Friday Dispatch: Not So Tiny Miracles

Plus, a new essay in four parts

Good morning,

I went to the doctor this week, at the urging of a cherished mentor. Mostly to rule things out, since why wonder? As a result, I had to get some labs done. Fasting labs. Which of course meant, no coffee. The lab opens at 7:00am, and of course, this would be a day when Chalupa woke me at 5:30am, crying in her crate, desperate to go pee-pees (yes, we are those dog people) and eat breakfast.

All of which is to say: I was awake for about two hours before my first sip of coffee today. What a feat.

But the real plus side of having to be out that early in the day is watching the light come up. A periwinkle sky with streaks of pink as I pumped gas, and then, on my way home, the sun’s emergence. I pulled over to take this photo. No filter!

Today is the last day of Hanukkah, the culmination of eight days of increasing light and paying attention to the tiny miracles that illuminate our lives and are so easy to miss.

To wit: I’m back home sipping my coffee. Chupie is snoring by my feet and Mani is still asleep. They delivered their undergraduate honors thesis defense yesterday. (They knocked it out of the park, I might proudly add.) We went out for German food to celebrate, and I had one of my few cocktails of the year, a ridiculously good Bananas Foster martini.

Yesterday afternoon, Aviva sent me the conclusion of her capstone project, an in-depth study of the need for and nature of queer spaces across time. It was so beautifully expressed, that I’ll need to go back to read it several more times to take in its fullness. She’ll be done with college in a few days, too, and I feel so grateful to get to celebrate (with) her. File under shepping naches.

A new essay was accepted for publication by

Midstory Magazine

! It’s called Something Epic, and I can’t wait to share it with you once it’s out (within a month).

Tomorrow morning, I’ll rise even earlier, this time to drive up to Maine to pick up Pearl, who is wrapping up his fall adventure at Maine Coast Semester at Chewonki. My oldest sister flew in from California, so the whole fam-dam-ily is going out to dinner tomorrow to celebrate my mom’s 80th birthday and Aviva’s college graduation.

So yes, many miracles. And not so tiny, after all.

I spent much of the week wrestling with some new writing. It expanded and contracted for days as I sorted through what I really wanted to say. A paragraph turned into a righteous op-ed, which I submitted to a local paper before rescinding mere hours later. I tell you this because I always believe there is much to be gained in transparency, and so often we do not get to see the process behind how things come into being.

In the case of this particular piece of writing, some insightful first readers offered that they appreciated my willingness to explore difficult questions and contend with my own interwoven clarity and confusion, they wanted more. Namely, they wondered where was *I* in this writing?

This helped me see that I’d been holding myself at a distance, rather than taking up the space I needed.

All of this is to say, the piece got longer and longer. I’m sharing it below, not without some trepidation but in the spirit of being a work in progress. (Aren’t we all?)

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

p.s. I’m planning to devote next week’s Friday Dispatch to writing groups that begin in January. If you are hankering for more community and know your writing life would thrive with more accountability and connection, keep an eye out.

p.p.s. If you could use some room to think out loud, wrestle with questions of your own, and have space to reflect on your Jewish journey, I’d welcome meeting with you. Learn more.

p.p.p.s. I also donated a Jewish Co-Exploring Session to the Artists Against Antisemitism online auction. If this sounds up your alley, come check it out.

p.p.p.p.s. When you were a kid, did you think writing as many p.s.’s as possible was the coolest thing ever, or was that just me?

On Not Adding to the Darkness

A note on the structure of this essay: In Gematria, or Jewish numerology, the number four corresponds to the Hebrew letter dalet (ד), meaning “door.” (In another life, I would like to become a gematria scholar, as there is so much more symbolism here to explore! Think, the fourth day of creation, the four matriarchs, the four questions at Passover…)

With this in mind, I have structured this essay into four parts, with the hope that each might be a doorway into new ways of thinking, understanding, and connecting.

1. The Problem of Time

As a progressive American Jew, I have felt squeezed into what feels like an impossible position. I am doing a great deal of internal reflection and wrestling while trying to extend myself the grace of not rushing answers. I wish to offer the same to you. And in some ways, part of what I am writing about here is a wish for more reflection and less certainty. I also ask for your grace back to me. I am a person here. I am taking the risk of turning some of my recent reflections inside out to share with you, and I am very much an imperfect work in progress, with both deep convictions and deep vulnerabilities.  

When I realized a few weeks ago, in an embodied way, that I was operating from a state of active trauma, it almost came as a relief. Because it helped me remember that this is true for so many of us right now. And not only the trauma of the past two months, but the years and years of trauma before this. From Trump to Covid to George Floyd’s murder to mass shooting after mass shooting, along with economic strain, addiction, poverty, the state of health care, ableism, and profound racism and transphobia playing out in our education system and at the highest levels of government, our democracy is teetering on the edge of its demise and we are individually and collectively exhausted.

All of this, of course, along with the complexities, demands, highs, and lows of our personal family, work, health, and care journeys. I mean, how could anyone’s nervous system be fully ok these days? So having this a-ha moment helped me tap into more compassion for how heightened everyone and everything is these days. I suddenly saw myself and other people a little more clearly, and certainly more kindly.

Against that backdrop, one skill I am trying to hone is the ability to extend empathy and care to my fellow Jews, whether we agree and align fully, partially, or not at all. I have Jewish people in my life who are vehemently anti-Zionist. I have people in my life who are vehemently Zionist. I have Jewish people in my life who are living in the in-between, who abhor the death and destruction in Gaza, who are grieving the massacre of October 7, who have a complicated relationship with Israel, or who have no relationship to Israel yet feel newly alone in formerly simpatico progressive circles. I have Jewish and non-Jewish people in my life who “choose the side of peace” as well as those whose deep knowledge of this region’s history – the land and the people – humbles me and makes me want, more than anything, to keep learning.

I have watched myself on social media and experienced firsthand how difficult it is *not* to be swayed in one direction or another. It requires a huge amount of intention to stay open. Righteousness is appealing and has both its place and its limitations. I know I am prone to righteousness; this is one of those areas where maybe it takes half a lifetime to come to learn one’s strengths and weaknesses and the ways they share the same roots. Discernment is key. So is time.

2. The Need for Questions

Because of all this, something I’ve been thinking a lot about is just that: Time.

There are so many ways to learn, and all of us engage in learning differently. For me, the deepest learning takes time, meaning many hours, sometimes extending into weeks, months, and years, of reading, listening, writing, discussing, discovering, challenging, and integrating. It also requires so much vigilance, in the face of social media, not to unwittingly spread information that leaves out whole swaths of the story. It means resisting the urge to burrow into certainty, while also not abdicating our responsibility as humans to stand up for our values.

I can very clearly see in my own development that when I am new-ish to an issue, I bring a lot of passion but not necessarily depth. I am a fast thinker and I tend to want to connect the dots quickly and create whole pictures of how things are interrelated. That’s all fine and good, but it can also keep me from the slowing down part of the learning journey which is also crucial for true understanding, especially if what I am learning about entails experiences I have not lived myself. It is one thing to see the intersections and common threads, and still another to have lived experience. Acknowledging the difference seems important.

Of course, here is the rub, to put it mildly: How can we possibly emphasize a need for taking more time to learn and for bringing nuance to our thinking when with every passing day, the chances of the remaining hostages coming home get smaller, and more innocent people die or face unlivable conditions in Gaza?

A question I find myself pondering: What if more of us in the West united against Hamas, which dehumanizes Jews, and the Netanyahu government, which dehumanizes Palestinians? Both are anathema to my deepest values.

Two “what if” questions I keep coming back to are:

1. What if more of us united to support the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, who all deserve leaders who do not perpetuate hellish cycles of violence and dehumanization?

2. What if more of us came together to oppose every expression of Islamophobia and antisemitism on our campuses and in our communities?

I have so many other questions beyond these, too. Many of them feel clunky and half-baked and maybe naïve. These fracture me psychically, stretch me ethically, overload me cognitively, and consume me emotionally. And some of them carry glimmers of knowing that none of this is as black and white as our social media feeds tell us. I don't think I'm alone in having so many questions, but I do think many, many thoughtful people are afraid to voice them. This is, shall we say: לֹא טוֹב. Not good.

3. The Scream

Since October 7 I have often felt like screaming: Do you not see what else is happening? I do not mean to compare suffering; every human life is sacred. Full stop. What I mean is that many people who knew little if anything about Israel and Palestine before the Hamas attack and this war have latched onto the narrative that Israel is only an oppressor without also widening the lens. In so doing, crucial pieces of this billion-piece puzzle are being overlooked.

Israel exists for a reason. I find it ironic that when this gets ignored, dismissed, or minimized, it’s like seeing a surreal real-time proof of that very reason. And yet the current Israeli government has taken Israel in a direction that betrays the values of so many Israelis and certainly many American Jews, myself included. This is a real bind, one that I wonder if non-Jewish people might not necessarily recognize. If you haven’t thought about this, or simply feel it’s irrelevant, I ask you to consider that.

Obviously, Jews are not a monolith. Many of us, inside of our progressive values, care deeply about Israel’s significance and people and see its existence as necessary and legitimate. (Think "Jewish geography," wherein many Jews are connected by mere degrees, including to Israel itself.) I find myself identifying more with Zionism than I ever have in the past, which to be honest has come as a surprise even to myself.

I feel unseen by many of the statements I hear from those who oppose Israel. It’s painful because I imagine we agree about many things. But the lack of care about Jews feeling safe – in Israel or here – is difficult to swallow when we are talking about liberation. Do Jews not also deserve to live without fear? Must our synagogues have armed guards and expensive security systems? Is antisemitism the cost diasporic Jews pay for Israel existing, or is antisemitism the reason Israel must exist? Like so many difficult questions, I wonder if my rabbi would answer this one, “yes.”

The message that comes across is that Israel is abhorrent, Jews are responsible for all of this death in Gaza, and so Jews talking about safety is something abhorrent. It is a circular and perhaps largely unconscious logic that I experience on a felt level. It tends to leave out October 7, and when October 7 does come up, it is immediately “contextualized” and thus legitimized.

When I hear references to the Hamas attack or slogans like "From the river to the sea” as liberatory, I struggle. I understand that such words mean different things to different people; intention and impact certainly come into play here. But I also worry that when Jews tell you it is antisemitic, this gets written off as unsympathetic to Palestinians.

Here is a perfect example of expanding our thinking, slowing down, and listening more deeply, not to mention letting Jews define antisemitism rather than others telling us what is and isn’t antisemitic. I also worry that people whose care about and commitment to Palestinian liberation is deeply humane, valid, and necessary may also be furthering a cause that is not the one they intend to support.

I wish to impart how it feels to see so many people weighing in on Israel who don’t seem to have read the Hamas charter itself. In an atmosphere that largely upholds one narrative as the truth, I wish to urge more non-Jews to seek out and learn from a diversity of viewpoints and sources, not only the ones that reinforce a binary. I wish I could unapologetically say I stand with Israel, I stand with my people, without this meaning that I am closing my eyes to injustice, suffering, and oppression. The fact that I feel pressure to articulate such a thing says something about our current climate. 

4. The Bottom Line

At the heart of all of this messy thinking, I am clinging to a vision of Palestinian liberation and Jewish safety as mutually inclusive movements. This cannot happen if we don’t challenge ourselves to shine a light on the parts of the story we’d rather not confront – on both sides.  

I will continue to seek out rabbis, interfaith leaders, and friends whose moral, ethical, and spiritual guidance and frameworks help me expand my thinking. And most of all, I will continue to turn to Israelis and Palestinians whose commitment to peace work should be a model for us all. I hope we’re not too late and that there is a future where Jews and Palestinians can coexist with mutual respect, equal laws, human rights, healing, and reconciliation. I do not know if this is possible or if I will see it in my lifetime, but I do know that with whatever time I have left, I wish to contribute to this hope.

I’ll end by saying that I wrote, deleted, expanded, edited, and revised these words over the course of the week as the Hanukkah candles burned. I wrote in the comfort of my home in New England, more than 5,000 miles away from where Israeli and Palestinian realities demand our compassion and humility alongside our grief, outrage, solidarities, and action.

Night after night, we lit the candles. We sang the prayers, which recall the miracle our ancestors experienced, celebrates our survival as a people, remind us that still today, the Jewish people face threats to our very existence, and mandate us to embody our values of tzedek (justice) and chesed (lovingkindness) in how we treat others and navigate such unbearable times.

Miracles feel distant right now, so the lighting and the blessings are themselves an act of courage and faith. My prayer is to continue learning in good faith, and that my words might in their tiny way serve to dispel some of the darkness, not add to it.   

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