Friday Dispatch: Hot, Hotter, Boiling
After Amsterdam
Friday greetings,
After the exam, Dr. B. shook his head and gently squeezed my arm. I knew what was coming.
“Have you been wearing your night guard?”
Um. Busted.
I told him I wasn’t particularly aware of grinding.
He pointed out the obvious wear on my teeth and gums and refreshed me on softening the night guard: First, hot water, then hotter if necessary, then let it come to a boil before submerging the hard plastic. He assured me I’ll be glad I did this down the road. I know he’s right.
The timing was uncanny. I haven’t unclenched my teeth since Wednesday, and I mean this literally.
Hot, hotter, boiling.
This pretty much sums up what I’m not sure I even have the spirit to write this morning but feel compelled to try.
The last thing I saw last night before going to bed was that a pogrom – yes, a pogrom – was occurring in Amsterdam. Jews were being attacked – beaten, run over by cars, stabbed – by mobs of men who had been deliberately waiting for them at the exits of the stadium after the Maccabi Tel Aviv-Ajax game.
As I was thinking about what on earth to include in this week’s Friday Dispatch, I considered sharing a small compilation of links to pieces I have found grounding since Wednesday. But when I woke up this morning I couldn’t not write about this.
I went for a little run yesterday early, through the working-class neighborhood just on the other side of the Connecticut border. A few Harris-Walz signs were still out. Trump banners flew proudly. I couldn’t help but feel they were gloating. As I always do, I looked at the houses and yard decor and wondered about the people and the lives inside. I saw kids waiting for school buses. I felt mostly sadness. Maybe sad is easier for me than rage. I know it’s easier than fear.
But rage and fear and sadness are all entangled and each time I attempt to pull one thread, the knot gets tighter.
This is the part presumably where I say something about returning to the breath and other life-saving mindfulness practices, and that’s all well and good. It’s true that last night as I lay in bed in the dark after seeing live footage – because the attackers themselves were recording their rampage, just as Hamas proudly recorded their massacre on October 7 – I realized I needed to breathe. I realized my teeth were clenched, my jaw tight, my breath shallow in my throat. Not good.
But this post is not about mindfulness techniques.
It’s about Jews being hunted outside of their hotels. Jews being warned to stay inside. Jews being advised to hide any sign of their identities. Israel sending rescue planes to evacuate them. The Dutch police taking up to two hours to respond to urgent calls. Men kicking people on the ground until they would say “Free Palestine.” And plenty of news outlets already creating a narrative that implies the Jews started it. Maybe, some people are thinking, the Jews deserved it.
This weekend, November 9-10, is the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. For the past year, young American Jews have faced intimidation and silencing on their college campuses.
(I can’t leave this here without pointing out the dimensions of ignorance of the “Go Back to Europe” slogan. Only half of Israeli Jews came from Europe, and it’s not like things were going so well for us there. The other half are Mizrachi, many of whom were expelled from and/or faced violence in Arab countries. It’s important to state that as a people, our origins are in the land of Israel. We wound up in scattered throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa, Asia, and Europea as a result of ongoing expulsions, persecution, assimilation, and conversion.)
What has been happening on campuses and what we saw last night in Amsterdam is exactly what “Globalize the Intifada” looks like, and I am angry that more people aren’t speaking out about it, not to mention those who are actively participating in it.
I know this isn’t news to you. I’m aware that I might be taking the ball of rage at the election results and hurling it in this direction. Maybe this is a bad idea to be writing when everything is so raw.
I know I can’t spend the next four years or rest of my life screaming lest I destroy my voice and can no longer use it for good. At the same time, we know that suppressing our truth literally takes years off of our life, and I’d like to be here for as long as possible and do as much good in that time as I can. I simply cannot waste time trying to say the right things or please everyone, neither of which is possible anyway.
What has felt overwhelming clear to me since seeing red at dawn on Wednesday morning is that I/we have work to do. What form(s) the work takes may not be clear. Where it will lead, we do not know. What will happen, we cannot know.
But fear cannot be the driver.
Rather than backing away, I feel myself moving in closer. Closer to my people. Closer to the complexity I grapple with deeply, daily. Closer to the need to be of service, to learn, to live my values, to offer whatever shelter I can.
We need to be smart, strategic, and strong. It’s a tall order. It is not kind or realistic to expect that any of us is going to wake up every day feeling like any of those things. It is completely, 1,000% normal to feel leveled and vulnerable. This is where grace comes in and I will always do my absolute best, which I guarantee will not be perfect, to extend that grace to myself and to you as we continue forth into this Wilderness of What the Fuck.
I know I am not alone in that my Jewish values are not part of what guides my commitment to universal human rights. They are the guide. They are my heart. As we have seen throughout history, the care is not always reciprocal, an extra special kind of blow.
Last night, Jews were violently attacked on the streets of Amsterdam, the city where Anne Frank hid with her family for 761 days while one-third of the world’s Jews were rounded up and murdered while he world stood by, remained silent, or secretly felt it was deserved.
I am grinding my teeth, and not only at night. I may have to ask Dr. B. about a day guard, but I don’t think there is such a thing. That’s where breathing comes in.
Will you take a moment to breathe with me?
Open your mouth wide and exhale forcefully. If you’re somewhere where you can do this, let out sound. Release. Do not hold it in. The fear, the anger, the grief, the confusion, the clarity – whatever swirl is moving through your body, let it out.
I am with you. We have (to have) each other.
Here’s what all of this has been leading me to, apparently (even I didn’t know until I knew):
I have shied away from saying Am Yisrael Chai because of fear.
Fear that it somehow aligns me with a different form of extremism that I find just as dangerous and abhorrent as any other. But today, I am done with that, because that is letting other people dictate meaning for me rather than claiming it for myself.
To me, Am Yisrael Chai means I love and stand with the Jewish people – a statement as simple-sounding as it is infinitely complicated, which is precisely what makes it so Jewish.
Today, that is my leap of action and my leap of faith, with a pounding heart and an unclenched jaw.
Shabbat Shalom and love,
Jena
EXCITING NEWS 🥁🥁🥁
I am self-publishing a collection of prompts written between 2014 and 2020!
FIERCE ENCOURAGEMENT: 201 WRITING PROMPTS FOR STAYING GROUNDED IN FRAGILE TIMES will be available for purchase before the end of the year.
My hope is that as the fragile times continue, this book will be a resource for refuge and release, an old-school one that won't require a screen or an app.
Our voices and stories matter. They always have, and they always will. This is true whether anyone reads what we write or we turn to the page only for ourselves as a way of seeking sanity and solace.
"We need to be smart, strategic, and strong." Love and strength to you.
As always but maybe more so today and now I am so damn grateful for you.