Sunday October 22

It is hard to sleep at night. 

I spend my days wrestling with what has happened here, with what is happening back at home and across the world, trying to understand and come to grips intellectually with what I’m experiencing emotionally. I can push aside the images and the raw horror of the events themselves; I can even joke and laugh sometimes, though mostly it is quiet here in the apartment. But when I lie down in bed at night, it is all there, waiting, lurking behind my eyelids as soon as I close them. All of the horror, the pure and helpless terror that so many families woke up to on the morning of Saturday October 7. It is hard to escape from the images and descriptions, new ones every day, of all of the ways in which all of those people suffered; children, parents, grandparents, mutilated, raped, tortured, burned and butchered alive. And of those still alive in the hell-holes and torture chambers that awaited them in Gaza, of what their daily reality might be as they enter into the third week of their captivity. All day long I don’t let my mind go there, busying it with other news, with furious typing, with the rhythms of the waves and the cleansing of wind and sun. But at night it is all waiting for me behind my eyelids, a vivid horror show playing in technicolor.

But last night there was a new subplot, an added drama to contend with unfolding right alongside. A Jewish woman in Detroit stabbed to death outside of her home. Today they’re saying they’re not sure what the motive is; I don’t know if it was a hate crime and of course I hope that it wasn’t (not that that helps her at all). But last night when I saw the headline, and I read about her (she was a peace activist known for helping Syrian refugees and bringing Jews and Muslims together in dialogue), it brought the nightmare to new heights. Not unexpectedly, given the massive worldwide support for whatever the marchers think the Palestinian cause is, as though they will suffer less if Hamas is supported (check out Whispers in Gaza if you haven’t already). The headlines before I went to bed told me that nowhere is safe; the horror that Hamas has unleashed was not confined to the southern border towns of Israel. It is being replayed in synagogue burnings, in threats, and now the first shot into the west has been fired, an opening salvo that enacts one of the fears that I have been harboring now for over two weeks: it is open season on Jews once again.

As the hundreds of thousands marching across the world chant for our deaths, for another genocide of the Jewish people, I have been contending with the why and the how of it all. I’ve been trying to engage it intellectually so that I can understand it and order it, give it some structure in my mind and have it make sense. But the what of it is something I have not allowed myself to really fully contemplate. I have always known that there were significant numbers of people who didn’t like Jews. To the Left we are rich greedy white settler-colonialists, merchants of Venice to eye warily as our penchant for ‘Benjamins’ is our base instinct and we are always on the lookout for our pounds of flesh. To the Right we are communists, dangerous threats to the fabric of society, our growing influence a menace that needs to be curbed as we seep into every nook and cranny of democracy in order to undermine it from within with our own protocols. (Side-note: how I wish we ACTUALLY controlled the media! So much of this could be mitigated.) To some we are Christ-killers, agents of Satan infiltrating the purity of decent white folk as we secretly control the banks (as communists tend to do) and keep the poor of the world in abject oppression and misery. At the least, we are Other, not quite of the same ‘stuff’ as everyone else, with questionable national allegiances and dubious morals; keep us at arms-length and treat us with caution.

I know those of you reading this are not in any of those categories, and I appreciate you all deeply. But it is hard, sitting here in the one place in the world that is supposed to be a safe haven when things go sour for Jews elsewhere, when we find out it’s not so safe if you’re a family living too close to the terrorists that have been permitted for 15 years to rule over 2.3 million people and keep them poor, uneducated, living in fear, and blaming the Jews for it. And it’s even harder when the antisemites that we always knew were there can gather in such numbers and with such solidarity, and not only rejoice in the horrific deaths of 1400 Jews going about their business on a Saturday morning, but call for more across the world. In all of the other supposedly “safe” places for Jews. In our cities, and on our campuses, and on our doorsteps.

It was good to get out today and feel like we were doing something productive. We joined a few others at the home of a Haifa councilwoman who has taken it upon herself to coordinate the collection of donations for both soldiers on the front line and displaced families from the south. She was receiving multiple phone calls constantly, on one computer keeping a spreadsheet of who needs what where, and on the other computer a spreadsheet of what has been donated. She has 130 volunteer drivers picking up the boxes that we helped pack and taking them all over the country. A small boy, maybe 10 years old, came through the gate and asked if he could have a couple of boxes to bring with him so that he could stand outside the nearby grocery store and solicit more donations. An angry woman from the district called on another phone and the councilwoman patiently listened to her complaints about the fact that school is cancelled and her child has special needs and nowhere to go. Her tiny dog alternated between barking at the street and coming around to us to be petted.

We heard so many stories. The woman who brought us there told us that her son had a ticket for the Supernova peace concert in the southern desert on the night of October 6th, but decided at the last minute not to go because he didn’t want to miss his favorite soccer team playing a home match the next day. His friends who did go were murdered, or are missing, or are injured mentally and physically. A group of them jumped into a jeep in a desperate attempt to out-race the slaughter, trying to escape a bullet-spraying terrorist on a paraglider. But someone threw a grenade in the jeep. One of his friends jumped on it and covered the explosion with his own body to save his friends. The woman told me that she can’t stop imagining what would have happened if her son had decided to go to the party. Her son is now deployed on the front lines in the north – she said she was so thankful it wasn’t in the south. She said that volunteering like we were doing today is the only way that she can cope, that everyone can cope. She said that the whole country has mobilized all of their resources to take care of the refugees, the families of those who are missing, the families of those who are dead. She said that even in this collective trauma – especially in this collective trauma – that’s what Israel is all about. Everyone here knows that they belong to a family, to a nation of people of different colors and creeds and languages and lots of different temperaments (if you heard the average people speaking to each other on the street here or in the supermarket, “everyone loves everyone else” wouldn’t be your first impression - it's not the vibe), and she said that they know that they can count on each other even when the world spreads lies and turns its back. Even when the government is incapable of supplying the soldiers, resettling the refugees – they know that their neighbors around the country will look after them. And that’s what we were privileged to be a small part of today.

Sorry if this post is disjointed and not as polished as usual. Everyone there had lost someone, or has a child on the front lines. It was so hard to hear all the stories today, all the worry and fear and anger, even as it was motivational and inspiring to be part of this network of helping others who really needed it and were counting on it. I’m still trying to process it all. I had another post planned for today but I think I’ll save it for next time and sign off for now. Thanks for reading.

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Just adding in a few photos from today below: the first is a wall I pass by on the way to the beach when I take a walk. Today it was covered with signs that someone posted there, all saying the same thing in Hebrew and in Arabic: "We will get through this together."