Tendrils of darkness rise from the ground, wrap themselves around my ankles, my arms, my hands, and pull me down. I wake choking, black tentacles scraping against my throat, which is raw from screaming.
There’s so much horror. It’s all around me. Color has bled away. All I see is ash.
I, the girl who lives in a fairytale world.
I, whose boots are iridescent. Who wears ballgowns and tulle skirts. Whose t-shirts are snarky or filled with literary references. I, with my crystal earrings and glitter eyeshadow. Who believes everything can be mended, kintsugi is an art form, and we are meant to be alchemists.
I am afraid.
I wear my star of David. My hostage tag. But I am wary. I look over my shoulder. Because despite the twinkling lights, the holiday cheer, the peppermint-scented lattes and the smell of roasted chestnuts, it’s possible that my barista wants to kill me. Or at least, wouldn’t mourn my death.
Wherever I walk, I wonder: what if you knew?
What if you knew I was a Jew?
A Zionist?
What would you do then? What would you say?
There is a redheaded baby who is about to turn one year old in captivity. If he is still alive. We don’t know if he is. So I look at my baby, whose hair glimmers red, and I can’t breathe.
Our soldiers killed three hostages. Hostages who survived seventy days of captivity and who brushed up against salvation only to be killed by our own. This is a heartrending tragedy. For the hostages. For the soldiers who will have to live with the guilt.
A woman and her two daughters were held by a Palestinian family. The family’s father spoke Hebrew because he used to work in Israel. The mother and daughters took turns guarding the hostages. These were civilians. Civilians who were happy to help terrorists.
There are little girls who do not speak. Children who watched their parents murdered before their eyes. A woman who was operated on by a veterinarian. A hostage who ran away only to be given back to Hamas by Palestinian civilians.
And while all this happens, while Israeli soldiers risk their lives to protect Palestinian civilians- because that is what they are doing, and why Israel is not indiscriminately bombing Gaza- our college campuses shill for Hamas while and hurl invective laced with hatred and antisemitism. Students then play victim when they are outed for their ugly views.
Our Ivy League presidents turn into free speech absolutists when it comes to defending students’ rights to call for intifada on campus. Misgendering a student is unacceptable, but a call for Jewish genocide may be “personally abhorrent” but must be allowed.
We are bringing home hostages in body-bags. Daily.
Like Anne Frank, I have always believed,
“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."
- Anne Frank, 'The Diary of a Young Girl'
But my trust is destroyed. My belief in humanity is being tested. I am seeing the worst of what humanity has to offer on daily display, and I am afraid. I am heartsick. I am mourning.
I am mourning a world I thought I knew. A world where people were naturally good, and could discern good from evil. A world where Gen Z didn’t class Jews as oppressors or think Israel should be given wholesale to Palestinians. A world where calls for intifada would be understood as hate speech. A world where civilians didn’t help terrorists hide mothers and children. A world where truth wasn’t one’s “personal truth” but capital T Truth.
So I search for solace. And find it.
What should have been our answer to Auschwitz? Should this people, called to be a witness to the God of mercy and compassion, persist in its witness and cling to Job’s words, “Even if He slay me yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15), or should this people follow the advice of Job’s wife, “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9), immerse itself into the anonymity of a hundred nations all over the world, and disappear once and for all?
Our people’s faith in God at this moment in history did not falter. At this moment in history Isaac was indeed sacrificed, his blood shed. We all died in Auschwitz, yet our faith survived. We knew that to repudiate God would be to continue the holocaust.
We have once lived in a civilized world, rich in trust and expectation. Then we all died, were condemned to dwell in hell. Now we are living in hell. Our present life is our afterlife…
We did not blaspheme, we built. Our people did not sally forth in flight from God. On the contrary, at that moment in history we saw the beginning of a new awakening, the emergence of a new concern for a Living God theology. Escape from Judaism giving place increasingly. toa new attachment to a rediscovery of our legacy.
[…]
We are tired of expulsions, of pogroms; we have had enough of extermination camps. We are tired of apologizing for our existence. If I should go to Poland or Germany, every stone, every tree would remind me of contempt, hatred, murder, of children killed, of mothers burned alive, of human beings asphyxiated.
When I go to Israel every stone and every tree is a reminder of hard labor and glory, of prophets and psalmists, of loyalty and holiness. The Jews go to Israel not only for physical security for themselves and their children; they go to Israel for renewal, for the experience of resurrection.
Is the State of Israel God’s humble answer to Auschwitz? A sign of God’s repentance for men’s crime of Auschwitz?
No act is as holy as the act of saving human life. The Holy Land, having offered a haven to more than two million Jews- many of whom would not have been alive had they remained in Poland, Russia, Germany, and other countries- has attained a new sanctity.
-Israel: An Echo of Eternity by Abraham Joshua Heschel, pages 112-113
Our land has been bloodied, our spirit battered, our hope shattered. But this is the land of resurrection. A land of sanctity, that has and will continue to save lives.
There is pain and there is darkness. There is horror all around me. I am scared, and I am sad, and I am mourning my belief in humanity.
But I believe in resurrection.
And so, out of this horror, will come new life. New growth. Even beauty.
I believe that even my battered belief in the natural goodness of humans can be bolstered. That evil is a mirage, a vapor. Some are taken in, some give themselves over it, but in time, it will pass away, because it is nothing but breath, fog. Clear-eyed people, pure of spirit, cannot be deceived by it.
The bush is burning, but it is not consumed.
The bush is burning, and it will never be consumed.