How To Stay Sane, Redux

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

Not long ago, a Zionist Facebook friend (now a real friend!) came through town. A bus had dropped him and all his stuff in the middle of Portland that morning and he wasn’t due at the airport until very late that night. He pinged me to see if I had any time to hang out and also to ask me for suggestions regarding the use of his day in the city.

I didn’t have a continuous block of hours until early evening, but I know very well how it feels to be in a strange city, with free time, while encumbered with luggage and no place to leave it. And I had so many angels in Israel who continually took me in, fed me, restored me, held onto my stuff and let me use their home as a base. I wanted to pay it forward, so I told him I’d pick him up, bring him to my house, let him stash his bags there, and then bring him wherever he wanted to go. I also invited him to have dinner at our house later, after which I’d drive him to the airport.

I always wear my hostage dog tags and my Am Yisrael Chai necklace when I’m out and about, but to pick him up, I also put on my tee that says I’m That Jew.

If I’m honest, I do feel vulnerable wearing signifiers like the dogs tags and the necklace, but I refuse to be bullied into taking them off. The tee is something else. I don’t go so far as to wear that tee in non-Jewish spaces these days. I’m willing to be visibly, proudly Jewish but I don’t go out of my way to invite harrassment by making myself a blazing target.

Anyway, I picked him up and brought him back to the house and let him shower. I forgot I was even wearing the tee. And then after dropping him off in the city again, I stopped by the grocery store for a few items.

I realized in the parking lot that I still had it on. And I actually wavered over whether to go home and change. But I would have felt cowardly doing that. While I hadn’t meant to wear it to the store, I still didn’t want to be craven enough to go home and take it off and come back.

So I got out of the car and went into Safeway holding the black canister of mace on my keychain in my right hand, with my finger on the trigger. My new friend and I had spent the last hour trading awful stories about anti-Semitic incidents we’d both experienced. I was feeling grim and defensive, ready to spray an anti-Semite in the eyes.

I got the items I needed and went through the checkout line. Then I stood at the end of the counter bagging my own groceries while a mother and teen daughter attempted to buy a green cabbage, a package of bacon, and a couple of onions. They asked the cashier to deduct whatever was left in their EBT account first, and then charge them for the rest. I couldn’t help overhearing that there was nothing left in the account. They asked about coupons and other discounts, but they still didn’t have enough.

Here I spoke up. “I can cover the difference, whatever it is.”

All three of them — mother, daughter, cashier — turned to stare at me.

“You don’t have to do that,” the mother said.

“Well, do you have enough?”

“What’s the total?” she asked the man.

It was $11. They had $8. I really couldn’t stand the idea of them spending their last $8 to eat dinner.

I said, “Look, can we please just do this? Just let me get the whole thing.”

I handed the cashier my credit card. There was a brief, startled silence. The mother and daughter both spent a long moment looking at my shirt before they said, “This is so nice of you, thank you so much,” and “God bless you.”

I feel strange relating this story because it’s arguably unseemly to talk about one’s own tzedakah practices, but here’s the point: in that instant, my perception of my own shirt transformed utterly. With one interaction, it went from feeling like a liability to an opportunity for a kiddush Hashem.

When I began to do Jewish advocacy, I made a decision to go deeper into my Judaism. I knew I could never endure the adversity without strengthening that inner core. In a psychotic world, we need inner sustenance that’s transcendent.

Peter Himmelman puts this so beautifully in a recent newsletter:

As at every point in history—from Christian anti-Judaism to European pogroms and persecutions in Muslim lands under Ottoman rule, to the Shoah, to October 7—there’s always a pretext: the Jew is cast as anti-nationalist, fascist, or communist. He is the perennial outsider, the target of every calumny. Whatever is wrong with you or your society gets projected onto the Jew. It’s a deplorable convenience where a thorough moral reckoning belongs.

So what now?

We shift our posture—from gasping to building. And the most Jewish way to build is also the oldest: to begin with mitzvot. I’m not asking you to become a fanatic, or to suddenly see yourself as “religious.” I’m not even asking you to believe in God. I’m simply inviting you to take one step—however small—toward what is immutable, eternal, and transcendent.

Not as performance, not as branding, but as muscle and marrow. Light Shabbat candles because a weekly island of holiness is non-negotiable when the rest of the week is geared for agitation. Put up a mezuzah because every threshold we cross should remind us of our heritage and faith. Learn from the vast canon of Jewish wisdom—alone, with a chavruta, with your kids—because Torah study rewires the reflex to apologize for existing. Give tzedakah because money given to people and institutions in need is theology made real. Visit the sick, comfort mourners, make blessings out loud. Keep kosher, or take a step toward it, because discipline in what you eat becomes discipline of the mind, heart, and soul. Make peace within your family and your community. Be a moral leader in your sphere of influence. If you’re a musician, write a song for the good of the world; if you’re a writer, use your words to bring illumination to your readers.

Mitzvot don’t erase danger; they empower what most needs strengthening—our sense of achdut, our peoplehood. Across millennia, the mitzvot reassert that Jewish life is not a reactive project but a creative one—that we are not here to explain ourselves, but to live as ourselves. By adding them to your life, you discover that courage isn’t a will toward conflict; it’s a will toward responsibility. You counter Anti-Judaism not through argument but through its opposite: pro-Judaism.

I’ll be real: I feel some degree of empowerment with my finger on the trigger of my canister of mace.

But that pales in comparison with the empowerment I feel when I just move through the world living as beautifully Jewish a life as I possibly can.

We are absolutely surrounded by, drenched in, the most venemous hatred from all sides.

What could be more empowering than the resolve not to let it stick to us?

If we take it in, if we’re filled with hate in response, they’ve won.

If we’re unapologetic, serene, proud and joyful, drawing on our Judaism to bring more love into the world wherever we go, then in the most essential sense, we are wholly untouchable.

On this note, I wish you a restorative and healing Sabbath.

May the candles rekindle your inner fire.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.