This is an excerpt of a longer article on the author’s blog, Chuzpah on Purpose. Find it at tinyurl.com/48e97fww.
Melynn Sight and her husband, Dan, were in Israel during the Oct. 7 attacks.
To each person who has lost sleep over the barrage of antisemitic words and actions these past weeks and months, feeling uncomfortably not okay at unacceptable acts happening near and far, this is for you.
I hate that the hatred of today is the kind of world my kids and yours have to grow up in. I hate that my friends and my family have to experience unwarranted hatred towards the Jews and Israel. I hate that my immediate family has had to live through this on a personal level.
At the risk of normalizing antisemitism — as it's been dormant and active on and off for centuries — today, it is way closer to home. Many conversations with family and friends repeat the same dispiriting sentiment: “I've never been (or felt) the target of antisemitism...until now.”
I've been wrestling with this question: What can we do to get through this situation and continue to face and have faith to understand — and then beyond that — to fight antisemitism?
We each come from a different place in this experience, so consider what follows a start to your coping and healing that might help us each move our way through it — each in our own time. It's not prioritized with any one of these ideas more important than the next, but rather it’s an unedited stream of possibilities:
- Any one of us could be that ugly, angry person who is protesting, violating property, holding a sign or talking behind our back, but we’re not that person. Let's say to ourselves: “Thank you for showing us the kind of people we don’t want to be.”
- Talk it out, cry it out, scream it out and say, “I’m not doing okay,” until you feel more okay.
- Lean on your (Jewish, friends and family) community. While it might feel like no one else understands, we all do. Remember, we have people who stand up for us when we aren't in the room; we do have people who speak up and show up; we do have people who get it. It's reasonable to be disappointed that more leaders aren't standing up, but it is healthier for our brains and more productive in moving the needle to focus on the ones who are. (This from Gavi Geller, executive director of Jewish Community Relations Bureau | American Jewish Committee.)
- Don’t change who you are, what you wear or what you promote. Continue to keep showing up as you. It might take courage to do that today, but more people will love and respect you as you than the few who want to take cheap shots at the Jews.
- Get support. Go to synagogue. Be with your people. And, if none of that resonates, just be with people who inspire you.
- If you’re involved today in choosing colleges with your high schoolers, do your homework on the colleges’ cultures — ask if there have been any antisemitic incidents on campus.
- Report any incident, should you see or experience it, to the Jewish Community Relations Bureau | American Jewish Committee and ask them for help. They are an excellent resource. We don't know how much we need them until we do need them.
- Vote. (Thank you, Alan Edelman, for this important and maybe most effortless reminder.) Vote, and encourage all others we know to vote for the candidates who care about the rise in hatred and finding a real solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. You may be upset with President Biden, but remember that his job is infinitely more complicated with a right-wing coalition in Israel and a terrorist organization, Hamas, that wants to destroy Israel and murder every Jew “between the river and the sea.”
Remember, no one can take away our dignity nor our identity. Our very own Rabbi Michael Zedek reminded me recently that we are both Israel of the flesh and Israel of the spirit. While sometimes, people might try to take away our spirit, they cannot take away that we are Israel of the flesh.
Let yourself feel your pain, and then, when you’re ready, I hope that one idea resonates with you. If not, take these ideas, and take it from here in your own way until you are a little more okay. Putting energy into doing something can channel some of our pain, fear and frustration.