i just want to say something to non-jewish allies. yes. it is shocking and terrifying to see this rise in antisemitism in real time, to finally understand how people turned on jews. i really appreciate that you understand that now.
however, i want you to think about it in this sort of perspective: i grew up hearing about how my great grandparents had to escape the pogroms as refugees. i grew up knowing what the shoah was. and i truly thought, yes, here in modern day america, i would be safe and people wouldn't abandon me for being a jew. but still. in the back of my head i knew.
in high school, all my friends knew i was jewish. my bullies also knew i was jewish. i graduated a few months before the october 7th attack. i remember that day very well. it was so fucking shocking and i couldnt stop looking. i had grown up knowing people did these things to us, and yet. it fundamentally changed me as a person. it felt like i had seen this before. it felt like i was seeing exactly what my great grandfather saw before he hid away in a wagon and escaped to america. i felt like i was reliving my ancestors memories. because it was so fucking familiar. it was traumatic for me, even here in america. (i do not say this to take away from people who actually experienced the attack.)
and then there was the silence. the fact that nobody even reached out to my family to see if we were okay. the fact that not one of my friends from high school even CONSIDERED asking me if i was okay. the fact i was expected to go on with my life. and i did. i took a gap year, worked a minimum wage retail job, read books and thought a lot about life. but i still think about it every day. i think about the fact that not even 12 hours after the attack began, there were people in my home state organizing protests in support of the group who just murdered 1200 of my people.
how are you supposed to go on like that? knowing that people CELEBRATE when your family members are slaughtered and kidnapped?
the violence was expected. the support of it was not. it was jarring and terrible. and yet it felt so familiar to me. ive been here before. ive seen this before. these memories are embedded in me.
i want you to think about what its like to read through over a thousand names to make sure none of them are people you know. and i want you to know, i felt zero relief knowing none of my family was killed. because it felt like every one of those names was my family. these people were my family. my tribe. my people. some of them were the friends or parents or cousins of people i grew up with, of extended family. but it doesnt matter. we feel these things as a community.
the pure loneliness and helplessness i felt was crushing. not just because people were celebrating the deaths of my people. not just because they were murdering and assaulting jews all over the world. but because i knew that this was not new. i have been here before. we have been here before. it was not just hatred and isolation and fear. this was my very real life-long fears, my parents' very real life-long fears, their parents', and then their parents' parents' lived experiences.
this was getting to experience the thing i feared. i knew they would turn on me and they did. i cry about it a lot.
we want to feel safe in this world, and yet, we don't. we're told to go back to where we came from, but when we do, we're told to leave, to go back to poland, where they killed 90% of their jews. we're told that we deserve to be massacred because we want safety. because we want to finally be free from oppressive and horrific treatment in nearly every place we go. we are villainized for wanting to be seen as real people rather than poor, helpless little political tokens. they universalize our tragedies and then say we are overreacting about said tragedies. our pain is not real to them. it is simply a metaphor. they excuse all the horrific, violent, humiliating, isolating, treatment towards us. they always find a reason to say we deserve it. they say we should learn a lesson from it.
and god forbid we tell them that we're sick of it.
so to the start of this post. non-jewish allies, i really, truly appreciate you and the fact you are willing to stand with us, despite us being a tiny minority. you are brave to put yourself out there. to even associate with us. but we are so tired, so, so tired. this is what we experience every single generation. these are things we are hypervigilant about. we tell people what's happening when we start to see the signs. i want more people to listen.
please, check in on the jewish people in your life when terrible things are happening. work to root out antisemitism in your community. educate people in your life who spread misinformation. we cannot stop this hatred alone.
sorry if this is lame and incoherent i hope it makes sense. im just. so exhausted.
