Throughout the 331 days of Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s captivity until he was murdered by Hamas along with five other hostages last August, Israel and the rest of the world witnessed the constant vigil of hopefulness kept by his parents, Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, as they campaigned relentlessly for the release of their son and the other captives and continue to do so even after his death.

Staying on the side of hopefulness before and after his murder was and is the only way of not “falling into the abyss of despair,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin told an intimate gathering at the Israeli President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Monday evening, marking the establishment of Israel’s first-of-its-kind Institute for the Study of Hope, Dignity and Wellbeing. Operating under the auspices of the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine and Life’s Door, a nonprofit based in the U.S. and Israel that promotes “hope-based care models,” the new institute will be run and chaired by oncologist and Hebrew University medical school professor Dr. Benjamin Corn.

The new academic institute is intended to serve as a hub for interdisciplinary research into the biology, psychology and sociology of hope across diverse fields such as medicine, nursing and social work. 

“Hope is one of the most fundamental virtues of humanity,” Corn told eJewishPhilanthropy. “Every person, by virtue of the fact that he or she is a human being, craves hope. For different people, it can mean slightly different things, but the feeling that descends on us is actually very similar, independent of how we’re defining it.”

Hope is often equated with optimism, Corn said, but they are two distinct things. While optimism is a trait that you either have or you don’t, “hope is something else,” he said. “Hope is the ability to look at a situation and to say, ‘What can I do to make this situation better, and how can I get there?’ It is actually such a distinct difference. You can be a pessimist and still be hopeful.”

Building on the work of Life’s Door, which has been running workshops for terminally ill patients, doctors, caregivers and foreign workers since 2015, the new institute aims to develop scalable, evidence-based models that use their research findings to promote resilience, dignity and hope for people facing serious illness, crisis or the stress of caregiving. Corn began conducting hope research in 2016, rooted in the pioneering work on the topic of hope started by University of Kansas professor Charles Richard Snyder some 40 years ago.

Though Israelis can be very pessimistic in their outlook post-Oct. 7, 2023, research data has shown that when they participate in hope workshops that give them tools to pinpoint their goals and pathways through hope mapping and guided imagery, they can become more hopeful, Corn said. He called the work “potentially sacred,” which will be reflected positively back into society.

“We think that we’ll see a lot of improvement on many different levels in the ecosystem of this country and in other countries that we’ve worked with. It’s very rare to find somebody who can’t be the beneficiary of hope enhancement techniques, and it doesn’t take a big investment. These workshops… take less than two hours to be effective for about 90% of the people who participate in such a workshop. So now we’re moving this on to video conferencing platforms like Zoom so we can get to reach more people,” he said. Smartphone applications and self-directed learning modules have also been developed, he noted.

Goldberg-Polin described the hopefulness that she and her husband felt as they worked to gain their son’s release as “palpable” and “visceral,” something “washing over us constantly.”

“I also think it was a choice,” she said. “It was a choice to decide to be hopeful, and we’ve kept that even now when it’s so many days later. And we are constantly, all of us, on this roller coaster ride of trying to stay on the right side so that we don’t go to the negative. It’s not helpful… For us, [hope] was mandatory. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a command that we say to ourselves and that we say to others.”

Hostages who were held captive with Hersh later shared with his parents that he had also helped them find a sense of purpose by sharing the core message from Holocaust survivor and philosopher Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. He reminded them, “If you have a why, you can find your how.”

It is this sense of purpose, of being able to determine goals, pathways and agency, which creates a sense of hope even in dire circumstances, Corn said.

One of the first research projects to be undertaken by the institute’s inaugural Hope Scholar, Dr. Adir Shaulov of Hebrew University’s Hadassah Medical School, will explore whether hope is contagious. He will conduct the study in collaboration with Corn, professor Malka Margalit of the Peres Academic Center and Dr. David Feldman of Santa Clara University, a protégé of Dr. C.R. Snyder.

Working with the top Israeli pollster, Mina Tzemach, the institute is also launching a national Hope Index in Israel inspired by Snyder’s Hope Theory, which defines hope as a combination of meaningful goals, pathways to achieve them, and the motivation to pursue those paths. The project, which is meant to be analogous to the Happiness Index, aims to measure and enhance hopefulness in communities across the country.

“We want to be able to measure hope and to see how we’re doing with hope and see how we’re doing in comparison to other countries,” Corn said. “If we’re not doing as well as other countries, what do we need to do to make ourselves more hopeful?”