The Duty of Hope. Facing the Spiritual Crisis
Yann Boissière
Desclée de Brouwer, 200 p., €17.90
Yann Boissière, rabbi of the Beaugrenelle synagogue in Paris (15th), makes in this book the rather dark observation of a “anthropological rupture underway today”. The individual ” autonomous “ which had emerged with Cartesian modernity “is disintegrating”. At stake is a “major spiritual crisis”which is not “additional to all the others: it is their matrix”.
In the first part, the author draws up the observation of a society torn between a desire for control which kills all creativity, and the “disbelief” resulting from the excess information sent to us by machines “suppress in speed and productivity”. “Shock and helplessness become the norm in our relationship with the world,” deplores the author.
“Spirituality ensures resilience”
In a second part, he explains why the human condition “determines us, whether we want it or not, to be nothing other than spiritual beings.” Yann Boissière recalls the power of “resistance of spirituality” : “In the face of the magnetism of novelty, spirituality ensures resilience.” It allows you to discover within yourself “a calm water which is the source of all value and meaning”, of “to find our unformulated, forgotten but essential point of adhesion with the world.”
The third part offers five “breaths” which, based on five key notions of Jewish tradition, invite us to find height in our lives. The soul (nephesh) reminds us of interiority and consciousness. The return (teshuvah), this “inner examination”opens the possibility of choice. The words of the Hebrews before the law: “We will do it and we will hear it” (Ex 24, 7) question the link between doing and knowing. Reparation (Tikkun) changes from anger to blessing. The meaning (Ta’am) is revealed “in stories, never in systems”And “only makes sense to us if we know that we are not the cause of it”.
In our societies which multiply the “problems” and the “solutions”THE “process” and the “reporting”as well as the monetization of emotions, this book is a welcome call for resistance. This is based not on the supposed effectiveness of a certain number of recipes, but on a return to reflection, to the beauty of the world and of art, to the length of time. Inviting the reader to “give a second chance to what we are about to kill with algorithms and logorrhea: the freedom to reacquire our interiority (…) to open ourselves to sharing, to the flavor of the world and to the happiness of being together.”
