Hey, tribe.
A belated Shavua Tov and a Chag Pesach Sameach.
Before I get into today’s topic, I want to show you the laser-cut copper hanging that just arrived from Israel. We hung it on the wall facing our Shabbat / holiday table. Isn’t it beautiful?
This past weekend, I went to the Farmers’ Market and Portland’s annual ceramic show and took long walks with loved ones but I didn’t manage to divert my attention from what’s happening at Columbia or in the literary community.
I have now seen video after video of horrific anti-Semitic violence being stoked at Columbia. These include throngs of people by the campus gate whom any Jewish person entering or leaving campus would be forced to walk by, chanting:
"Al-Qassam [the military wing of Hamas] you make us proud!”
"We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!"
"Oh Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too!"
"Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas’ fight!"
"It is right to rebel — Al-Qassam, give them hell!"
"It is right to rebel — Hamas, give them hell!"
Other clips show protestors holding torches aloft and waving Hamas flags. Countless calls to “globalize the intifada”. A protest leader lauding the Al-Aqsa Flood (Hamas’ name for October 7th) and the "freedom fighters" who perpetrated it. A masked man screaming at young Jewish women that October 7th will happend 10,000 more times. Shouts at Jews to “go back to Poland or Belarus” and calling them “Nazi bitches”. Protestors forming a human chain to push Jews off the campus lawn. A masked protestor standing in front of a tiny cluster of Jewish counter-protestors with a sign that read: “Al Qasam’s next targets.”
And yet, the vast majority of posts I read from my friends on the left are bemoaning the school’s efforts to keep the students’ legal right to protest from morphing into actions that violate the university’s policies, qualify as threats and hate speech, menace Jewish students, and disrupt the college’s work environment.
If there is a single left-leaning news outlet that’s honest about any of the above besides articles making tepid statements like: “…there have been several moments in which demonstrators have yelled intimidating phrases” and “some Jewish students said they felt unsafe” (thanks, New York Times), I have not seen it, and that’s not for a lack of effort.
Meanwhile, predictably, PEN America has canceled its annual literary awards ceremony given the number of authors who have pulled out in protest of the org’s refusal to unilaterally condemn Israel.
The brilliant and lovely Yardenne Greenspan writes of the swiftly-becoming-systemic trend of the literary community barring the vast majority of American Jews from entry by adding “No Zionists” to their criteria list in her searing new essay We Are No Longer Welcome.
Growing up, I can’t tell you how many times I wondered how in the world the supposed “friends and neighbors” of the Jews turned on them in Nazi Germany. Now I see it happening. As Yardenne reports of her writing group:
All at once, my relationship with several members of the group went south. They cited my social media activity — raising awareness of Hamas’s crimes, calling on the world to demand the release of hostages, and condemning protests that reframed murder and rape as resistance — as insensitive, nationalistic, and myopic. There may have been other reasons for the rift that developed, but I wasn’t given any, so all I have is my own understanding of the situation. We had years of close, intimate friendship under our belts. (If you’ve ever been part of a writing group, you know all too well the vulnerability this entails. Especially if, like me, you have been working on a memoir.) I spent a good long while looking back at every single thing I’d posted, but found no calls for violence in my words, no hatred directed at any group of people. I only found the fear, turmoil, and urge to make the world understand what any Jewish Israeli was expressing. Was that the problem?
The acceptance and safety lavished on the token Jews willing to renounce Israel creates incredible pressure to conform to their model.
As Howard Lovy writes in his own substack, Emet-Truth:
My life and career would be a lot easier if I just announced that #AsAJew, I denounce Zionism, and that I have a manuscript telling the story of how I cannot support the apartheid, settler-colonial, white European project in ‘Palestine’… unfortunately, for my writing career and reputation, I don’t believe any of these things.
This brings me to a reflection in honor of Passover.
A few years ago, I wrote the following post on Facebook:
Yesterday I met my son’s Sunday school teacher at the reform synagogue we joined not long ago. She’s an older woman – maybe late sixties – with a butch presentation: she had short cropped silver hair and wore a “men’s” suit and tie. She told me her given English name as well as the Hebrew one she had chosen for herself — Nachshon — and invited me to address her by either.
I told her I loved her Hebrew name and would gladly address her by that.
I could only guess what it meant to her, but afterward when the kids asked me why I’d chosen her Hebrew name, which was much harder to say, we had a conversation about what it might signify.
I said, “You know, it might be hard for you guys to believe, but when I was your age, it was very dangerous to be gay or trans or even to present yourself in the workplace in attire traditionally reserved for the opposite gender. It was dangerous socially, professionally, legally and even bodily. Many people were beaten or even killed for being gay or trans.”
The kids said it really was hard to believe, and I had a moment of feeling so grateful for how far we’ve come. Things are far from perfect, very far, especially under the current administration, and yet everywhere they go – their school, their shul, the climbing gym, any street or store or public place in town – they see non-binary people and same-sex couples living in no apparent fear.
That's the reality they've grown up in, oh so thankfully. But Lionel's teacher obviously hailed from the ranks of the old guard.
When the Israelites, pursued by the Egyptian army, came to the Red Sea, God commanded them to proceed. They balked in fear. Only Nachshon stepped forward and walked into the water. He was submerged in it up to his eyes before the waves drew back.
I told my children that things are the way they are now for the LGBTQ+ community because so many people of my own generation had the fortitude to stand and be counted as their authentic selves in the face of almost universal adversity and hostility. They risked everything to step forward into the fury of the sea, pressing on even as the waves rose up to their eyes, and it was in response to their brave bodies and souls that the water finally began to part.
So now let’s cut to today.
In every age and place, during the holiday of Pesach, we are encouraged to consider the ways that we’re still in Egypt.
We don’t have to struggle for any parallels this year.
Our hostages are in the darkest corner of Egypt, as surely as Joseph languished in Pharaoh’s prison cell. But with absolutely no parallel between the extent of their suffering and ours, Jews in the diaspora are also in the darkness of Egypt right now, given the makings of another Kristallnacht rising across the country.
Leaving a steady and reliable source of income to do Jewish advocacy with no guarantee of pay and showing up in my life as a proud and unapologetic Zionist is my way of walking into the waves at this moment. If you’re finding your own way to do that, please know that I stand with you and will stop at nothing to support you.
If you’re attending a Seder tonight, as we are, I hope it’s beautiful, meaningful and inspiring to you in this very hard time. I love you all with all my heart.
Am Yisrael Chai.
What's happening on campuses is disgusting. I find myself feeling grateful I'm no longer teaching and my kids have graduated. The idea that Jewish kids at Columbia aren't safe on campus is a reflection not only on the mindless demonstraters but also on the spineless adminstrators and faculty that can't or won't keep order on campus.
The more "anti" they become, the louder, prouder, and more pro I become.
The view from my windows of intersectionality ensured that I never count on the progressive left to do anything other than be performative; they are performative in the allyship, they are performative in their politics, they are performative with their wallet… They are spineless always have been, and always will be. The one thing I'll say about antisemites, racist, bigots, homophobes, they are willing to act; nothing about them is performative; they are quite literally willing to burn it all down for what they believe.
Jews can do no less figuratively speaking. As for the progressives and the left: I'll leave them to their performances and when they take their final bow, no one will be in the audience.