It has been impossible to write. I broke my pattern in publishing this offering. I paused because it was not time to make meaning yet. Rather, it was a time to listen, to witness, to move through, to feel, and to respond.
Welcome to an off-cycle post. The world is off-kilter and so am I.
Just over a month ago, there was an attack by Hamas on Israelis, killing over a thousand people, taking hostages, and stirring up intergenerational echoes of “Jews aren’t safe” in Israel and across the world.
There is no righteous way to kill someone.
To kill someone is to kill an entire world.
Western media started booming the frame of “unprovoked attack” as loud as it could. Those of us who know better started bringing up the receipts – occupation, displacement, and dehumanization of Palestinians for decades. Not as justification, but context. We spoke into a frame that did not set us up for a generative conversation. It reset history to start on October 7, 2023.
I could feel the drawing back of an outsized military fist. Ready to strike, wrapping itself in gloves of justification for the violence it was about to perpetuate. We watched as Empire showed its form more clearly. There was not time to grieve the more than a thousand Jewish lives lost, before trying to stop that mighty fist from coming down so hard, so violently, and so disproportionately.
Just over a month ago, so many braced for what was surely to be an outsized response from the Israeli government on Gaza. What came next was more horrific than anything I could imagine. Israel has been relentlessly bombing, starving, killing, and torturing Palestinians and all who live in Gaza every single day since.
For over a month.
More than 10,000 people, many of whom were children, have died.
10,000 worlds extinguished.
Entire family lines were wiped out.
I was taught that to save a life is to save the world by Judaism.
“Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world. Because we are created in God’s image.”
- Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a), as taught by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz
I don’t understand where we forgot this. What would it be like if we actually moved each day as if this were true?
There is no righteous way to kill someone.
To kill someone is to kill an entire world.
In high school, I learned about the stages that proceed a mass killing through World Without Genocide. Founded by a Jewish woman, the organization strives to educate folks about how genocide happens and promotes advocacy efforts to stop ongoing genocide and prevent future genocide.
Something that rings in my ears from that learning: you never think it’s going to happen in your context or a context you are connected to.
Until it is happening.
Every stage in this framework happened and continues to happen in Gaza.
I have a tattoo on my ribs. It says, “To find beauty in the very core of horror.”
Philippe Gaillard, head of the International Committee on the Red Cross mission during the Rwandan genocide, said that it was his job to find beauty, create beauty in the very core of horror – to witness how people were saving each other, to heal as many people as he could, and reaching towards each other in the midst of the unthinkable. To find the cracks and open them wider.
Right now, we need to find the cracks and open them wider.
A crack is calling for a ceasefire.
There is no righteous way to kill someone.
To kill someone is to kill an entire world.
It is increasingly clear to me that Israel is a trauma response – its creation, its actions to this moment. Trauma, when unhealed, causes us to enact violence or oppression we have experienced on others. Surviving genocide, then perpetuating it.
Again: context rather than an excuse. This helps me start to make meaning of the immense cognitive dissonance moving through the Jewish community.
I never want to see the words of my sacred tradition be said before marching into a slaughter. I am seeing that happen right now.
There is no righteous way to kill someone.
To kill someone is to kill an entire world.
A spell or a prayer for this moment:
Judaism is a diasporic tradition. It flexes, melts, and re-forms based on where it takes root, with a strong backbone of rituals and meaning-making technologies, but a soft, supple, and evolving expression that can bring more wholeness, weaving, and healing in our lifetimes and beyond.
We are all made of the same stuff – holy energy coursing through everything and all of creation, every living being.
We are eating ourselves. We are losing our humanity by demonizing and destroying each other.
We know what is like to not be able to chart our lineages, to have family lines cut short, to know and not know how ancestors perished, to loose our languages, homes, and so much more.
We were taught: “NEVER AGAIN.”
We are not listening.
May we see how our liberation is bound up with the liberation of all peoples.
May our ancestors give us the strength to stand up to Empire and help us follow this ever-adapting tradition we call Judaism and hold loosely, even release, the forms it currently takes – infused into a nation-state, calsifying in institutions, and justifying a power grab.
We are made of each other.
We are made of each other.
Ceasefire now.
To release more holy sparks into the universe, we do mitzvot (sacred acts) to weave the world back together. At this time, this means:
Call your representatives to demand a ceasefire. I have been using 5 Calls to help tee up and remind me to do this daily.
Follow Palestinian-led activism and Jewish organizations like JVP and IfNotNow, affirming “Not In Our Name,” to get plugged into local activism.
Attend “Have You Made Art About It?” with the Jewish Studio Project to integrate how you’re feeling through the creative process.
Ground yourself in where you are.
Learn more about the relationship between Israel and the United States.
Sending ease your way and until next time,
Coming up: I am starting to plan my work portfolio for 2024. Check out my website to see my offerings. Let me know if there’s a project that comes to mind.