Monday October 16

I type the title above and I can't believe it's Monday October 16. Time has both stood still and rushed forwards and backwards this past week and a half in a weird warp of sadistic surrealism. Everything had been so carefully planned out for this sabbatical year abroad; all of the research and conference side trips, the vacation times, the work times. My daughter was supposed to start classes yesterday. I was supposed to be trying to live my best life by the sea, spending days doing all the writing that I've only been able to do in my head for years now, taking my daily walks while soaking up vitamin D and the soothing movement of waves, and spending the bulk of this month hanging out at the underwater excavations that were scheduled at a fascinating archaeological site half an hour south of me. Last month I bought paints and canvas in preparation for filling my evenings alone in this apartment with the newfound hobby that kept me sane during covid lockdowns. But the excavation was cancelled, her classes postponed, and the canvases are still wrapped in plastic while the paints have accumulated a fine layer of dust, unopened on top of my dresser. The careful and meticulous outlines for the academic writing projects that I've carried around in my head - all the research work that I had so thoughtfully planned out to fill my time here, to satisfy my curiosity, and to bulk up my research portfolio - have vanished, as unplanned and furious words with no outlines, no forethought, and no scholarly boundaries have poured out of my heart and onto this screen instead.

I re-read my words and feel the need to clarify that this isn't me feeling sorry for myself but rather my attempt to capture the idea that although I'm sitting at the same desk by the same big window watching the same waves beat against the rocks and typing on the same laptop, I'm living in a completely alternate reality from the one that existed before Saturday October 7 and I don't see a way back. This is an expression of amazement as I try to capture the absolute and infinite bizarrity (is that a word?) of everything in something as finite as writing a blog. How to relay just how completely life has turned upside down while also sliding sideways, and how impossible it is to get my footing? And I'm one of the lucky ones because I can write this all down, and I can show my face to my son on video every day and tell him that I'm still safe and that I love him. I haven't lost friends or family; my daughter has not been murdered or - worse - missing, and I have no children on the front lines. 

My daughter found another call online for blood donations so we took a bus to the location only to learn that by the time we got there (an hour after they opened) they only needed type O - otherwise they had everything they could process. So we wandered over to the mall nearby to see it they had a book my daughter was looking for. Malls in Israel always have a security guard at the entrance but up until today these surly men or women in grey uniforms had barely looked at anyone even to wave them through. Today though, he went through our purses and we had to walk through a metal detector that neither of us remember being there last time. The last time we were in the mall we were excited to be searching for supplies for her dorm, enjoying the displays and sounding out all the English words rendered in Hebrew letters on store signs ("burger ranch," "home style," "movieland"), nervous to actually speak Hebrew to the people in the shops. It was full of noisy families, teenagers, and elderly people taking their daily strolls indoors. But today it was different, with many of the stores shuttered, the hallways empty, and the only ones shouting excitedly were three boys in soccer gear racing through the wide open spaces that we could barely squeeze ourselves through last time. We didn't find the book, though we did find that the books they had in English comprised an interesting collection, from Homer to Dante, Shelley to Kafka, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Nietzsche, and a few Jane Austens - I took a photo and posted it below.

They also had Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, a book that has been on my mind this week a lot - both in terms of what she faced and wrote about and also because it has been banned in so many places in recent years (makes sense - one wouldn't want to risk having to answer difficult questions if young readers start to ask why anyone would hate Jews so much that they would seek their mass extermination). I read it close to 40 years ago but there are parts that I still remember intensely vividly (which is more than I can usually say about what month it is or what I ate yesterday) and they have been playing in my mind, one in particular:

It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

I'm not sure I ever fully believed that last part, but I always marvelled that she did. And I often wondered if she still felt that way when she was separated from her father at Auschwitz or when she lived her final days at Bergen-Belsen starved, disease-ridden, and worked to death. The epilogue so starkly contradicted her own diary's ending.

But it's the first part that is the experience that I've been living, and from a zoom call with NECA colleagues this afternoon, this is a sentiment we're all grappling with. The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics (NECA) was formed last spring because so many faculty members across Canada were becoming increasingly unable to ignore the rise of Jew- hatred on our campuses, and increasingly aware that our unions and our administrations were either gutless or powerless to do anything about it - or worse, that they were indifferent to it. Although we initially welcomed the advent of EDI and critical race theory programs at our universities, we quickly discovered that they not only ignored the experience of Jews but often tacitly or overtly stated that Jews were not a minority group of concern. It's ironic that a group that is always accused of ghettoizing ourselves - but in fact, among academics at least - have been so isolated from each other, needs to come together to form a safe-space virtual ghetto in order to pool resources and ideas that can help us combat this rising wave. The further irony is that this group was formed last March, and the meeting on zoom today was planned weeks ago. Obviously the bulk of our conversation revolved around recent events. We all shared the poor or non-existent responses from our administrators and union reps that -- if they said anything at all -- equivocated and expressed sympathy to "both sides." (Both sides??? If they meant Hamas and their Palestinian human shields, that would almost make more sense. But they meant Hamas and the families that they tortured and murdered. As we know.) And we all shared that we hadn't expected much better. More disturbing in our conversation this afternoon were repeated expressions of concern around physical safety for Jewish faculty and students in the aftermath of the huge and unequivocal support expressed all last week for Hamas' terrorist attacks and calls for a Day of Rage. The stories I heard of why these colleagues and their students feel increasingly physically unsafe are not mine to repeat, but please know that they exist, and we feel very alone. If you have a Jewish colleague on a university campus, please reach out to them and ask them how they're doing - I promise it will make a big difference to how we're all feeling these days.

Anyway, it has been a long day and although I have more to say, my growling stomach is drowning out my thoughts so I'll end here, first with an expression of gratitude and then with a short plea. 

Gratitude: I want you all to know how moved I am by all of the emails you've been sending, letting me know how my writings have touched you and what you've been learning from them. There is no greater motivation for me and your responses have been keeping me, and this blog, going. Thank you so much for continuing to read and to value what I have to say.

Short plea: If you're a colleague who would like to be an ally and join NECA in trying to figure out ways to improve the climate for Jews (faculty, staff, and students) on campus, we would love to have you. Please email me and I'll put you in direct touch with the co-chairs of the organization.