"Don't Tell Them I Was A Good One"

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

It’s been a very eventful several days for my family and especially for our daughter. Her high school graduation was last night and we had my mom and dad in town with us for that. She also had to contend with Youth Climbing Divisionals (an intense two-day event) over the weekend, after which we took her grandparents on a very brief road trip (another intense two-day event) so she could show them Smith Rock State Park, her favorite place to climb outside. We even managed to attend Shavuot services on Monday, as a three-generation family.

As a result, it was a string of five days where the news wasn’t front and center, even though I remained aware that a jihadist sociopath set a bunch of elderly Jews on fire as they were demonstrating not in support of the IDF, but just for the return of our hostages.

As a quick aside: even as I write this, I’m repelled by my own reflexive tendency to emphasize that these Jews were advocating from a place that was nothing but peaceful and protective. So many of us, including me, wrote similar things about Sarah Milgram and her would-be fiance — emphasizing that they were attending a peace-seeking and bridge-building event. And we wrote similar things as well about the peaceniks murdered on October 7th, both at the Nova Festival and on the kibbutzim near the Gazan border.

I bow to Vanessa Hidary, whom I had the honor of profiling not long ago for JUDITH’s Jews Of The Universe column, for writing these words in response to this knee-jerk tendency of ours:

If something should happen to me in a Jewish space being a Jew:

Don’t tell them I was a good one

Don’t tell them I was different and deserved to be spared

Don’t tell them I was there doing peace work and therefore worthy

Don’t tell them I wasn’t a Zionist

Don’t tell them anything

Other than I lived as a proud Jew

Til my very last breath.

In any event, as I was saying above, the news was there as it always is, even if it receded somewhat during the intensity of these milestone events. It kind of hangs in the air like a dark cloud, casting a pall over everything even as we have personal reasons to rejoice. I experience this accrual of the awful as a kind of weight, like a string of those silver fishing sinkers accumulating on my heart, dragging it down.

That downward tug was there all weekend and into Tuesday, even as we celebrated my daughter’s transition into a college student. In the background too was that insufferable attention whore Greta Thunberg, voguing in her keffiyeh on a yacht headed for Gaza, where apparently she hopes to deliver some token humanitarian aid for the international cameras. Because that’s going to be oh so helpful right now. Because for her, this tragic situation has all the makings of an irresistible publicity stunt starring her as the heroine. She’s having the time of her life on that boat.

Amidst all this, I keep seeing the same social media posts from Jews.

The silence is deafening.

We feel gutted by the indifference of our social justice “allies”.

Please, please stand with us.

This vicious cycle has only spiralled further downward over the last two years. Please, Yidden, enough already. Stop begging these soulless people for the crumbs from their table. I honestly can’t bear it.

The ones who haven’t posted in support of us yet will never post in support of us. We need to accept that they’re no friends of ours and move on.

Meanwhile Trump, our shining leader who’s so feared and respected everywhere that he was going to end the Israel-Hamas war — as well as the one between Russia and Ukraine — on day one is, as usual, being scorned by the dictators he worships even as he continues to stab all of America’s longtime allies in the back.

He’s learning that his best friend Vlad has been playing him like a cheap violin and that Iran is no more interested in supporting his foreign policy ambitions than Russia is.

Per CNN, the Ayatollah just told the crowd assembled at a memorial service for Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran: “The first word of the US is that Iran should not have a nuclear industry and should rely on the United States… [but] our response to the US’ nonsense is clear: they cannot do a damn thing in this matter.”

It would be nice if Bibi could develop a similar spine and solve the problem of Iran’s nuclear program even without Trump’s approval. It’s widely reported that Trump is purging many of the Iran hawks and pro-Israel hardliners (such as Eric Trager, Merav Ceren and Morgan Ortaguson) from his foreign policy team and replacing them with “America First” anti-interventionists who see economic opportunity as the cardinal priority when it comes to relations between the US and the Middle East. And of course, this is all in the direct wake of a visit to the region where Trump visited Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar without so much as a courtesy call to Israel.

Is “friendship” like this worth missing the best opportunity Israel will ever have to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities?

I wish I could imagine a way out of this hellscape. I wish I believed in the version of this life that’s favored by our local Chabad, where everything that happens is for some greater good we can’t necessarily comprehend. I wish I could understand how the whole world can stand by and allow a few terrible men to do so much harm. I wish I believed that the U.S. will be restored to democracy and sanity, that our planet will survive our collective heedlessness and greed, that Israel will survive and prevail as a morally upright and shining Jewish state forever, that our children will inherit a home worth living in.

I keep reminding myself that all I can do is my own work, and that our people have survived worse times and places.

I’ll try to be back before Shabbat, with more uplifting content and maybe even some good news.

Until then, heartfelt love and strength to you all.

Am Yisrael Chai.