Our Ever-Narrowing Bridge

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe:

Predictably, by this morning there is an attempt to blame the Jews for the pogrom against them in Amsterdam last night. There is a clip circulating of Israeli football fans going into the subway while singing a supposedly hateful song (per Debbie Lechtman of RootsMetals, an impeccable source, it turns out that it was just a regular football chant), and another of one person trying to pull down a Palestinian flag.

Meanwhile, it is well documented that this attack was premeditated, coordinated and planned in advance.

Meanwhile, a synchronized attack huge enough to overwhelm more than 800 police officers and go on for 7 hours is not something you can posit as a credible response to a few people being assholes, if indeed those stories are even true.

Meanwhile, Jews in America have spent an entire YEAR watching as Jew-hating mobs roam the streets, chanting violent eliminationist rhetoric en masse, setting fires, vandalizing and terrorizing Jewish homes and businesses, calling for a global intifada, cheering on Hamas and the Houthis, waving jihadist flags, and burning, spitting on and trampling Israeli flags.

Weird how none of us beat any of them bloody, ran over them with cars or drove them into rivers.

I am inexpressibly repelled by the knee-jerk response of so many as they set an entire night of terror and violence against the supposed provocations of the terrorized group, as if to imply we brought it on ourselves (of course).

I posted the above content on my personal Facebook page and immediately, as if eager to serve as a visual aid, a now-former virtual friend popped up to say that actually, the Jews really did deserve it. He’s gone and will never be back.

Fam, it’s going to be a challenge to stay sane. For all of us. Because my G-d, we are just being squeezed, squeezed, squeezed between two walls closing in from both the left and the right, day and night, all the time, with no end in sight.

Something that troubles me immensely is that for the entire past year, the far left felt much more threatening to me than the far right. I still hated the far right, which had essentially become nearly all of the right; I still knew it was there, a clear and present danger, but Trump and his ilk receded for me as a visceral specter in the face of jihadist mobs running amok over huge swaths of the country, while our allies seemed indifferent to or supportive of the havoc and terror they were wreaking.

But now Trump is back, much more empowered than before, with absolutely nothing left to stop him.

Now the Nazi whom Trump invited to dinner at Mar-A-Lago is gloating all over social media, cackling “Your Body, My Choice” and gleefully celebrating the subjugation of women this administration represents:

Now Black men, women and even children across America are getting emails ordering them to report to slave plantations:

Trump emboldens these people. He stokes this energy. He fuels this fire. He promises them safety and immunity and a restoration of their sovereignty.

We have them on one side, jihadists on the other. This has been true for a long time but now it’s accelerating, intensifying at such a dizzying speed and force that it’s sending that bone-deep cold straight into my veins, so that wherever I go inside my own house, I need to bring my heating pad so I don’t shiver uncontrollably.

I’ve always promised myself I wouldn’t show too much distress or fear here because we all feel those emotions, there is no insight or benefit in cataloguing them, and letting ourselves be paralyzed by terror, dread and rage is something we can’t afford.

But you know who feels just as angry, hurt and betrayed as we do right now? Black women. At least the dozens who have posted in my news feed. How could they not? Election season in and election season out, they have carried the Democratic party, but the Democratic party far too often falls far too short of showing them appropriate appreciation and respect. To say nothing of the Klansmen on the other side.

Here’s what hurts me more than anything, truly: the Trump-voting Jews who decided that, since almost none of our allies on the left spoke out for us this year, they were resolving to look out only for our own community.

I understand that hurt and anger but I will never cross that line.

Social justice work should not be transactional, but even more than that, what does it mean to be Jewish? Are we a sports team? Are we just out to make what we believe is the best strategic choice for ourselves, everyone else be damned?

The most haunting conversation I had during the last couple of weeks was with a Jewish Trump voter who had adopted that stance. This is the way our conversation went:

Me: “If Trump had said, knowing FULL WELL it was flat-out false, that the Jews were eating the dogs, eating the cats, eating people's pets, and stoking violence against the Jewish community in America, would it not be obvious to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could not possibly vote for him? And if the answer is yes, then how can you as a Jew support him when he's doing this to a different vulnerable community?”

Him: “If he was inciting violence against Jews like that, I absolutely wouldn't vote for him. Nor do I blame Haitians for not voting for him. As for your second question, I don't subscribe to the "tikkun olam" thing. I put my own people first because it is clear to me now that the rest of the world does not care about us and sees us as expendable. Jewish blood is worthless as far as they're concerned. I'm done showing up for others.”

Me: “Don't sell your soul. How are you different from a good German in Nazi Germany if you do that?! I am a thousand percent for our people. I just told the lit world they can kiss my Zionist ass. But I would never sell out another vulnerable community -- that is absolutely beneath me as a Jew.

Jews don't cozy up to sociopathic thugs, seeking favor, while they kick the shit out of every other vulnerable group. That is not what Jews do, or not what we should do.

Our great sage Hillel's second question was: If I am only for myself, what am I?

The Jews aren't a sports team, where we are for ourselves and against everyone else. Shouldn’t being a Jew mean something morally and spiritually elevated?”

Him: “Look, I don't believe in spiritualism. I don't believe the way I was born means I'm obligated to be a ‘better human being’ or whatever. I was put on this Earth to live my own life. I don't serve anyone else. I am an atheist.”

I was able to persuade at least half a dozen Jews not to vote for Trump, but I did not persuade him.

If he had no moral or spiritual aspirations at all, just a desire to vote strategically on his own behalf, then we didn’t share a language or a set of values (even though I myself am an atheist or at least an agnostic) and I might as well have been speaking in Greek.

I’m as hurt by and angry with as much of the left as he was, but I will never stop standing against racism, homophobia, transphobia, and every other form of bigotry.

I started this newsletter because standing between these two poles while taking heat and being wounded by both sides is among the hardest things I’ve ever done and I wanted everyone else in the same space to have a shared and supportive community.

Do you know how much easier my life would be and how much money I would make if I just veered hard to one side or the other and went with that full-throttle? I wouldn’t lose anyone, I wouldn’t get pushback, I wouldn’t have people joining me because I stood up against one side and then feeling disappointed that I also took a stand against the other.

Believe me, it’s not fun recognizing how deep and lethal the anti-Semitism and anti-liberalism runs on both the right and the left. Feeling embattled all the time is not conducive to a sense of well-being. I’m here because I feel that not enough people are willing to be vocal and visible in this space and I have to keep calling it as I see it on a case-by-case basis every day.

I’m for us, all day every day, from every angle and in every way. But I also believe that if we’re only for ourselves, then the most sacred part of being Jewish is lost.

As we move into Shabbat, which I desperately need, I wanted to share an excerpt from Eating Animals, a memoir by Jonathan Safran Foer that I feel is relevant here. It’s the book that made me stop buying factory-farm-generated animal products completely and forever.

In this excerpt, he’s in conversation with his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, as she described nearly starving to death as she ran from the Nazis:

During the War it was hell on earth, and I had nothing. I left my family, you know. I was always running, day and night, because the Germans were always right behind me. If you stopped, you died. There was never enough food. I became sicker and sicker from not eating… I wasn’t too good to eat from a garbage can. I ate the parts others wouldn’t eat… the worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.

“He saved your life.”

I didn’t eat it.

“You didn’t eat it?”

It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.

“Why?”

What do you mean why?

“What, because it wasn’t kosher?”

Of course.

“But not even to save your life?”

If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.

*

I’ll be back with you on Monday, beloved fam. I wish you a peaceful and restorative Jewish day of rest. I’m confident when I say I’m sure that all of us need it. Hold it as close as you can and take sustenance from it for next week, and all the weeks in the foreseeable future, because we will surely need it.

I love you all.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.