It Is Impossible to Talk About Israel

I haven’t spoken to any friends about what’s happening in Gaza. I haven’t spoken to any colleagues. I haven’t spoken to my family.

People like Jewish people and people don’t like Jewish People.

It is impossible to talk about Israel without crumbling…and moments like this give the world more ammunition to wish us gone.

Jews have been persecuted for millennia. Enslaved. Murdered. Massacred. Regardless of what you feel, think, or believe, Antisemitism is in the global blood; it is a mineral in the global water we drink; it is deep and caked and solid.

It doesn’t matter if you have Jewish friends.

It doesn’t matter if you love Jewish people.

I doesn’t even matter if you, yourself, are Jewish.

I understand the need for one single safe place in all of the world. One place to call home. One place in, its ideal vision, free from attack. One place to celebrate ancient culture. One place without hiding. One place that is ours.

I live the feeling of not belonging in any single place — I have come to believe that is a component of my Jewish identity. I feel deeply, within the bones of my ancestors and soul of my body, never feeling safe; so lives the DNA of diasporic peoples.

I wonder sometimes, if we, as Jews, are meant to be a people of sprinkles; moving throughout the world, in pockets of communities — a true, global tribe — united in far-reaching history, culture, and tradition. Celebrating in collective community, the whole of our diversity, and the whole of who we are. Growing up out of our own cracks; moving out of our collective entitlement.

There are no words for the devastation happening in Gaza.

I morn for Palestinians and I morn for the representation of Jews across the world. Disappointment feels shallow and still true.

We are a good people. We are a traumatized people. We are an unhealed, grieving people.

And perpetually, I ask of Israel:

What holiness is this?

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

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