Hey, tribe.
I hope you had a beautiful Shabbat. Mine was so full of gratitude. It included time with loved ones AND time in nature, because my friend Stephanie, who lives 12 minutes from JFK (my airport of departure) drove into the city and picked me up, hosted me at her home for my final night in the east, and then brought me to the airport the next day.
Before leaving the city, we had the most delicious dinner at Tsion, a fully kosher and vegan Ethiopian cafe in the heart of Sugar Hill in Harlem. Tsion, of course, is the Hebrew word for Zion. The owner, Beejhy Barhany, is Jewish, Ethiopian and Israeli, and she recently told the JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) that “what pushed me toward going kosher is the whole ordeal of what’s happening toward Jews, as a whole, since October 7. I am proud of my identity, being a Black Jewish woman here in the U.S., in Harlem, and I felt like: what is better to illuminate, to shine and to showcase who I am — no matter what, even though the hatred towards us has increased — than to become fully kosher?”
Just before getting on the subway to meet Stephanie and her son there, I picked up a dozen sunset-colored roses for Ms. Barhany, because I wanted to show her love and support that went beyond having dinner at Tsion. When I arrived, I went to the bar and asked whether the owner was there, and if so, whether I could speak to her for a moment.
“She’s here, but she’s in the back right now. She’ll be out later,” the young bartender told me. “Can I help you with something in the meantime?”
”I just wanted to give her these roses.”
“Oh! Well — in that case, I’ll go get her.”
She disappeared into the kitchen and a moment later, Ms. Barhany emerged. I told her I’d read about the vandalism the cafe has experienced since October 7th and her brave and beautiful response to it, and I’d just wanted to show my admiration and gratitude.
It was the most wonderful moment. Her expression went soft and she hugged me and thanked me, telling me how hard the last several months have been for her.
When the waitress came to our table ten minutes later, she told me, “It was really nice of you to bring her those flowers. She’s crying in the kitchen right now.”
Please, friends, if you’re in NYC or close enough to visit Tsion, consider going and showing her some love. Every single menu item we tried was heavenly, the ambience is ethereal, and the staff is so warm and kind.
Mishpacha — my family: let me say here that by this point in my trip, I was as tired as I’ve ever been. Day one of the conference was nearly 12 hours long, and I was soaked to the bone in the evening’s monsoon on the way to dinner with friends. I got “home” to my friend’s apartment sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 pm, and then I stayed up until 3:00 am writing my letter to all of you.
And then I rose at 6:00 am to do it all again. I had four or five back-to-back days and nights of burning the candle at both ends. Because I wish above all during this harrowing time to bring you a lovely light.
At any rate, it was an overwhelming relief to be picked up and driven to Stephanie’s house on that final night. I pictured sleeping in on Saturday morning in the blessed sanctuary of her attic guest room. That’s when she asked if I wanted to join her hiking group for several miles in a nearby nature reserve the next morning. If I were up for it, we would meet them at the trailhead at 7:00 am.
I figured I’d sleep when I’m dead.
But my evening and morning in her home provided one glittering additional gift, one that will sound counter-intuitive at first, but hear me out.
Stephanie’s older son is a very young adult who has spent hours of the last several Thursdays protesting against Israel in Union Square. When I asked him about his reasons for being there, he confidently told me that Israel is a settler-colonial state that’s currently committing genocide. And as he spoke, it struck me how differently I would see him if I were walking by him on a Thursday when he’d be standing with other protestors. I imagined I would feel fear and rage and maybe even hatred.
But because I know him, I felt none of these things, and it was so, so easy for me to keep loving him despite the things he was saying. Even when he told me the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 never happened, and I countered by saying there was extensive footage provided by Hamas itself, and he suggested those clips were AI-generated — even then, I felt nothing more potent than exasperated dismay.
Because I know him, and he does not hate Jews and he does not wish harm upon anyone. He’s just young and confused in an era where it has become nearly impossible to discern what’s true in the news or on social media.
Please do not misunderstand what I’m saying here. I am not suggesting that we should assume no malign intent on the part of Israel-haters. I am only too aware of how much genuine and scorching anti-Semitism is out there, and I don’t believe we should give true anti-Semites quarter or grace. And I don’t believe it’s our job to educate, enlighten, or win the hearts and minds of our haters.
I’m only saying there is a considerable subset of people who don’t know what they don’t know, and that it can be worth making them aware of this gently and with love, especially if they’re very young and well-intentioned, as this young man is.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, when in a situation like this, I like to ask questions first, and that’s what I did with him.
Did he know the definition of settler-colonialsim? (He did — he understood that it’s an imperial structure and he knew the definition of imperial.) I asked which mother country the Jews were enriching when their postage-stamp-sized, bereft-of-oil, swamp-dotted, malaria-infested little tract of desert land was declared the modern state of Israel.
He conceded that Israel’s re-founding was not a settler-colonial project after all.
And he readily conceded that both sides have done terrible things, but told me he aligned himself against Israel because he saw it as Goliath to Gaza’s David.
Over the next few minutes of questions, he revealed so much he hadn’t known.
He had not known that the identity “Palestinian” did not originate as a term identifying one as hailing from a country called Palestine, but is instead a twentieth-century construct created to identify the Arabs in the region who opposed the founding of Israel.
He had not known that there are 125 Muslims in the world for every single Jew.
When asked how many Jews he thought there were in the world, he guessed 2 billion. (Yes, really.)
He had not known that the map of Israel amidst the greater Arab world looked anything like this (Israel is in blue, the surrounding Arab states in green):
He had not known that it was, in fact, Arabs who had colonized the region, and he was skeptical of that until his mother told him it was true. He also could not believe there were only somewhere between 15 and 16 million Jews in the entire world, until he couldn’t find a single source on the internet that did not corroborate this figure.
Without getting into the weeds of every single point we discussed, the upshot was that he thanked me sincerely for helping him see a vaster and more complicated picture than he’d previously held of the conflict. He told me I had caused him to revise his understanding and resolve to keep learning. He subscribed to this substack.
And our exchange reminded me that I had known just as little at his age, myself. When I got to Columbia at the age of 18, an older student leading my orientation group told us that when we went to open a bank account nearby, we should go to this bank rather than that bank because the latter had not yet divested from South Africa.
Now, at the age of 18, in the vaguest of ways, I knew that South Africa was an apartheid state and I knew who Nelson Mandela was. But even though I didn’t know much more than that, I dutifully opened an account at the bank he’d specified as the good one, and went around telling people I’d chosen it because it had divested from South Africa.
Luckily, that political picture was a simple one, with clear-cut villains and victims, and my blind adherence to what I’d been told to do caused no harm to anyone.
But I think it’s important to realize it’s all too easy for well-intentioned young people to confidently and loudly participate in a movement they don’t understand. Many of them are likely not anti-Semitic at all, though I’m also fully aware that many of them are.
Discerning between the two will likely never be an efficient undertaking. It takes time and emotional investment to inquire into someone’s motives and ideological framework. Our emotional labor is costly, our energy is precious, and we are not responsible for eradicating anti-Semitism.
But when we do find ourselves with the time, space, bandwidth, and goodwill toward an individual critic, it can be worth engaging from a place of curiosity and gentleness. And whether or not we choose to engage on that level, I think it’s helpful to bear in mind that those who threaten us are very often also vulnerable, also hurting, and also human.
In an earlier post, I wrote that I wanted this substack to include a more-or-less weekly feature I’ll call Correcting The Record, in which I tackle the most widespread and pervasive misconceptions about Israel.
Tomorrow, to continue the theme of my conversation with my young friend, I’m going to talk about Settler Colonialism, and why Israel is in no way, shape or form guilty of this form of oppression.
Till then, I hope the rest of your weekend is wonderful. Shavua tov!
Am Yisrael Chai.
I so identify with this experience. I have been in a long online conversation with a dear friend who adamantly believes that Israel has a "greater responsibility" than Hamas for ending the conflict, that Joe Biden is supporting genocide because he hasn't made a ceasefire happen with a snap of his fingers and, yes, that the stories of rapes and other sexual violence during the 10/7 attacks are "false propaganda."
But I also know that there is not a single anti-semitic bone in his entire body. Our conversations are civil, and he does respond positively when provided with substantial evidence not coming from the 99.9% of MSM that he deeply distrusts. He is currently reviewing the UN Meeting notes I sent him from yesterday's presentation by the U.N. Commissioner on Sexual Violence about her mission to Israel to investigate charges of Hamas' sexual violence. And so far, he appears to be taking her and her credentials very seriously.
Will he come around? I don't know, but to me it is besides the point. If there ever is to be peace it wil start with people who have strong opinions on both sides of the conflict being able to talk to each other, not at each other. Anything we do to further that today, even one person at a time, matters.