Once, after having spoken about some of these ideas someone came up to me and said, “I appreciated your words. But don’t you think you are fighting a losing battle?” It was a good question. . . . What I replied, though, was this: “Yes, the Jewish fight is a losing battle. It always was. Moses lost. Joshua lost. Jeremiah lost. We have striven for ideals just beyond our reach, hoped for a gracious society just beyond the possible, believed in a messianic age just over the furthest horizon, wrestled with the angel and emerged limping. And in the meanwhile those who won have disappeared, and we are still here, still young, still full of vigor, still fighting the losing battle, never accepting defeat, refusing to resign ourselves to cynicism, or to give up hope of peace with those who today as in the past, seek our destruction. That kind of losing battle is worth fighting, more so than any easy victory, any premature consolation.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Future Tense. Cited by Os Guinness, Impossible People, pg.18
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