Survival of the Jewish Pessimists
Amongst Jews there is a saying: "The pessimists fled, and the optimists stayed behind."
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This is a guest essay written by Joanne Fedler, a South African author of 15 books.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Optimists like me are often made fun of, by cynics — by which I mean, my husband.
I don’t know if it is my natural disposition to always look on the bright side or whether it is a cultivated personality trait. The difference is I want people to like me and my husband doesn’t care what people think of him.
A friend’s son once remarked that my husband is the coolest person he knows, which is weird because his toenails are smashed from ultramarathon running and you never want to see him in a pair of Birkenstocks — especially if you’re just about to eat. Still, despite my wholesome toes, I have never attracted such an accolade.
I am too keen, even I know this. Enthusiasm is gauche and graceless, perhaps even juvenile, in a culture that rewards sarcasm and mockery. I grew up on “Noddy” books, not “The Simpsons.” I have never wanted to live inside a mind that easily expels put-downs because people are schmucks and a waste of time.
It leads me to wonder whether being a sceptic isn’t its own cultivated and curated identity which seeds in the lonely darkness of teenage years. I have my theory that witty repartee is a defence sourced in some backstory wound that may or may not have involved breastfeeding. And I don’t live shielded, mostly because I don’t know how to, not because I was bottle-fed.
My optimism makes me an easy teasing target, because it is, let’s face it, a little naïve and foolish after a certain point. Precisely where that point is, is the point of this essay.
A friend commented recently that my bullsh*t radar is faulty after I trusted someone who has given me sufficient reason not to. She pointed out a pattern which was hopeless to deny and made me feel a little embarrassed. Eventually, we have to take responsibility for finding ourselves in the same place again and determine where the murky border between La-La Land and hardcore reality is.
William Blake wrote poems of Innocence and Experience, to distinguish the two states, and all you have to do is read “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” to get the contrasting vibes. Rejoice, tender, and bless describe the frolicking lamb, but in the forests of the night, we get, fearful, burnt, fire, and chain — the language of maturity.
By the time we’re menstruating or shaving, the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny should be fully retired, debunked as fictions. But the agony of giving up these fantasies is real. There are, I guess, complicated emotional reasons for why I’ve always been a magical thinker, but what use are our sort when the synagogues are burning?
Susan Sontag wrote in her essay, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” that:
“Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood. No-one, after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance or amnesia.”
I think, if offered the choice, I would opt to hold tight to my innocence and incredulity, but there comes a junction on the path where optimism and positivity turn toxic — they are a soporific, a bypass of evil. And you will be taken as seriously as a wand-waving child in a tutu when what’s needed are serious hostage negotiators.
People love to quote Anne Frank who wrote in her diary:
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”
She was only 16 and hadn’t lived enough to make a decent assessment of what Nazis were capable of. If she had known that she was going to die soon, betrayed by neighbours, she might have revised her adorable assessment of “people.” Because, despite what we magical thinkers like to believe, some “people love dead Jews” (which is the title of Dara Horn’s very excellent book).
Another one of my go-to humanists is Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch writer who was taken to Westerbork labour camp in 1943. She kept detailed diaries in which she wrote:
“We have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. We are hurtful enough to one another as it is. And I don’t really know what I mean when I say that there are bullies and bad characters among our own people, for no-one is really ‘bad’ deep down.”
If she’s right (I’m not sure she is), the question is, how far down does your badness have to go, before you can be persuaded to herd people into gas chambers, shoot them down at a music festival, rape women and kidnap babies? What point is there in thinking the best of people who clearly don’t think the best (or even enough) of you to let you live?
Amongst Jews there is a saying: “The pessimists fled, and the optimists stayed behind.”
Etty knew she might die, but she wasn’t as attached to her own survival as perhaps I am and it makes me grievously mad that she was killed in Auschwitz at the age of 29. Her belief that people weren’t bad “deep down” did not save her. Neither did her faith in God, goodness, finding inner peace, and spending time in prayer.
Still, she died an optimist, like Anne Frank did.
So did Vivian Silver, a lifelong peace activist who fought for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. She advocated for human rights and a negotiated peace agreement and worked with Women Wage Peace, an interfaith grassroots organization of Jewish and Arab women. Vivian was murdered by Hamas at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023.
Perhaps she didn’t believe Hamas would do what they have been promising to do always, which is to kill as many Jews as possible. That’s magical thinking for you.
Etty Hillesum wrote: “I also believe, childishly perhaps, but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again, only through love.”
The little girl in me arches towards the light of her words. But the adult knows that the world we live in, is not a Beatles’ song. We need more that just love.
Not all people are good, even “deep down.”
In the forests of the night, where there are “deadly terrors,” I have to learn the ways of the Tyger.
I don’t know if it will ever make me cool, but maybe, just maybe, it will keep me alive.
 | A guest post by
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Nice article; thanks. I think one can have an optimistic view of the world while recognizing that fear, aggression, territorialism, and just plain xenophobia are as much a part of the human condition as the more compassionate and cooperative traits. Even more plainly, when somebody says he or she is coming to kill you - and their culture echoes this loudly - believe them. Thinking you can change their minds is not optimism; it's foolish arrogance.
Thank you, Joanne, for describing so well the emotional/intellectual maelstrom since Oct. 7. My head is still spinning from having done a 180 so fast. I am asking myself many things, but not whether I was wrong ever to have planted myself so firmly among liberal thought. I WAS wrong, and I’m guessing you feel that way, too. I loved, though, that you started my day with some gentle, self-deprecating humor. I think, more than renewed optimism, I now aspire to seeing and appreciating humor, and goodness, wherever they may be found.