Hanging around my neck

I started this essay in October. I’ve put it down and picked it up more times than a glass of champagne at a never-ending baby shower. I keep fiddling with it and it never feels right. It’s riddled with issues, just like the topic at hand. And whenever I think I’ll just post it, something else happens. Sigh. The massacre. The retaliation. The drones. The goading.

I want the bombing and killing to stop. I want the hostages released. I want blame to be put on Hamas. The way it was on October 7th. Except…that it kind of wasn’t; judging by the silence of so many. And that’s the rub. One of the many rubs.

And now, Iran. The attacking. The goading. The waiting. The new wave of protests. Jewish students being told to stay home? As I said, this essay never feels right. But it’s not about being right. It’s about pain.

Here’s the essay. But first, a little story - last week, I was walking up Fifth Avenue, as a throng of young people walked toward me, headed toward Washington Square Park for a rally. A couple of girls wore midriff-baring-shirts, paired with keffiyeh’s. The guy they were with held a big Palestinian flag that fluttered in the wind. As our paths crossed, the flag hit me in the face, and I had to whack it with my hand so it wouldn’t get wrapped around me. The moment felt almost comical in its obviousness; as black and white as the scarves that were so casually draped around their necks - at a time when my soul is littered with shades of grey. The kids didn’t register my whack; their eyes were trained forward.

They kept walking and so did I. Each in our own direction.

Ok. Now here’s my messy essay.

My jewelry drawer is nothing to be proud of. I mean, I love a lot of what’s in there, but then there are other things, like the fringy earrings that make me look like a kooky art teacher - not cool-kooky - more like a substitute who keeps coming up with annoying paper mache projects. I tell myself I’ll sort it out, but I kind of like the jumble. Because almost every time I delve in, to unopened jewelry pouches or boxes, I find something that makes me smile or remember.

There’s a pair of big, white, shimmery earrings I never wear, but am always happy to see - like party guests who drink too much, but say the sweetest things. And a black stone necklace I bought after zip-lining in Mexico, because it was said that the stones represented strength.

Recently, curiosity led me to open a velvet box. I recognized the necklace instantly - a small mezuzah on a gold chain. It was given to me on my Bat Mitzvah by the president of our synagogue’s Sisterhood, who said she hoped I would wear it proudly as I began my journey into Jewish womanhood.

As a 12-year-old woman, I was way more excited by a velvet choker I’d poached from my sister’s jewelry box, exactly like the one Shelley Hack wore on the cover of my bible - Seventeen Magazine (also poached from my sister.) I actually stood in the mirror with my head cocked to the side like Shelley’s when I tried it on. The mezuzah could wait.

My cousin Judy wore a Jewish star that was even bigger than Sammy Davis Jr’s. Once, my brother said, “Hey Jude, you think anyone knows you’re Jewish?” which made even my father laugh, and he took his Judaism seriously.

“I hope so,” she said, without hesitation.

Her proud conviction took me aback. I told myself I didn’t need a piece of jewelry to remind me of who I was. But her pride gave me a pang of something I couldn’t name. Guilt? Embarrassment? Jealousy? “I’m Jewish, but not THAT Jewish,” I’d think, when I saw people with Judy-level stars around their necks.

But now. It is mid-October and I feel a bigger sense of Jewish identity than I knew was there. I find it hard to sleep. A group of Jewish NYU students stand in a semi-circle near the arch at Washington Square Park, as a much larger Free Palestine rally gathers on the other side of the fountain. Shyly, I stand near the Jewish students.

I impulsively rejoin the synagogue I haven’t gone to in years because I want to be surrounded by the minor-key melodies I’ve known all my life. I want to feel my father’s presence.

I stand at a mirror and hold the mezuzah in front of me. I try it on. I take it off, eyeing its little hinged door. I open it to see the “Chai” it reveals. Chai. Life. To life, to life, l’chaim, I hum. And then sigh. Surely me not wearing a little necklace won’t make the fiddler fall off the roof. I put it away.

The velvet box seems to look at me whenever I open the drawer, but I don’t look back. I tell a friend who isn’t Jewish that I’ve been thinking about wearing it and admit my hesitation.

“I mean, I want you to wear it, but… do you think you might get…”

“Looked at with disdain? Or worse?” I say for her. We both sigh.

The TV plays as I get dressed. Innocent people dead. Young people kidnapped. Posters of hostages torn down, their anguished shreds fluttering against the metal poles they were taped to. The Cornell student whose posts call for the slitting of throats of Jewish “people” (sic) on campus.

When you’re part of a religion that constitutes .2% of the population, posts like that are not just chilling; they’re terrifying. I say it aloud - point two percent. Clearly, to some, that’s .2% too many.

Instagram is a sea of black backgrounds with white text that goes on for pages, and at first, I read every word. Both sides. I embrace my Jewish righteousness and wonder where it’s been all my life.

And then, the Israeli response. The bombing. The evacuations. The suffering. The starving. Babies. Women. Children. News footage of parents, wailing over dead children.

The killing. The deprivation. That goes on. And on. And on.

The hostage-keeping that goes on and on and on.

The uneven death toll makes me shudder.

The fact that Hamas burrows and hides beneath its own people makes me livid.

The demand for a ceasefire is understandably loud.

But the fact that it is so much louder than a demand to return the hostages is infuriating.

And yet, as time goes on, and the atrocities in Gaza become more atrocious, it all gets so damned cloudy. Talking about October 7th makes me feel like a child, pointing my finger, saying “she started it.” But. We’re hardly talking about a random kick on the playground.

Mothers without children on both sides. Primal wail versus primal wail. No one wins.

I wince as I write this, and have put it aside many times, because, honestly, I fear the comments. Comments from people who know more than me. Or who say they do.

I read the “Ceasefire Now” posts and nod, because I too, want this hell to end. But I stop nodding when I see the comments. Comments like “They can never get enough power and wealth to satisfy their own cravings” and “They are not human.” A shocking amount of which get Likes. Each Like, a slap in the punim.

When did we become a “they?”

We always were. I just didn’t know it. And it’s hitting me - stupidly - on the head - the same ton of bricks that hits everyone who’s been blind to the obvious.

I put the mezuzah back into its box, tucking it in gently - a promise not to forget it.

I snap the TV off and yank a jacket from the coat closet. A walk with an episode of Conan O’Brien’s hilarious podcast is what I need right now. I make my way toward 5th Avenue, passing the nearby university, when I hear chanting. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, I see students, cross-legged on the floor, like children looking up at a teacher. But the person at the head of the room isn’t telling them it’s nap time.

“Free!” she calls, and the group echos the word back to her. “Free Palestine!” she then says, and the phrase is repeated. The cadence is rhythmic - Free - free! Free Palestine! Free PALestine! - there’s a unified lift to the voices on the first syllable of “Palestine.” As chants go, it works.

I continue to walk, when the next chant begins. “From the river to the sea…” I stop. Do these kids want freedom for innocent Palestinians or the abolishment of Israel? Or do they believe that you can’t have one without the other?

I want to storm in, not to yell, but to talk. About how astonishing it is to hear chants for the abolishment of a democracy- one that supports freedom of expression, gay people, women’s rights. I glance at a young man with platinum hair and red nail polish, who seems to be cheering for an ideology that wouldn’t have him.

My eye is caught by one girl in particular. She chants earnestly. I can’t stop looking. With her loose brown curls, sweet eyes and trusting face, she reminds me of someone I can’t name. And then I realize. It’s me, when I was her age.

Me. Chanting No Nukes, with other girls in embroidered peasant tops, standing shoulder to shoulder with boys in faded flannel. Shouting. Angry. Excited. Because we were demanding change, together, on the right side - which is to say the left side. Which in those days, was united.

The sweet-looking girl looks committed and kind-hearted. She glances up and sees me through the window. Our eyes meet. I wonder if I remind her of her mother. We stay that way, eyes locked, mine, squinting with confusion, hers, filled with earnest conviction.

Would I have joined a protest like this when I was her age? I certainly would have been swept up by outrage. The narrative, reinforced by social media and the news - privileged whites vs. oppressed people of color. Netanyahu, bad, Palestinians good. Dead children pulled from rubble. People forced to flee, with nowhere to go. Starvation. Water deprivation. The number of dead on one side grossly disproportionate to that on the other. I can almost feel the stirring of my 18-year-old soul, and imagine myself jumping in. Almost. But I wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have.

Not without picturing the eyes of my grandmother, who fled to this country “to be safe.”

“To be safe from what?” I asked, my plump, unlined, 7-year-old hands, next to her dry wrinkly ones, kneading dough on her red linoleum kitchen table.

“Safe from something you should never know,” she answered, looking straight ahead, as she sprinkled flour that tickled my fingers. It was years before I understood.

I hear echos of my father’s voice saying “anti-semitism will rear its head again” and my own teenaged reply, that things have changed. The outrage about Gaza is justified. But that outrage is entwined with something every Jewish person I know has felt - the unleashing of what feels like a not-so-deep-seated hatred toward Jews.

“From the river to the sea” continues and I wonder where all this passion was on October 8th.

Why the lack of response back then? Could anyone think that sleeping families deserved to be shot? Or dragged from their homes? Raped? Burned? Could anyone think that kids at a music festival - girls, whose hair flowed in waves as freely as those of the sweet-looking girl on the floor - could anyone think those girls deserved to be raped? Mutilated? Killed?

I think of my kids - the same age as the festival kids. And I shudder. Who doesn’t?

Even the flicker of that thought, the blink’s worth of an image of those I love being tortured, humiliated, brutalized, hauled away - is unbearable. Sickening.

Would I want my government to move heaven and earth to get them back? Would I expect that the world would support us? Would I think that those who’ve been persecuted for their own “otherness” would stand beside me? Yes.

“From the river to the sea” gets louder.

And I feel the shades of grey.

Recently, I read the account a poet whose family was forced to leave their home in Gaza. He described their terror, his children’s fear, the pain and panic of being forced to run to nowhere. He talked about the nausea he felt at Israeli checkpoints, not knowing if his family would be turned back or allowed to continue. Not knowing how to find safety. I saw Israel through his eyes and my heart shattered, because I understood the hatred his children would feel.

Oy.

Recently, my husband came home, shaken. It was unseasonably warm and sunny. So sunny and warm, that while walking through Washington Square Park, he’d sat on a bench and closed his eyes. He heard a male voice that sounded a little unhinged.

“Suddenly, I realized,” he said, “the guy was talking to me. He was ranting all this stuff about Jews; hating Jews, and hating Israel, and then he said, ‘I can tell you’re a Jew,’ and when I opened my eyes he looked straight at me and spit on the ground.”

And no one reacted.

The Sides. The posts. The heartfelt passion on both sides. I feel the horror all the way around.

But if I have to pick a side, I pick mine. The side made up of .2% of the population. The side of my father. The side of my grandmother.

The sweet girl is still chanting. She’s picked a side too. And it’s clear she believes she’s right.

I don’t feel like doing errands any more. Maybe I’ll go home and get some work done.

But I keep standing here.

Our eyes remain locked.

All we have in common is our pain.

I go home and open the jewelry box.

I look at the tiny mezuzah. And cradle it in my palm. And put it on.

I want to say I feel total clarity.

But what I feel is pain.