I've started writing a new post at least 4 times over the past month.
- Once when I got back to Israel from America, but never got to finish it.
- Once when Hezbollah pagers started exploding, but never got to finish it.
- Once when American university students started going to back to antisemitic (and often violent) campuses, but never got to finish it.
- Once when Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated, but never got to finish it.
Now, a mere days before the one year anniversary of Hamas' brutal massacre that started this war and I simply can't believe we're here. One whole year of war is approaching. Some may say that they predicted this to be a long war, but not me. I was sure that we would have our hostages back and the war would be over by the end of 2023. How mistaken I was and continue to be.
Social media has fueled that flames of antisemitism through the thinly laid veil of anti-Zionism. The rate of rapid growth of the number of people being swept up in anti-Zionistic rhetoric is both astounding and horrifying. The Nazi rise to power took several years until it got to the point of cattle cars and gas chambers. Social media has amplified that process and through rampant ignorance and propaganda the levels of hatred and antisemitism have risen to uncontrollable levels. The cat is out of the bag and it's impossible to put it back.
You see over the course of the last year I have learned what antisemitism is. My light hair and blue eyes afford me to be white passing. I look like any other regular ole soccer mom out there. I'm the one that security waves through the line quickly, racial profiling on fully display. White lady, coming through. Yet, I've had old friends write to me saying that based on my skin color I have no connections to Israel. That I should take a 23 and Me test to see where I'm really from and go back there.
There is a point here that for most of my life I wasn't able to articulate. Being Jewish is a culture, a religion, but also an ethnic group. Culturally we are connected through shared traditions, foods, and music. Religiously we are all connected through our lighting of Shabbat candles, our history and prayers, and our Torah. Ethnically, although dispersed around the world for hundreds and even thousands of years, we still share DNA and connection to Jerusalem and Israel. A Jew from New York is the same as one from Small Town, USA. Or one from Sudan and one from Ukraine. We hold the same traditions and share a complicated history of persecution, expulsion, and extermination.
We may still be physically fighting a war, nearly one year later, against terrorism and Iran's proxy armies. But we are additionally fighting antisemitism and voilence on a global scale on the streets of major cities like New York and London, across university campuses, and online.
I have no idea when and how the war will how. How antisemitism will end and the world will find it's way back to peace.
But I pray that it happens soon.
As we approach Rosh HaShana, I pray that this year we find peace...globally and sustainably.
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