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7th, and Hamze Awawde, a Palestinian man.**** During the interview each man said one thing that stayed with me and countered this voice which keeps shouting, ‘give it up! Give it up’. Firstly Magen said the following in response to a question about the future in the region:
I want to make it much more concrete. When I imagine peace I imagine my family comes to Hamze’s family in Dura - eating great food, playing football, hanging out and we don’t have to cross any checkpoints on the way. And the next Saturday Hamze’s family’s coming and visiting my moshav - and we go to the beach together. For me that’s peace. That’s what I want to imagine and maybe we have to start picturing it - like guided meditation - because for decades now we’ve only imagined war. We’ve prepared for war, we imagined war, and we got war. I’m saying the most practical thing at the moment now is to dream. We have to dream about peace. And then taking small steps to achieve it.
Secondly, Hamze said that we don’t have hope but we create hope. The voice of despair is the easy way out - coming from a place from outside of us and our tradition. We are, at our best, a people who are committed to creating hope and imagining and working towards a a better world. We know, through our endless cyclical readings of the Torah, of ancient texts which speak to us today, that time is a spiral. Empires rise and fall. What feels impossible and permanent is, in so many ways, temporary. Change is and has to be possible.
As I was standing by the ruins of the Berlin Wall earlier this year I felt this; as I walked through the Holocaust Museum I knew this; as I study the prophets and imagine their lives as the temples were destroyed and the people exiled, I imagine better times.
Unlike the Kafka story, we must believe, deep within, though divinity, that we can find the way, together despite the horrors and real fears. We must be the ones to create hope and refuse any unholy calls from within or without to ‘give it up’.
As the gates will shortly close, may we find ways to create hope going into year 5786.
Ken Yehi Ratzon - may it be so. Amen.
*Brown, B. 2021. Atlas of the Heart. London: Penguin, p.101.
*** Brown (2021)., p.102.
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