"Teshuvah ... is also a kind of creativity. The Hebrew word teshuvah means repentance and return. However, as a creative act, teshuvah is not a simple return. We return to who we are meant to be but have not yet become. We return to growth and possibility that has lain dormant within us and not yet flourished, much as a sculpture lies hidden within a brute block of stone. That is why the process of teshuvah, as painful and even humiliating as it can be, is in fact very joyous and hopeful.”
~ Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto), in his 1941 Rosh Hashanah sermon
I had a powerful dream last night.
I was at some kind of function. There was an opportunity, almost like a last call, to give voice to anything unspoken from the last year. Given that the Book of Life opens tonight at sundown and remains open for 10 days, we can infer what the "function" was.
I was sitting next to someone who I imagine represented not only themselves but those in my world from whom I have grown distant if not altogether disconnected in the past year.
I was sitting there, considering what to say and whether to say it, working to get the words right in my head before letting them exit my mouth, irretrievable.
I desperately wanted to say something very directly to the people in my life who did not or would not and still won't unequivocally condemn the sexual violence and terror that occurred on October 7. Or – and this almost feels worse – those who expressed care initially only to disappear into a movement rife with people who outright deny what happened. And not just a few outliers. Or those who assumed my love of Israel meant I did not grieve for innocent Palestinians and wish for their safety, too.
All of this was racing through my thoughts. I was viscerally aware of the person’s presence to my right. I could see them peripherally. We hadn't communicated in months. Why did I still care so much about what they thought, how they would take this, and what might happen if I said it out loud? It's not as if they didn't already know how I felt.
I sat with the sting and resentment I'd been carrying around for 361 days, being told not to "center my feelings" even as ZAKA, Israel's Search and Rescue, was still looking for bodies and survivors.
I sat with the disappearance of people I had loved and respected as teachers, friends, and collaborators both creative and political. I thought about the ways I minimized and stifled myself so as not to "make it about me."
But if it's not about me, who is it about? And I do not mean me egocentrically. I mean the me that is part of a we, the "we" being the Jewish people, and the "we" being humanity.
Before a single bomb fell, saying the word "humanity" this year in the context (a word that would become a convenient shield for antisemitism) of October 7 became anathema.
This became more and more true as the year went on. Many liberal Jews in the U.S. went into a kind of hiding. A political wilderness. Who are our friends? Who are our allies? Who will sit with me while I sort through this, struggle with it, feel numb only to find myself standing in my kitchen, mopping up spilled coffee and finally, weeping over it all just hours after hundreds of missiles stopped falling, missiles you said nothing about. (Do you think Israel deserves to be obliterated?)
As you see, it was all too much, and in the dream, I only had a minute to formulate my thoughts.
Also, I worried about how this neighbor would react. I worried they would confront me and we would have a big blowout. I did not know or remember in the dream that in "real" life, in waking life, I have had big blowouts with people I love and cherish, and we have not only survived these but grown closer. We continue to slowly, tenderly find ways to let the disagreements rest so as not to keep hurting each other and ourselves. We keep being there, not despite but right alongside our differences.
The moment to say my piece passed, and I let it. I did not speak. In the name of "keeping the peace," I swallowed my voice. A familiar sensation, and one that perhaps I am ready to heal.
I woke up and immediately understood the dream.
As the Gates open, part of my teshuvah is this: I regret blaming myself for those who disappeared from my life.
I regret silencing myself instead of honoring the validity of my experiences and perspectives.
I am sorry I didn't speak and write more often about the girls and women who were raped, brutalized, dismembered, murdered. And the ones who continue to live in terror tunnels without sunlight at the mercy of their captors – captors too many people cheered for and continue to defend by idealizing Intifada as something having to do with liberation.
I am remorseful that I didn't wear a yellow ribbon every day of the year so that strangers in the grocery checkout line could ask, what does your ribbon mean?
I regretted not speaking in the dream.
And so I am doing it now.
Because the Days of Awe are about returning. Returning to who we most want to be in the world. Returning to the values we have strayed the furthest from. Returning to an authentic quest for honesty, directness, and repair. Returning home, something I am still praying the remaining hostages will do – alive.
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To all who observe the Jewish holidays, I wish you a shana tova – a good year, a sweet year, a year of peace. It feels very distant. May it start with me, with you, and with the work of teshuvah.
Shana Tova, my dear friend.
I will sit with you. 🩷
Jena, this writing, your ability to show the stark brutality next to the light of telling the story and your soul- ness- just, thank you. Shana Tova!