Question 9: What is True for the Jews?

Too much is true for the Jews right now. 

It is true that many of us are barely able to hold our grief for the thousands dead. That each life is its own world and that the thousands of lives ended in Israel and in Gaza and in the West Bank are thousands of worlds shattered. That each of the people held hostage by Hamas at this very moment will be at best burdened with a lifetime of trauma and at worst have no life time left at all but the trauma will live anyway in all who love them. We fear that callous governments will not truly work to free the captives because to arrange for freedom would be to lose leverage, and callous governments care more always for power than for people. 

It is true that many of us are terrified by the death toll yet to come, that we are enraged by the ongoing onslaught on Gaza— an onslaught perpetrated by the Israeli government and worsened by Hamas. And it is true that many of us watch Gazans fleeing with nothing but their children and the bags on their backs and we see the shtetl and the pogroms and our ancestors taking those same harrowing journeys in the hopes of escaping harm, and we know that, just as with our ancestors, not everyone will make it. And we see on our screens the 203 empty seats for the hostages set out in Tel Aviv, and we see in our minds all of the empty seats that will not ever be filled again because so many innocents are already dead, and we weep with the mourning, broken families across time. And we see the fallen soldiers too— young people just beginning to live out their own dreams— more empowered, perhaps, than the civilians in their choices but whole worlds nonetheless, and whole worlds that will be lost. More empty chairs at future tables. More tables that will never be built because the families who would fill them will never exist. And we see our people’s past and present and future at once. 

Because it is true that trauma is indeed epigenetic, and that when we whose genes know what it is to be slaughtered for being ourselves witness slaughter, we are triggered. That there is nothing that can be done to stop such triggering. That we are afraid because we have reason to be, defensive because we have reason to be. That many of us know the names of our ancestors who didn’t make it last time, and that many of their names are the same as the names of those who didn’t make it this time. That we are the descendants of Avrahams and Yaakovs and Chanas, the cousins of Noas and Yonatans and Ayelets, that when we read their names among those murdered by Hamas we can’t help but remember their names among those murdered by the Nazis and in the Inquisition and and and and through the countless losses. 

It is true that this moment does not exist in isolation, that we cannot talk about Hamas without talking about Israel, and that we cannot talk about Israel without talking about Palestine, and that we cannot talk about Palestine without talking about colonization, and that we cannot talk about colonization without talking about imperialism, and that we cannot talk about imperialism without talking about racism, and that we cannot talk about racism without talking about white supremacy, and that we cannot talk about white supremacy without talking about antisemitism, and that we cannot talk about antisemitism without talking about anti-Zionism, and that we cannot talk about anti-Zionism without talking about 20th century Jewish-American education, and that we cannot talk about 20th century Jewish-American education without talking about trust, and that we cannot talk about trust without talking about community. And community splits. And multiple narratives. And generational divides. And talking past each other. And how we are so interconnected that we will likely never be able to unravel it all, and how the interconnections sometimes get pulled so tightly against one another that the twine wrapped around us digs into our skin and the marks of our connection hurt. 

It is true that our circles of community are intensely small. That in the American Jewish community of 2.4% there are endless connections to the Israeli Jewish community. That in the American Jewish community there are many, many of us with connections to the Palestinian community and certainly to the Palestinian-American community. That when we who care for all people hear our communities only able to acknowledge the humanity of some it brings an even deeper hopelessness to a hopeless moment. 

It is true that the silence hurts. The silence of our non-Jewish friends. The silence of our Jewish friends. The selective silence of those who call only for ceasefire and not for hostage release or only for hostage release and not for ceasefire. The silence of the people we organize with, those whose causes we have rallied and continue to rally around because we know that there can be no distinction between “their” causes and ours, because the only true justice is shared. The silence of people who don’t know what to say so they don’t try, the silence of those who speak only of some sorrows while pointedly ignoring others, the silence of those who are so afraid of offending that they pull away entirely, the silence of those who shrug and move on when we cannot. The silence of Jewish leaders, leaders like me, reasonably scared enough for our job security that we do not feel we can speak. (I am afraid to speak but more afraid of the cost of staying silent in a time like this.)

It is true that the vitriol hurts. The vitriol of the people we thought we agreed with on most things who seem able only to shout for vengeance. The vitriol of justifying unequivocally unjustifiable acts. The vitriol of antisemitism and the vitriol of islamophobia. The vitriol of either/or statements that condone and sometimes push for bloodshed. The vitriol of pain manifest into rage. Children are dead and dying. Innocents are dead and dying. Soldiers who need not die but are pushed by the war machine are dead and dying. And all some can do is cheer on one side’s body count. The pain grows until it is unbearable and still the vitriol comes. The posters of hostages are defaced and ripped down. The Jews at protests for Gaza are called kapos. Rabbinic listservs and Instagram posts devolve into shouting matches.

Because it is true that we believe many things, we Jews. (You’d think with all the stereotyping antisemites do, they could add that one to the mix. It, at least, has merit.) We are Zionists, non-Zionists, anti-Zionists, Jews who don’t know what we think about Zionism. We have been to Israel, lived in Israel, don’t think there should be an Israel, been to Palestine, lived in Palestine, don’t think there is a Palestine, never left the US, know no one outside the US, only care about the US. We have studied the Middle East extensively, a little, and not at all. We carry the idea of Israel as a dream yet unnamed, the Israel before the 6 day war, the Israel that became Goliath, the Israel that must hold the river to the sea, the Israel that must vacate the river to the sea, the Israel given to Jews by God thousands of years ago, the Israel ripped from the Palestinians by Britain less than a century ago, the Israel that is the end of the journey of the Exodus and nothing more. It is true that, regardless of what we believe, we all remain Jewish, even if some of us wish others of us could not be counted as such. 

It is true that antisemitism is exhausting and that the lines between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, often tricky, are growing fuzzier than ever. 

It is true that this week, too, will seep into our souls and our stories even as we wish it could be otherwise, that we will teach it to our children with the words of the sh’ma in our fears and our grief, and in our hope for something better. It is true that Simchat Torah will always carry a tinge of sorrow now, that no matter the fallout of the terror the murder of these hundreds of Israelis will be what we must carry, and that many of us will carry as well the thousands of dead Palestinians. It is true that when the Israelites wandered the desert they carried both the whole tablets engraved with the 10 commandments and the broken tablets Moses shattered in rage upon witnessing the golden calf. We Jews know how to hold sorrow and joy together, but oh, Master of the Universe, could we do it a little less often? 

It is true that in times like these we must lean on Torah — not the Torah that calls for war, and God knows there is enough of that— but the Torah that is a tree of life. That Torah, that tree, is broad and strong enough to support us, even when we have trouble believing it. It is the tree upon which we Jews have grown our hopes and dreams, our families and our stories, our very hearts from generation to generation. It is laden with fruit enough for us all, fruit to eat and to store and to share. Its branches will never grow brittle so long as we the Jews look to it for nourishment and water it with our love and with our tears.

And, finally, it is true that we must learn to lean on each other. We can choose the path of isolation from beliefs that challenge our own— the path of saying that if you hold in this way you and I cannot belong to the same community, cannot love one another, cannot respect one another, cannot be tied to one another. We can pull our donations and withdraw from organizations and silo and point and blame and scorn and name call and curse. We can take our Jewish-American community, our precious community of 2.4%, and let it fissure for a generation. Or we can come through this together. We can ask one another questions— a tradition so entrenched in our text that we’d think it would be easy and yet has come to be among our greatest challenges. We can listen to the answers, even as some stances ignite rage, and we can take a breath and ask even more questions. We can write and weep together. We can seek life together. We can lean into the pain and let it soften our hearts so that we remain Moses instead of becoming Pharaoh. We can make it through this, but only if we commit to doing this together.

Too much is true for the Jews right now.  Lech lecha, God tells us this week. You will go. So let us go together even as the journey is harrowing and we do not know the way. Let us walk side by side. And let us be blessings to one another.