There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t at some point wonder how hating the world’s only Jewish state became the most popular activity in the western world.
If we could zoom out and literally see how much more interconnected we are than we realize (like if we could observe humans the way we do an ant farm or bee hive), I suspect we’d discover that each of our individual perspectives are sustained by the very fact of other persons holding different ones.
You get to be a warrior because others are not warriors. Others get to be nonjudgmental because not everyone is nonjudgmental.
My thinking might sound abstract or mystical, but it’s informed by what I know about family systems in psychology. Change a person’s role and everyone’s roles shift.
As it happens, I surprised myself today. I always thought I would feel some degree of schadenfreude to see an “As a Jew” get their comeuppance. If not schadenfreude, then some moment of “I told you so.” But when I watched the video footage of Scott Wiener getting harassed, I felt nothing like that. I wanted to have been wrong, I was so sad for him. And I’m also sad for the ignorance in the LGBTQ community.
Islamists have infiltrated our elite institutions and our most vulnerable populations. They weaponize everyone, and once they cease to be useful, they will kill them.
It does feel like one is forced to choose between White nationalism and Islamist-Marxist jihadists. Death by lynching or beheading? White hoods or keffiyehs?
I absolutely love so much of what you said here. It's that way in families too. My husband could be the fun parent *because* I yell at him to bring the kids out of the ocean on a day with heavy riptides. He relied on me to be the killjoy in that context. You're 100% right -- that dynamic plays out in a million ways.
But while there are definitely Islamists involved in the far left's insanity, regular progressives are responsible for their own choices and so many of them make absolutely everything worse for the people they think they're helping.
Oh and my husband is the fun parent too. I’m sure this surprises no one. My last piece for HuffPost was largely about this dynamic in our marriage—not just that, but a lot of that!
Thank you, Elissa. I also saw the post from Heretic Coffee and felt the terrible weight of it. And my own feeling of isolation from close friends where I’m afraid to talk about my own identity. I mean, they know I’m Jewish, but everyone avoids the topic, including me.
Incredibly heartfelt. So many of the feelings you express, I express, too. The cavernous rift. The intolerable situation where political rivalry has transformed into hate. I mean real hate. Only last night, someone online said I was poison and he wished I would die. I sent him a photo of my army shoulder ranks and the medal I got for fighting in the first Lebanon war. And he still wished me dead. Proof that it was never about loving the country, but about hating someone whose values are different. To him, unity means uniformity. Otherwise you are poison.
I totally identify with your despondency. However there is one thing that always centers me: I know that here is where I belong, There is nowhere else I would want to live; here is where I feel rooted. Despite the torn social fabric and despite the toxic political discourse - and we feel we are on the verge of a civil war. Nobody is going to move me from here. And you know what? That centers me. It gives me an anchor. Please, Elissa, please find your anchor and hold on to it - that immovable truth that will always be yours - and allow it to give you certainty and comfort.
Oh yes . I know what you mean. I have just posted something about this on my FB page. I don't think the terms left and right mean anything anymore....the right is probably more pro-Israel since the fundamentalists think that's where the second coming will be...I just don't talk about the subject of Israel with certain friends anymore. These are Jews who are not involved in anything Jewish except being anti-Israel.
Thank you for writing this. It made me cry. I wrote thousands of postcards to flip the Senate blue. I dropped a close friend and mentor of 20+ years over her comments at our first lunch after 10/7. I can't love Patti Smith anymore. I am an original member of political action groups that now support candidates who would be just fine with no iron dome and lots of dead Jews. I can't take it! Anyway, thank you for expressing this so clearly and for sharing your conversation with your son. 💙
Oh Elissa, I have just spent the entire afternoon struggling with this exact issue in myself. I suppose that Judaism is not Buddhism (though there is much to be learned from the East.) Our God, in whom you don't believe but oh well it's what we've got, sent us angry prophets when we strayed from the moral way. I do believe God's love is huge and all-encompassing, that in fact that is the substance of the world, but that doesn't mean he/she/they doesn't get mad at cruelty and idolatry.
I feel all of this, although I think I may have less rage, maybe because I’m so uncomfortable with anger that it flips to sadness. Also, I didn’t work as hard as you on politics. I hate politics. I showed up and gave a lot for Hillary, but she’s the only one. I did, however, consider myself a liberal progressive, which I left behind on October 8, 2023, and now I can say good riddance to bad rubbish. The mindfulness world, and the poetry world (my communities) are difficult right now for someone like me who doesn’t allow words like apartheid, and genocide, to go unchallenged. I’m usually alone. It’s exhausting. And it sucks.
I think "raw" in this way is how many of us are feeling so much of the time. You affirm that the rawness is real, the weaponization against us is real, AND you provide balm for the rawness. And I also think, with all the people who are responding this way to you, you are building something--a movement, a cohort, a group with an ever strong sense of solidarity.
“ I hate being asked to accept Jewish Trump supporters in my community.”
This!!! Single issue Jewish voters!! “He’s good for Israel “ NO HE’S NOT!!! Meanwhile all the damage being done here at home will never be repaired and we suffer. Aaarrrrggghhh. Having briefly had a small amount of conversations with Jewish orange Mussolini supporters, it seems they get their “news “ from the same source as the non Jewish. I feel more comfortable talking to Jewish conservatives than non Jewish but I can’t even be physically near uber leftist supporters.
Thank you for this.
There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t at some point wonder how hating the world’s only Jewish state became the most popular activity in the western world.
If we could zoom out and literally see how much more interconnected we are than we realize (like if we could observe humans the way we do an ant farm or bee hive), I suspect we’d discover that each of our individual perspectives are sustained by the very fact of other persons holding different ones.
You get to be a warrior because others are not warriors. Others get to be nonjudgmental because not everyone is nonjudgmental.
My thinking might sound abstract or mystical, but it’s informed by what I know about family systems in psychology. Change a person’s role and everyone’s roles shift.
As it happens, I surprised myself today. I always thought I would feel some degree of schadenfreude to see an “As a Jew” get their comeuppance. If not schadenfreude, then some moment of “I told you so.” But when I watched the video footage of Scott Wiener getting harassed, I felt nothing like that. I wanted to have been wrong, I was so sad for him. And I’m also sad for the ignorance in the LGBTQ community.
Islamists have infiltrated our elite institutions and our most vulnerable populations. They weaponize everyone, and once they cease to be useful, they will kill them.
It does feel like one is forced to choose between White nationalism and Islamist-Marxist jihadists. Death by lynching or beheading? White hoods or keffiyehs?
I’ll be back to bird watching tomorrow.
I absolutely love so much of what you said here. It's that way in families too. My husband could be the fun parent *because* I yell at him to bring the kids out of the ocean on a day with heavy riptides. He relied on me to be the killjoy in that context. You're 100% right -- that dynamic plays out in a million ways.
But while there are definitely Islamists involved in the far left's insanity, regular progressives are responsible for their own choices and so many of them make absolutely everything worse for the people they think they're helping.
You’re right about that. And that’s why it’s so hard not to be pissed off every day. I live with daily fury too. It is not fun.
Oh and my husband is the fun parent too. I’m sure this surprises no one. My last piece for HuffPost was largely about this dynamic in our marriage—not just that, but a lot of that!
Thank you, Elissa. I also saw the post from Heretic Coffee and felt the terrible weight of it. And my own feeling of isolation from close friends where I’m afraid to talk about my own identity. I mean, they know I’m Jewish, but everyone avoids the topic, including me.
Incredibly heartfelt. So many of the feelings you express, I express, too. The cavernous rift. The intolerable situation where political rivalry has transformed into hate. I mean real hate. Only last night, someone online said I was poison and he wished I would die. I sent him a photo of my army shoulder ranks and the medal I got for fighting in the first Lebanon war. And he still wished me dead. Proof that it was never about loving the country, but about hating someone whose values are different. To him, unity means uniformity. Otherwise you are poison.
I totally identify with your despondency. However there is one thing that always centers me: I know that here is where I belong, There is nowhere else I would want to live; here is where I feel rooted. Despite the torn social fabric and despite the toxic political discourse - and we feel we are on the verge of a civil war. Nobody is going to move me from here. And you know what? That centers me. It gives me an anchor. Please, Elissa, please find your anchor and hold on to it - that immovable truth that will always be yours - and allow it to give you certainty and comfort.
Hugs.
Oh yes . I know what you mean. I have just posted something about this on my FB page. I don't think the terms left and right mean anything anymore....the right is probably more pro-Israel since the fundamentalists think that's where the second coming will be...I just don't talk about the subject of Israel with certain friends anymore. These are Jews who are not involved in anything Jewish except being anti-Israel.
Thank you for writing this. It made me cry. I wrote thousands of postcards to flip the Senate blue. I dropped a close friend and mentor of 20+ years over her comments at our first lunch after 10/7. I can't love Patti Smith anymore. I am an original member of political action groups that now support candidates who would be just fine with no iron dome and lots of dead Jews. I can't take it! Anyway, thank you for expressing this so clearly and for sharing your conversation with your son. 💙
Oh Elissa, I have just spent the entire afternoon struggling with this exact issue in myself. I suppose that Judaism is not Buddhism (though there is much to be learned from the East.) Our God, in whom you don't believe but oh well it's what we've got, sent us angry prophets when we strayed from the moral way. I do believe God's love is huge and all-encompassing, that in fact that is the substance of the world, but that doesn't mean he/she/they doesn't get mad at cruelty and idolatry.
Thank you for sharing that. ❤️
I feel all of this, although I think I may have less rage, maybe because I’m so uncomfortable with anger that it flips to sadness. Also, I didn’t work as hard as you on politics. I hate politics. I showed up and gave a lot for Hillary, but she’s the only one. I did, however, consider myself a liberal progressive, which I left behind on October 8, 2023, and now I can say good riddance to bad rubbish. The mindfulness world, and the poetry world (my communities) are difficult right now for someone like me who doesn’t allow words like apartheid, and genocide, to go unchallenged. I’m usually alone. It’s exhausting. And it sucks.
I think "raw" in this way is how many of us are feeling so much of the time. You affirm that the rawness is real, the weaponization against us is real, AND you provide balm for the rawness. And I also think, with all the people who are responding this way to you, you are building something--a movement, a cohort, a group with an ever strong sense of solidarity.
“ I hate being asked to accept Jewish Trump supporters in my community.”
This!!! Single issue Jewish voters!! “He’s good for Israel “ NO HE’S NOT!!! Meanwhile all the damage being done here at home will never be repaired and we suffer. Aaarrrrggghhh. Having briefly had a small amount of conversations with Jewish orange Mussolini supporters, it seems they get their “news “ from the same source as the non Jewish. I feel more comfortable talking to Jewish conservatives than non Jewish but I can’t even be physically near uber leftist supporters.
Unconditional love is a beautiful thing.