“Our time is, in the main, alien to Biblical thought and faith. God as a source of hope is recited in formal worship and called upon as a last desperate cry. Very few people really depend upon it. In the deep despair which pervades our life there is little reliance upon God and the hope which derives from Him. “

In October of 1963, Rabbi Olan addressed the pervasive loss of hope plaguing mid-twentieth century America. Blinded by constant change, conflict, and the prospect of global thermonucear war, it was difficult for many to envision any tomorrow. Rabbi Olan viewed this despair as a social illness that could be remedied. Some will find answers in faith. All can find encouragement in modern advances in science.

“It is a strange phenomenon of our time that real hope arises from the new scientific revolution which has opened up the whole universe for us.”

If there will be a tomorrow, why not work together, using all our mental, physical, and spiritual resources to make it better than today?

(Rabbi Olan quotes T. S. Eliot, Edward Fitzgerald, William Butler Yeats, Ecclesiastes 1:9, Job 2, Genesis 9, Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 57-58.)