In the two weeks that have now elapsed since the horrific and disgusting terrorist slaughtering of fellow Jews in Israel, I have experienced, and continue to endure, an unending range of overpowering emotions: from shock, to anger, to despair, to anger (lots of anger; it bears repeating), to sorrow, to fear and to frustration.
Like so many of my fellow Jews the world over, my initial feelings were those of disbelief. How could something like this happen? Where was the IDF? Where was the Mossad and Shin Bet? Where was anyone that could come to the rescue?
As the disbelief gradually diminished and the scale and scope of the disaster began to come into focus, I was overcome by a profound sense of loss. Not just a loss of life and fellow Jews, but a loss of a sense of security and stability that, while often strained, never seemed so fragile or ephemeral. It was as though I had allowed myself for my entire life to believe that at long, long last, despite the enormous problems and constant criticisms that our safe haven faced, its permanence was beyond question.
Upon realizing that so much of what I had for so long believed – for the entirety of my existence, in fact – was now called into question I experienced a great sense of disconnection. I could not understand what had transpired in the world, a place I always knew to harbor anti-Semitism and hatred more broadly, but so acutely, so profoundly to the cornerstone of my own self-identity and that of so much and so many generations of my family. It was as though out of thin air the security that we had subconsciously relied upon for so many decades had vanished. It was almost as though I had been living a lie, had been a fool, for fifty years.
Although I describe these changes in emotions in a linear fashion, as in attempting to cope with any unfathomable trauma these emotions often co-existed or appeared, disappeared and then reappeared at unpredictable times and without warning. Thus, while realizing that my world was far from what I thought it was, I also experienced simultaneously a sense of relief that those who came before me, who so profoundly shaped my identity and my Jewish self-awareness, were not present to experience this terrible horror. A relief that our predecessors were not present to see what we, the collective Jews of today, had let fall into ruin after they strove so relentlessly to protect us from the world as they had so harshly known it.
At the same time, despite being close to elder status myself, I never felt more acutely the need for my own predecessors to guide me. I had not known firsthand or in real time mass slaughters of Jews, existential threats to the State of Israel or pogroms. I did not know how to handle this situation, not for myself nor much less for my own children. I had never felt less equipped or able to be an adult than at this moment (and that’s really saying something since there’s little I enjoy more than self-criticism). I simply felt awash in failure. And I had no one to whom to turn.
Perhaps it was so much self-flagellation that brought on such anger, anger which I had never experienced before (which is also saying something since I am rather a hot-head, just ask my family). Initially, and understandably, my uncontainable anger was directed at Hamas, of course, and its enablers. Yet, as if often the case with anger spawned by powerlessness, there were more targets I found befitting recipients of my barely repressed ire. I did not have to look far as I was constantly being supplied by the ceaseless media cycles with an incalculable number of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish voices. Many of those rejoicing in the pain of Jews across the world – tacitly or otherwise – were in my own backyard. It was too much to bear, and I did not try to contain my disgust any longer, firing off emails and demanding accountability regardless of age or background or any other proffered excuse for the unbridled hatred espoused and rationalizations for the horrors that had been 10/7.
This rage against the perpetrators – and a need for retribution that I had never experienced – has migrated from the purely emotional to the steely states of calculation and determination. And while the uncontrollable torrent of emotions that Hamas and its collaborators unleashed within me has now been repositioned to a place that allows space for other feelings, I became aware of a new source of anger: The leaders of Israel.
I am not angry at Shin Bet or its leaders nor the commanders of the IDF. Their roles in this are, in my view, beyond my ability to critique. I never had to lay my life on the line as a soldier on the front lines nor as an agent protecting the people of Israel. But that does not constrain me from the hostility I feel towards Bibi and the extremists with which he conspires. It is not their failure to be prepared that makes me so angry, though they may well pay the price for such shortcomings. Rather it is their now-apparent willingness to continue to consciously deny another people the same rights that underly the very motivations for which our grandparents and great-grandparents sacrificed and suffered so much. A carefully – although deeply flawed – approach to systemic subjugation of the Palestinians for narcissistic and extremist religious purposes has brought this ruin upon us. Their arrogance and sheer disdain for other peoples – principles that run counter to everything that we purportedly stand for – have made me nearly as furious as the acts that of savagery unleashed upon us. For if it were not for this nearsightedness and unadulterated selfishness, we would not be in this position, one that promises more endless suffering and losses that we cannot countenance much less sustain.
Thus I am left in a state of exhausting ricocheting between anger at multiple evil-doers and despair and uncertainty over what is to come next. The ever-so carefully constructed world that I had created that balanced a world full of anti-Semites against the invincibility of those who sought to defeat them has come to a debilitating collapse. And as though the actual battle that must be waged between the Jews of the IDF, unknown and unknowable numbers of whom will make the ultimate sacrifice both for me and because of others, were not punishment enough, I must endure the endless punditry of anti-Jewishness from which I cannot break free.
In every generation, we are reminded each Pesah, there will be those who rise up against us. Where is our Moses today to guide us in this most dire time of need?
Comments