Unfolding Complication
I have written an essay for my Jewish community and the people who want to be good allies to the Jewish community. Judaism is not a monolith. A nationalist project is a monolith. The main throughline I have found in the Jewish faith through a lifetime of interacting with fellow Jews around the world is a commitment to asking questions, to uncovering truths and a dedication to liberation. I have tried to continue in that vein here.
In Judaism we cherish the maxim of L’dor V’dor, literally “from generation to generation”, also translated as “what we pass on.” In this time of year for ancestral reverence, in this time of closer relationship to the ones we have lost, in this moment of wishing peace to the souls of so many innocent people slain by the hubris and power of a few sickening men, I have been locating myself on a map of past and future. What legacies of my ancestors do I want to continue? What new paths do I want to forge for whoever follows in my footsteps? I have been remembering, I have been tracing.
One legacy I want to carry on is a story I heard at my Grandmother’s shiva. The memory told to me: my grandma wearing red lipstick, white gloves, skirt suit, standing alone, holding a sign high to protest the war in Vietnam, every single Sunday, on the town square corner of her Chicago suburb, regardless of any jeers to the contrary coming from the surrounding community.
Our ancestors can be a balm and an inspiration. They can also bring shameful histories to light and inspire us to improve. Sometimes we look at these ghosts and decide to break a cord. Sometimes we look deep within ourselves to accept or amend the complex and disturbing legacies we have inherited. One of the ways we unravel our complicity in settler colonialism is to understand the ways that it has formed our sense of self, our identity, our privilege and the expectations we have for the world. It must be ongoing work for us white people to investigate global and multi-layered complexities of settler-colonialism as it seeks to exterminate indigenous people or turn them into tools of the state.
I went looking in the archives to understand my previous generations’ potential interest in nationalism and Zionism, to recognize my complicity but also to simply understand the community catalysts that may have led to this moment. Judaism is about teachings and teachers. I currently have no congregation, so I thought these documents could at least give me some understanding of where this desire for displacement came from. What was passed down to me without me even knowing it? I was offered solace and encouragement by what I found there, specifically the writings by my Great Great Grandfather.
Julius, my mother’s father’s mother’s father, was born and raised in Hungary, and ordained as a Rabbi in Berlin (through what I understand to be somewhat commonplace transience before Franz Ferdinand’s assassination), a contemporary of Theordore Herzl. He moved to America after the pogroms and led multiple progressive synagogues in the Midwest, notably in Chicago and Milwaukee. Because he was a Talmudic rabbi, and very active in city politics, community needs and Jewish law, many of his viewpoints have made their way to the internet a century later. I thought I would find some justification for Zionism but instead there were various documents arguing against the case for Nationalism. (In fact, at the National Conference for Rabbis, whose lectures have been scanned and uploaded a century later, there were many arguments against the creation of a Jewish state.) I have posted a few screenshots here to speak to my relative’s ethics: he was one of the first rabbis to allow for the integration of genders in worship and study; he outspokenly allowed for inter-religious marriage and burial; he devoted a chunk of his career to easing tensions between Eastern and Western European Jews and explicitly welcomed people of all nations to his synagogues; in the years leading up to WWII he led peace rallies with pastors and leaders of various Chicago faiths; and he scoffed at Jewish nationalist sentiments.
From what I have deduced in his writings, he recognized that the Jewish people were a religion, and not an ethnicity. He believed that Jews from different countries were more accustomed to the cultures and laws of the places they inhabited than to a universal law beyond a spiritual one. (Just to re-emphasize that he was a Talmudic Rabbi, i.e. he studied Jewish law and was consulted on the interpretations and particularities of those laws.) He referred to the fact that ancient Israel, textually, was a political failure, albeit a haven for the divine. He also criticized nationalist literature for being in Yiddish (presumably his mother tongue) as opposed to Hebrew. Hebrew is the language of the Torah, the book all Jews revere and read in diurnal worship. Yiddish is the language only of Germanic Jews. I think this clue is exceedingly important and interesting when we look at the creation of the state of Israel in the wake of the systematic murder of 8 million Jews during the Holocaust. (Later, the resurrection of Hebrew as a spoken language in Israel would be an intentional mythologizing of “one people”--but that’s a whole other essay.)
Reading documents from well over a hundred years ago also reminded me that there have always been dissenters. To truly honor my Jewish ancestry, it is crucial that I investigate, discuss and find the solution that preaches compassion, mitzvot and freedom from oppression. There have always been peacemakers. There have always been progressive thinkers that stir the pot and remind people of their morals. I do not doubt that my Great Great Grandfather would have been horrified at the Nakba had he still been alive, and I am certain he would be attending inter-faith actions to protest the genocide of Palestinians today.
When I consider the souls lost during this time of honoring the dead, I not only venerate my ancestors. I remember the friends I have lost. And I wish peace upon the souls who have been brutally taken from this world, people who have been innocently caught in the middle of a few powerful men. I grieve for the deaths of people who wanted no part in such violence. For the 1400 people murdered in Israel a month ago by Hamas, many of whom were outspoken about their condemnation of occupation, not all of whom were Jewish, and the endless list of Palestinians mercilessly punished for the crime of existence in what is essentially a massive refugee camp. We have watched the numbers of Palestinian people murdered mount from 1,000 to 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 to whatever devastating number of casualties from bombs brutally dropped by Israel is tallied by the time I post this. Children, so many children dead. Starving a kettled group of people to death as their homes and hospitals are bombed out is one of the most barbaric forms of mass torture I could possibly imagine. Complete medical system collapse. We watch even the paltry aid allowed through become bombed or inaccessible. The slim percentage of potable water drained. We watch as people fall silent, the internet imploding, bombs in the dark. Internet returns to reveal unimaginable horrors for all to see. Pushing people from their homes again and again. Violently. Without recourse. The UN calls for ceasefire and Israel only ramps up its attack. There have been so many war crimes committed by Israel these last weeks that I’ve lost count. At this point, even with a ceasefire, the UN estimates that the Palestinian people will be living in a humanitarian crisis for generations. But we see how powerless the UN is. The fallout is so bad it’s nearly inconceivable.
What happens when Europe casts out a problem that they created (genocide of Jews and traumatized survivors) and thrusts them upon another population with newfound power and privilege to turn on cousins? What happens when Israel casts out a problem they created (Palestinians in revolt after generations of apartheid)? What happens when America does this? Global and domestic politics are quite simple when we consider it in these terms. Did the creation of the State of Israel allow Jews the privilege of whiteness? Is there a fear of losing that privilege when we recognize our similarity to Palestinians?
*****
All that I can speak to with any credibility is my own experience. So I’d like to talk about my lifetime of experience as a Jew, a Jew who was Bat Mitzvahed in Jerusalem, a Jew who grew up very active in the Jewish community, a Jew descended from a line of religious lawmakers and spiritual guides. I’d also like to speak to my lifetime of experience as a Jew in the context of criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In my lifetime, in my generation, I have been more vehemently verbally attacked for my anti-Zionism than for my Judaism, and more often than not by Jews instead of non-Jews.
If you know me, or have been following my relentless stories, you know my views on this matter. I want a ceasefire now (as the majority of Americans do) and I want the occupation of Palestine to end. I speak to these things with a committed tradition to respect my Jewish ancestors, and the legacy of their experiences/teachings/ethics especially in the wake of the brutality we have been witnessing across the screens of our phones for weeks now. If you want the history of Israel and the forced displacement of Palestinians you can look at the highlight I’ve conveniently made on my profile filled with books, films and articles made by people much smarter than myself. Educate yourself. As a Jew who is deeply afraid of the very real possibility of anti-Jewish violence, I believe that it is crucial we discuss the ways Zionism is dangerous to all Semitic people—Jews and Arabs. This imperialist genocide isn’t about religion. To any of you who are still under the delusion that American interest in Israel is connected to the protection of the Jewish people, I pity you. When white supremacists come for the Jews, this government will not be here to protect us. So many of the people cheering for the death of Palestinians will be cheering for the death of the Jews.
Let me say this again quite clearly: there is nothing more dangerous to the Jewish people than equating us with genocidal politics. Many of the most celebrated Jewish thinkers have written extensively on this topic. It truly terrifies me to watch the state of Israel wipe whole Palestinian families off the map and then condemn the compassionate people who criticize it. Our safety can only be found in solidarity with the people in this world who try to stop genocide the moment they see it.
When I was growing up, my mom told me her stories of experiencing antisemitism—living abroad in Europe in the 1960s and having all of her possessions thrown out the window and onto the street by a housemate once my mom’s religion was discovered. I experienced minor accusation and discrimination in my life, including being “stoned” (their wording–I think they were pieces of wood chips tossed at us with poor aim during recess) by a group of my kindergarten classmates who attended Sunday school together after they had been told at church that it was the Jews’ fault the son of God had been crucified. When I went to France as a teenager, a woman checked my head for horns after I answered her question about “which church I belonged to”—her initial question merely trying to ascertain whether I was Protestant or Catholic.
I do not shirk from my Jewish faith even when I find fault in it. I am grateful for the inquisitiveness bestowed upon me by my forebears, who taught me the holiness of Questioning. I feel truly blessed that I was always encouraged to have a critical eye and a brave voice. The first time I ever got kicked out of a party was at a highschool kegger. I was discussing Palestine with a friend, and the stranger hosting the party overheard and began screaming at me for criticizing Israel until the house full of people fell silent. She yelled about her grandparents, I yelled about mine. It felt like we were in some weird kind of Jew-off, our opinions only holding enough validity as the trauma we had experienced (let’s use some critical thinking to recall the other places where we see this sort of leverage). The fact that my father is a gentile has been used against me in these arguments, an absurd purity when you consider the thousands of years of no one having any idea who fcked whom in their lineages. But more importantly, how can we as a people fall for the construct of purity when others’ chants to our impurity devastated the Jewish people by the millions? I find it difficult to swallow any argument that rests on “purity” in any form. Full stop.
As a precocious 15 year old, I was invited to a luncheon at my synagogue with notable Holocaust survivor and beloved writer of Night, Elie Weisel, alongside the rabbis, cantor and other leaders of the temple. At a certain point, he began talking about the importance of Israel. I asked him, respectfully, how, after all his experience, he could support the inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people. He turned to me with anger, and yelled that I knew nothing of what he went through. It’s true. I have never experienced firsthand the extermination of my family alongside millions and millions of others just like me. Only compassion is warranted in handling the horrors he faced. But I wished to have a conversation about values. Jewish values. And none was allowed. He chewed me out, and when I asked for my autographed book back, he tossed it at me with dismay.
A few years later at my temple youth group (which I attended after school weekly throughout highschool), we watched this ultra-zionist propaganda movie about the 6-day war. I was horrified by its nationalist rhetoric, hypocrisy and inaccuracy. I only knew about the film’s mis-representation of facts because my mom had previously debunked “Land for Peace” to me after I leaned on its case to justify Israel’s occupation during our visit to the middle east. (That trip, the one I took for my Bat Mitzvah, where we stayed in the Muslim quarter, had a Yemeni tour guide and visited the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt was truly eye-opening. It demands an entire other essay to recall. Which I’m happy to recount if anyone has interest.) When the movie was over I made some teenage punk comment about being force fed lies to brainwash us, which quickly turned into a “conversation” where a few zionists yelled at me, I argued back, while the rabbis and the rest of the congregation sat silently. I will never forget how so many of the synagogue’s leaders came up and quietly thanked me in the shadows of the halls, men thirty years older than me, for my boldness in speaking up on such a “complicated issue.” I asked them how they let me just sit there and absorb the anger of these adults, how they were captive to this politic, how they couldn’t even speak to an alternative viewpoint, how they couldn’t defend me publicly, how they were too afraid to speak up. Rabbis silenced by a few zionists. I looked this strange power struggle in the face.
******
I understand that this is a controversial thought, but Israel is the manifestation of what I find so chilling about identity politics or granting impunity to anyone, including victims of oppression—we know what happened with the Stanford experiment, when people are given the authority to dominate another. All people must be held accountable for their actions regardless of the awful things they have experienced. I do not like murder of any sort, by police, the state, activists, anyone. But I do understand why people resort to it. I don’t condone the Angel of Death slaying the first born sons of Egypt—that one was quite hard for me to get behind as a child. But I came to understand the terror that we raise our glasses of wine to every year on Passover. And I learned why we dip out a drop for the Egyptians who died as well. Compassion for the dead is an important part of our cultural tradition. I understand killing the person who tortures you day after day in hopes that you will stop being tortured. I understand slave revolts and the desire to behead the people who have murdered your family and treated you as an animal. I understand why Palestinians have fought back. As I read one response to the criticism of Palestinian retaliation, “What is the ethical way to climb out of hell?”
What does it mean to be a wandering people? What does it mean to have no homeland? In a world of flux, what does it mean to always be a newcomer? How do we learn to belong when we can’t grow roots? This has been the story of the Jewish people for thousands of years, but it became the story of the Palestinian people in 1948. It’s the story of so many people who have sought refuge in this country we call home. This wander is imprinted epigenetically upon my DNA, and I sense that I move through these questions continually as I’m always compelled to keep moving, regardless of the exhaustion. I seek a sense of arrival, but I am beginning to understand that arrival is a construct too. Zionism is not arrival. Zionism is the terror of pogroms unleashed as the Nakba. Jews are not the only ones who have been caught in this trap. I think of Mexican-Americans enforcing America’s Southern border. I think about enslaved people promoted to the post of policing their families by the people who have enslaved them. How are Jews being used as a pawn in global affairs? Why are we bearing the grunt of utterly white supremacist and fascist foreign policy? How do we throw a wrench in all similar cycles? Only through a refusal to weaponize our grief can all humans be liberated and live in peace. I believe we can end this trend by feeling our pain and practicing kindness in its wake. This path is explicitly written in the Torah.
The internet is already filled with excellent historical lessons and talking points. I know that most people already cling vehemently to their views, and I am certainly guilty of the same. I am not putting this here to rehash the same arguments in the comments, but simply to create some context and raise questions of our Jewish relationship to Zionism. I am not out for blood. I am posting this out of a desire to collectively, compassionately dream up solutions as to how humans can exist on this planet of bounty and beauty without senselessly executing each other. We are haunted by internal demons that we believe can be avenged through human life. Is this an inherent component of homo sapiens? In all our technological advancements can we mutate genocidal inclination?
*****
To conclude.
When I was in highschool there was a kid in my temple youth group who was caught smoking weed in the dome of the synagogue, the silver spiral that we affectionately called the Hershey Kiss, celestial architecture rumored to have backstair access. The spiritual superior who found the boy and his friend said in a way only a Jewish elder could, “Stain! There will be a stain upon you for the rest of your life!” In an example of teenage dark humor, the rest of youth group began calling one of the kids “Stain” as a joke, and, well, it stuck. Lately I have been wondering, if you can get a lifelong stain, a Jewish scarlet letter, for seeking alteration in a place of worship, what happens when you murder thousands of innocent children because you’re triggered? What do you carry upon your soul then? I say, in that way only a Jew can, that all of you who support this genocide shall be marred in shame for generations. Your children will be haunted by your words and your actions. I wish you no physical harm. Only to feel deep in your nightmares the terror you have decided to pass on to further generations. I wish for you to be visited nightly by the memory of infants slaughtered with your full support. I hope you wake night after night with unsettling fear until you choose a path of peace.
Above: My screenshots of various writing by or about Julius Rappaport, my great great grandfather.
Some footnotes about the Jewish-led spaces where I received much of my anti-Zionist education:
In college I took a “History of Israeli Cinema” class at NYU’s film school. My professor was a young, disillusioned Israeli who now teaches in Tel Aviv. Most of my classmates were Jewish girls who had recently returned from their “life changing” birthright trips. The class quickly divided–the newly Zionist students complained about the course and I was profoundly shaped by everything I learned. We watched the first films made in Palestine advocating for a zionist solution all the way up to movies of the early 2000s. The earliest Israeli films were funded by the US to convince American Jews to leave the country I reside in. Just as America didn’t want to accept Jews fleeing from the Holocaust, they encouraged them to leave the US. (I am no expert on Liberia by any means, but there are some smart comparisons tumbling about on the internet.) In this early Israeli cinema, Mizrahim (Jews indigenous to the middle east before the state of Israel) and Arabs are equally depicted as heathens, apes. It is not surprising to see victims take on the violence of their trauma and weaponizing it, but it is heartbreaking. And deeply disappointing. The Sabra–the mythical son of Israel, born of diasporic Jews—was represented as blonde and blue eyed. To see that depiction in film less than a decade after the end of the holocaust was stunningly sad–the goal of our past oppressor projected onto the oppressed, a sick Stockholm syndrome then pushed onto yet another group of people. It is so devastating to think about that process, the ways that agenda used to exterminate the Jews could then validate the violence Jews bequeathed so few years later. Hurt people hurt people. Just another reminder to soften into the sadness instead of inflicting our pain onto others. The highlight of that class was watching the gorgeous films of Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai. Specifically, his documentary “House”, about the pre-1948 home of Palestinians and its following tenants. The movie was immediately censored in Israel. Gitai, who has consistently condemned his country’s actions, spoke out against the Israeli war machine only days before the Hamas attacks and the Israeli genocide of Palestinians this past month. It is crucial to speak to the myriad Israelis who are consistently critical of their country’s legacy. Israel’s current treatment of dissenters and protestors is one of the most dangerous actions anyone can take against the Jewish people.
In 2008 I took a job with the Media Education Foundation. I mostly collected and edited b-roll for the documentary Blood & Oil, narrated by the foreign defense correspondent for Nation magazine. Over months of researching archives, reading de-classified documents and working with the filmmakers, I learned first hand how oil has been the catalyst for US foreign policy before the birth of the Israeli state. I also typed up subtitles for Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land, a documentary which splices the commentary of many brilliant minds, including Noam Chomsky, multiple rabbis, Israeli’s and Palestinians. I highly recommend that one for understanding the fundamental reasons American media is so Zionist. Working on both of these projects gave me so much insight into the historical machinations of nationalism and the US involvement in the Middle East. I could continue the litany of my education around Zionism. To anyone who wants to hear specifics, I can go into more detail. In the interest of time (which I’ve already taxed), I will wrap that up here.