Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

From the summit of a butte I didn't think I could hike up

As people swirl around their cesspools of antisemitism, pretending that concern for one group of people isn’t hate for another, I realize that I’d rather think about what being Jewish means to me. Thinking about the light that motivates me is a better shield for the moment and guide into the next. It helps me, too, to think about helping you on your way, pushing past darkness and negativity into the place from which you can receive nurturing thoughts and hear/heed/absorb the wisdom that emerges from our sources. Whether or not you are Jewish, I hope that my exploration and learning can help you, too, grow into your higher/deeper self as I seek to do the same.

Being Jewish is an essential part of my identity, as basic as being a woman with curly hair and green eyes. To be Jewish is not to be defined by haters, because what can they possibly know when they’re blocked by blind bigotry. And why should I let them distract me from continuing to find the beauty in this eternal path of discovery, compassion, and learning with roots so deep, coming from and sustained by the generations before me. This is what I need to be me.  

How much of my Jewishness is about Judaism, the religion itself: remembering and experiencing Shabbat blessings over candles, challah, and wine at home; and preparing for and celebrating holidays as a family or alone; and services in synagogue, often sitting beside a friend, our friendship expanded through shared ritual; and saying prayers that are sometimes inspiring though often words to read and recite and, perhaps, create meaning through repetition; and mourning my father by saying Kaddish (the mourner’s prayer) on the anniversary of his death and on certain holy days—a powerful practice that keeps loved ones within the fabric of our lives; and learning Torah stories as an adult that brings more questions, connections, and insights than the way they were explained then to create common touchstones of identity in Hebrew School; and contemplating G!d, HaShem (the Name), HaMakom (the Place), the Divine Spirit, and how this eternal meaning is a part of my life; and why it’s important to know that I’m not just me—I have never been even if I thought I was—adrift in this world.

And how much of being Jewish for me is about Israel and my connection to the land and the people who live there; and how much is about my connection to Jews here, in the Diaspora, even those who live in such different worlds of Judaism; and how much is about continuity—being a link in a very long chain of resilient, inspiring men and women; and how much is about a zeal to learn from our texts so that my life fulfills its purpose—one that is internal and unfolding. And how much is the shared pain when people are murdered for being Jewish, and the pain of hearing those murders justified by the antisemites for whom hate is inspiration.

There are myriad ways to learn how to be a good and righteous person, and what that even means—this way has been and will continue to be my guide. Yes, this is the path I was born into and the way to which my soul clings—the seeking is within my expansive tradition. This is not about superiority of one vision over another: it is about fully living my life and being my purpose and seeking the best way to do that. By not acquiescing I bring honor to the past, commitment to the present, and sustain the future.

In a pause in my writing, I read a psalm, which I aim to do once a day. Today I read Psalm 25; such a powerful psalm with lines that are as relevant today as when they were written by King David 3,000 years ago.

1 Of David. O ETERNAL One, I set my hope on You; 2 my God, in You I trust; may I not be disappointed, may my enemies not exult over me. 3 O let no one who looks to You be disappointed; let the faithless be disappointed, empty-handed. 4 Let me know Your paths, O ETERNAL One; teach me Your ways; 5 guide me in Your true way and teach me, for You are God, my deliverer; it is You I look to at all times. 6 O ETERNAL One, be mindful of Your compassion and Your faithfulness; they are old as time. 7 Be not mindful of my youthful sins and transgressions; in keeping with Your faithfulness consider what is in my favor, as befits Your goodness, O ETERNAL One. 8 Good and upright is GOD, who shows sinners the way. 9 [God] guides the lowly in the right path, and teaches the lowly the godly way. 10 All GOD’s paths are steadfast love for those who keep the decrees of the covenant. 11 As befits Your name, O ETERNAL One, pardon my iniquity though it be great. 12 Whoever fears GOD will be shown what path to choose. 13 They shall live a happy life, and their children shall inherit the land. 14 GOD’s counsel is for those who show reverence; to them the covenant is made known. 15 My eyes are ever toward GOD, who will loose my feet from the net. 16 Turn to me, have mercy on me, for I am alone and afflicted. 17 My deep distress increases; deliver me from my straits. 18 Look at my affliction and suffering, and forgive all my sins. 19 See how numerous my enemies are, and how unjustly they hate me! 20 Protect me and save me; let me not be disappointed, for I have sought refuge in You. 21 May integrity and uprightness watch over me, for I look to You. 22 O God, redeem Israel from all its distress.

And as King David called out, so do I: asking to be protected—all Jews—and saved and returned—the hostages—and for our world to transform from enemies filled with hate to be a place of refuge for us all to live lives of integrity and compassion watched over by the force of creation.

It’s not that I expected everyone in the “Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Christian Nationalism” group at the multi-faith potluck to agree with me, but I didn’t expect to be confronted with an antisemite and a keffiyeh-wearer whose presence were—now I get the term—triggering!

Where’s my silo?!

A friend, who lives in Israel and is 19 months into living in a war zone, suggested that I leave the group, that sometimes there really is too much for a person to handle.

A friend in New York suggested that IF I stay in the group, I would need to develop a thicker skin. She also commented that perhaps I was put there by HaShem (The Name, G!d) for a purpose.

A third, very new, friend, who was there, tried to convince me that the way forward is to have a Muslim speaker at the next event. That was too much. I’ve read and learned enough to know that appeasement and ceding to the other is not the way forward. Why step aside and give the stage to someone who doesn’t respect you? Why not have them hear Jews speak or have a conversation as is the stated intention at a dialogue group? While they were at this meeting and in this group (at a different table from me), which is positive, their very aggressive stance (why wear the keffiyeh?; why say “Zionism is the problem”) I did not feel that I need to be gracious, but rather that I need to graciously take a stand.

To listen and be heard. To learn and understand. To share and connect. To not be strange strangers. To me these are the goals of interfaith dialogue. I wonder if I can do it now.

*****

After we moved to the States from Israel in 2000, I tried to establish a dialogue group with a Palestinian woman. We didn’t get anywhere, beyond the not inconsequential realization that our ex-husbands, my Israeli and her Palestinian, were very similar in the ways they were verbally abusive and aggressive, and we were similar in having pushed against convention and the “he’s a good provider” thoughts to divorce them.

Before Covid, I was a member of a local chapter of the Sisterhood of Salaam-Shalom, a group for building connections between Jewish and Muslim women. We had been meeting for about a year, becoming friends, uncovering similarities and differences between our religions (and sometimes learning more about our own religions) and the home countries of most of the Muslim women, and, of course, eating delicious foods. We were just starting to think about what to do for the betterment of our community when Covid put an end to everything, and then I moved.

Through that experience, though, I saw the value in going out of my way to meet people I wouldn’t normally meet, to work on correcting inaccuracies in how I and my people are perceived, and in how I perceive others. It’s not necessarily that knowledge is power, it’s that knowledge may lead to compassion.

*****

Now that I’m a retired, middle-aged woman who has never done any moving and shaking, what is it that will not let me rest (or nap), will not let me accept my past ineffectiveness? What am I looking for in these groups? What do I want to happen?

I wonder if I should accept that the talking—the exchange of experiences and time spent together—is the essence? Should I stop diminishing in importance what I do because it’s not what I deem to be important work (that others are doing—stop the comparing!)?

In our small group conversations at the multi-faith meeting, I talked to a woman who is Baha’i, who extolled her religion and its basic tenet of acceptance, and a Christian woman who talked about her work in El Salvador helping physically improve lives. I spoke of the negative way Islam views Jews and how harmful it has been—is. We each shared our hearts, using this opportunity to say what moved us, things that we don’t get to share in our everyday interactions.

*****

At last night’s potluck, there was a speaker from Our Children’s Trust which “represents young people in global legal efforts to secure their binding and enforceable legal rights to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate.” After that, we got into small groups and talked about our faith traditions’ teachings on the environment. We all care. We all see ourselves as stewards of the earth, whatever being or entity breathed it into being. That connection felt like a strengthening: we are not alone in caring and wanting to protect the earth.

After that the “Antisemitism and Islamophobia” group got together to talk about when to meet again. Walking out of the meeting, I was deflated (and not just because hardly anyone took my pasta dish), until I saw my friend who is trying to keep the group together. Her insistence that I need to care about Islamophobia may be correct, but at this moment, I can’t take it on as my concern. When antisemitism and anti-Zionism are so immediate, critical, dangerous, resurgent, and when Israel is attacked and Judaism maligned, I want to stay focused. So while this group may offer some worthwhile interactions, it will not replace the work I need to do.

On my way home, I passed a pickup truck with a Palestinian flag and a life-size replica of a missile in its truck bed. Doesn’t seem like Islamophobia is the problem.

It is Day 576: there are still hostages suffering in Gaza. We are each our brother's keeper. I'm focusing on my hurting family first.

I have taken to hiding a small ceramic bowl that I use for most of my meals on the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet. This is so my mother’s aide doesn’t use it for my mother’s meals. This is silly. It’s a bowl, though it’s special because a friend’s daughter made it and gifted it to me for helping her with her writing. I’m being petty. For goodness’ sake, I wasn’t using it at the time—I wasn’t even home. I only know that it is being used because sometimes it’s on the drainboard when I come home and my mother says, yes, May served her meal in it.

I will let this go, after I have dealt with it.

Being petty, as we know, can feel consequential, because little things are often big things in not-so-great disguise.

When I taught my students about symbolism, there was always the explanation of an object in all its physical reality and the myriad ways that very same object could be understood, felt, or related to.

This bowl is a wonderful vessel for salads, stews, and pasta, since its small size enables for (practically) guilt-free refills. It also represents me as separate from my mother. It represents the person who is living a share-free existence in some alternative reality.

But is that really the universe where I want to be living?

I ask this as I sit around the table with my Monday morning writing group. We are in this coffee shop using this quiet hour to write without the distractions that come when we are home, and with the tacit support that comes from others who also spend their time putting ideas to paper for the glory, the fame, the riches—HA!—no, the need to express what is inside. Space is shared. I’m here because sometimes I don’t want to be physically alone when I’m writing.

In the past two years, my mother has become a little old lady. I am her support; she depends on me. That is the reality. Keeping a bowl for just me neither changes that nor does it trick me into thinking that I live alone. Nor do I want it to be living alone, at least now, when it’s more important to share my life. Sitting with these other writers, I’m experiencing the benefit of being together. It’s not always necessary to move aside to be separate from others; it could be to breath fully alongside others who are also trying to breath fully.

This is why writing is important to me. Having worked through my thoughts in this essay, I now feel ready to stop hiding the bowl. I won’t even talk to the aide and tell her never, ever, ever use it. Although, I will not, ever, serve my mother anything in it. When I’m home, it’s still mine.

I was warned that my new hometown in the Pacific Northwest is not very Jewish. This was not just in comparison to New York City or Israel or southern Florida, the very Jewish places where I have lived, but in comparison to northern Virginia, where I also lived, which is not very Jewish.

On the first day of school, just weeks after we moved from Israel to Virginia, I introduced myself to the mothers at the bus stop, as my daughters shyly looked at their potential new friends. Upon hearing that we moved from Israel, one woman pointed to another mother and daughters coming towards us and said, “Look, there’s Leslie, she’s Jewish, too!” Which was a welcome, and a warning that things would be different from what I was used to.

Growing up Jewish in Queens in the ‘60s and ‘70s was to feel like any other group; we were in enough numbers to be an integral part of the city, and there were enough bagel places and delis to back that up! Our holidays were school holidays. New York was (is?) a salad bowl, but prepared by someone who doesn’t like their vegetables to touch, yet each of the different veggies were needed to make it delicious.

In Virginia, I understood what it meant to be a minority during the December “Holiday” party in the high school where I taught. There were years that I didn’t go, not wanting to be a Debbie Downer with my sour expression at the Christmas stuff, abundantly aware that this is not my holiday. Other years I went, following up the festivities with an email to the principal protesting the “our Lord was born” song that the school choir sang beautifully. Some years I let the dreidel song appease me. Not that anyone did anything wrong; it was an annual unable-to-ignore acknowledgement of what it feels like to be a minority.

When my daughters were in high school, I had to argue against their fear of missing a day of school and my insistence that honoring our holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur!) was more important. (Even teachers understand priorities.)

Which all goes to say that it’s not easy being a minority, and that a person who is a minority, but doesn’t necessarily look it, continually perceives how much she is or wants to be separate or integrated into the larger society. At this point in my personal history (where I see myself as a woman who is Jewish, American, and Israeli) and history itself with the rise in antisemitism, I have no intention of hiding my identity or only being it in my home or specific public spaces, like my synagogue or at multi-faith meetings in churches, or my writers’ group where I always talk about the latest Jewish-themed blog post I’m writing.

Since October 7^th, the feeling of being fully accepted and part of this country has been severely damaged. There is no way to watch what Jewish students are facing on their campuses and the excuses that are made for the violators, and not know this. It is heart-wrenching. It motivates me. It is to realize some responsibility for them and their plight, and to want to help them fight what has been wrought by previous generations, including my own.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, I was in the local pharmacy, wearing my new Jewish star (made by an artisan in Israel). The clerk said to me, “Good Shabbos.” I instinctively reached to touch my necklace, my statement, and looked at him and saw his name plate said Jonah. Jewish? I wondered. I said, “Thank you. Shabbat Shalom to you.” At that moment, I realized that, while this is not a very Jewish town, there are enough Jews around to not feel alone. It also made me realize that wearing my necklace was not just to proclaim my Jewish identity and pride, but to show other Jewish people that they are not alone. We are here.

In a grocery store the next day, I saw a man wearing a kippah (yarmulke). “Chag Sameach” (Happy Holiday) I said to him since it was Purim (a Jewish holiday). He looked at me, nodded, and said “Chag Sameach.” Another simple exchange. I am not alone.

Since October 7^th, when I wear either a Jewish star or Chai (חי) necklace, people often say that they like my necklace. To me this is code: I’m Jewish too. Or, I see you, you are not alone in the negative whirlwind that has descended.

But there is also this.

Before I brought my laptop for service last week, I pulled off the Jewish & Proud sticker that I got at the recent BBYO convention. A small part of me feared that an antisemite would be assigned to repair my computer, and, seeing the sticker, would infect it with a virus. I’m not pleased with myself, but I don’t know if I would do anything different going forward. I put it back on my laptop as soon as I got home—and it is here, back on my laptop. This, too, is what it means to be part of the Jewish minority, especially since October 7^th.

Perhaps the take-away point is that we are part of the continuum of Jewish history, not separate from it—there is never separate from it—this is how it has always been, unfortunately. This perspective may help each of us figure out what that means to us, and how we can ensure that our history continues (or help it to continue if you are not Jewish), still hoping, though, for shorter downturns and decreasing in intensity.

Naivete is no longer an option. Neither is ignorance.

What does it mean to be Jewish? This is the question. How has this changed and how will I change going forward?  

“She can’t even get a glass of water by herself,” I told a friend in a zoom conversation. Her usual smile faded. “It’s a lot,” I added. She repeated my statement, nodding in acknowledgement and fear, thinking, perhaps, of the future with her own parents.

It is a lot. It’s a heck of a lot to take care of someone who no longer does ordinary tasks for herself and for whom the future portends doing even less. This is not a helpless child who you teach to be independent. This is my parent who is losing her independence, which means that she will be increasingly dependent on me.

It is a lot, on so many levels. I’m trying for it not to overwhelm me. Although, to be aware, constantly, of another person’s daily needs is an invasion of my own mental space and sanctuary.

It’s not that I object to thinking about other people, or this specific person, or that I think I’m an island, it’s that there’s always this awareness, a shadow person on/in my mind.

But I’m also aware that it could be worse. Which makes me feel like I’m spoiled and lacking.

But I’m also aware that I could be worse. Which makes me feel like I’m caring and accommodating.

Life on a different kind of edge.

As she takes what feels like an eternity to go down the two steps from the house, painstakingly pushing her walker over the threshold, then one sneakered foot over it as if it’s a minefield, then the other, positioning her feet as if they are both dainty and leaden, I try to be empathetic. Breathing in compassion for this woman who strode around Manhattan at a native New Yorker’s brisk pace. I try to see that version of her, not the little old lady who’s afraid of walking because she’s afraid of falling because she’s afraid of breaking a bone because she’s afraid of dying.

I force myself to slow down, remember that I’m in no rush, that letting her work through the motions at her pace is all that matters at this moment. I don’t need to huff and puff with frustration. I can be still, leaning my heart into her motions, finding the better version of myself, the one for whom patience and humility are not just for strangers or contemplation. Life as continual lesson.

Rabbis teach that the challenges we face push us to become the person we need to be. There are no choices in the challenges, just how a person reacts to them. Acknowledging this wisdom helps me accept that there is no alternative life in which I should/could/would be living on a yacht in the Caribbean with, perhaps, a gentleman serving me. This is the life I need to grow within to fully be me at this moment in my life.

What is the challenge that most challenges you right now? How are you accepting it?

Parents Moving to Live Near their Adult Children—It’s a Thing!

I’m on the mother migration trail (on which I’ve noticed quite a few fathers too). There are no covered wagons to hitch, nor stakes to claim then settle for the coming generations. No, this migration trail is forged in the heart of mothers (especially the single ones) who see the empty nest as a diminishment, an unwanted interruption in her motherhood role, and for whom family needs to be held together by more than an occasional holiday visit or weekend phone call. We’re on the move, kids! Watch out!

We’re driven to reach the people who are home: to collapse distance and complicated scheduling. Calls and zooming are no longer sufficient, especially once children’s lives became steady, dependable—imagine that! Migrating to be near the people who will sit around my kitchen table, enjoying my cooking as a comfort and reminiscence—even bringing to-go containers knowing that leftovers for them are a given. People for whom talking about this and that, scheduling a walk tomorrow, and not saved for a visit that involves planes and Airbnb’s, is meaningful in a natural, this-is-everyday-life, way. This is the new promised land.

Once, the next generation would return home, to be near their parents who were moored in place. But not now (or with so many of the people I know), not with family homes sold because of divorce or relocations for better jobs or any job, or retirement to warmer climes. So many of us did not stay put, but, amazingly, our children are starting to settle down. They are not tempted to come to where we ended up; they have no connection to our new places. They are determined to find the perfect balance of work and life style. If we want them to live near us, we need to adopt their hometowns.

My brother, who stayed near the home base and whose children have done so too, seems to be the outlier amongst my friends. They are the people who stayed in the old country while the more adventurous, or desperate, relatives joined those westward trails, seeking new opportunities and different possibilities. This journey is more than about being a mother (or father) living near her children; it’s about being the type of person who pushes herself out of her comfort zone, who doesn’t want to settle with what has been, who still believes that what will be can be different, guided by internal and external discoveries.

Many mothers and fathers (alone or together) are on this unmapped trail. Our guides are love and connections: people-as-place. The compass points are not grounded in the earth, but in our hearts. More on this journey as I make this new place home.

What are some of the places, figurative and literal, that your path brought you to? Who or what did you follow?

I’m branching out! I just started a Substack called Sharing Insights . This will be another home where I plan on sharing insights, as well as providing support, empathy, consolation, and lighthearted moments that show our hearts are made of/for compassion and love.

I plan to continue posting here, generally the same posts because there’s just so much that I can do and think and feel and write.

So please, either continue subscribing here or, if you’ve gotten comfy on Substack, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter, Sharing Insights, there.  

Thank you thank you thank you for being a reader. Thinking of you helps me write.

The main topics that will continue to write about include: being a woman, a mother, and soon! to be a grandmother, retirement, single living, caregiving, elder care, Judaism, and Israel.

“Move up. Don’t sit alone.”

That was not me whispering to myself when I got to temple on Friday night, the night after the Bibas boys returned dead, murdered in Gaza, and the day that their mother, Shiri, finally, returned, murdered as well. That was the rabbi, gesturing to me, encouraging me to join the congregation.

I moved up one row.

She came over to me, and asked me to move even closer to the front, to where people were sitting. “You look like you could use fellowship tonight.”

I moved up some more, to behind a new friend. Rather than staying on my own, pretending I hadn’t noticed her, I moved to sit next to her. When I turned around, I saw a man I met a few days earlier at a temple event and encouraged him to sit next to us. So, instead of being by myself in the back, I was now in the second row between two new friends.

At the beginning of the service, the rabbi tearfully called everyone to join her on the bima (raised part of the synagogue). She said that many of us were there that night because we were devastated by the deaths of the Bibas family, and that trans people and those who love them were fearful for the future, and there were researchers whose funding had just been cut off. Then she stopped, as if overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pain in and around her. So many of us were in tears, barely holding it together. After the introductory prayers, there was hugging.

Returning to my seat, I could feel that something within had moved. My sadness was still immense, but it wasn’t a solitary burden. Now, it felt like being within a communal pot of pain and compassion.

I have attended synagogues where intellectual discussions were the way to connect to and be inspired by Judaism. Sometimes the singing and music were how I engaged and rose above quotidian thoughts. Occasionally, the words of the prayers themselves made the connection between past and present. Rarely, though, do I feel G!d or the Divine Presence or the Spirit that connects me to beyond me—but that night I got what I needed without words and analysis. Perhaps I needed it so much, perhaps I pushed myself to feel beyond thinking, perhaps it is about wanting something and not preventing it from occurring.

A religious gathering that brought together people in pain, in fear, in solitude—needing to discover/uncover sustenance for the soul. To find that which aches and to realize it can be lessened, that there can be moments of entry of the connecting tissue. To acknowledge that I need more, whatever that may be, is to accept a level of unknown and unknowingness. It is not to make demands. I am one vessel. It is to keep being who I am and not close off myself. Knowing that to be open, to not seal myself off, mentally or physically, is the way into what may be.

This phrase from Psalm 92 is ringing in my ears: It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing to Your name, O Most High. To declare in the morning Your kindness and Your faith at night.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-843061

Maybe We Can Smile Tomorrow, as an Act of Resilience and Affirmation

“Smile,” the woman said to me when I told her that no, she can’t take a chair from the table where I was sitting in this busy coffee shop. I had already given one of my tables to them and told a few people in her group that they can’t take any chairs from around my table, which I needed for my own group that would be meeting soon.

She reminded me of men in NYC whose lewd hoots and howls would often include demands to smile. It is not a positive connection. Her comment was annoying; though, I know it was not meant that way. My basic suggestion is if you don’t know someone, don’t tell them to smile. And my next suggestion is that if you do know someone, don’t tell them to smile—unless it’s for a picture.

Sorry, not sorry, lady, but I’m not in a smiling mood. I’m wearing a bright orange sweater today for, what I fear is in memory of, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas. I chose to envelop myself in this pain and to declare it; though, I assume that I’m the only one here who knows what it represents.

It’s hard to be alone in your specific awareness of the world. This is a time when it is especially hard to live outside of Israel, where the Bibas babies are at the forefront of people’s minds today. But it shouldn’t be. This should be everyone’s awareness. How are we enabling such monsters to continue terrorizing Jews and the non-them world?

Yesterday morning, I was at a social event at temple when I received a text from a friend confirming (we now have final, forensic confirmation that Ariel and Kfir were returned in coffins, their mother is still unaccounted for) that they had been killed. I went to the bathroom to cry in a stall. I didn’t share the news with anyone. Even in Jewish circles, my focus on Israel makes me an outlier. This is not a regret; in fact, I’m proud of this. It pushes me from what could be self-centeredness. But, still, it is always to be aware of a separation.

What do I live for? What do you live for? What would make you wear your broken heart publicly?

Today, I craved a sufganiyah (jelly donut). As I walked to Voodoo donuts, I realized that Kfir Bibas was too young to have ever had one, which is such a staple of Israeli childhood—and adulthood, too. This is for Kfir and his brother Ariel, who won’t be able to compare whose donut had more jelly in it.

******

And to those who continue to support and encourage the monsters who kidnapped and killed entire families, and young people from a peace festival, and today—today!—planted bombs on buses in the Tel Aviv area (thankfully they exploded when no people were on them—were they planted by newly released terrorists in this deal, ready to resume trying to kill Jews?)—you are monsters, too. This is not about politics or policies or politicians. This is about humanity. Find yours!

The former Emmanuel Shearith Israel Synagogue in Denver

For 501 days and nights (which is 43,286,400 seconds, each of which the hostages feel intensely; and we, empathetic humans are still counting, tearfully) the Israeli hostages have been held by savages in Gaza.

For 501 days, I have consumed and been consumed by news of seemingly non-stop attacks against Israel and vile acts of antisemites around the world.

Since this ceasefire started a few weeks ago and hostages have been released—with visible signs of having been tortured for being Jews—the horror has seeped even deeper into my moral being and my Jewish soul.

October 7 should have been the day on which the evil that erupted was promptly stopped. The outrage that should have reverberated should have ripped off the mask of false resistance and should have brought forth a reckoning with terrorism and its attempt to deny Jewish rights in Israel and around the world. But it didn’t.

What did happen is that too many people (in universities, the media, international “human rights” organizations, the UN, in governments) doubled-down on hate and support of a terrorist regime: one that is genocidal, apartheid, and colonialist.

For 501 days I have seen darkness in the guise of indifference: darkness that is accompanied by morally bankrupt words.

But for a few days last week I took a break from thinking of dank, hollow, twisted cavities within seemingly human bodies for whom life is about death.

I spent time at the BBYO conference where thousands of Jewish teens from around the world gathered in joy where their Jewish identity was a sign of friendship, purpose, connection, and continuity—and that has entered my heart.

My Israeli colleagues/friends, for whom this was a break from the constant pressure of war, and news, and demonstrations, and lack of confidence in leadership that constantly test their inner strength, could, for a few days, breathe air that is not infused with pain, fear, worry, sorrow, and anger. Their momentary relief, perhaps, gives them space to remember what normal life looks like, and to wonder—hope!—that it is possible again.

With one Jewish friend, we always talk about the eruption and infestation of antisemitism, pinpointing and then circling around how we have lost our naivete that the world had moved on from its own history, its allegiance to antisemitism. But now, talking to these teens I feel a strengthening in my core, in my DNA. To be Jewish is not just to experience the violence of antisemitism, it is to be defiant and proud of our Jewish identity.

Recently, I heard a rabbi say that Jews are not victims, meaning that we don’t wallow in our victimhood, but move on with life. (On a personal level, I believe in the need for some wallowing and self-pity, but I get what he means.) One teen seemed to exemplify this. She said that the antisemitism in Montreal wasn’t as bad as it has been. A realistic lioness.

Over our history, Jews have been victims of repeated violence and expulsions. Not everyone wants to deal with that. Apparently, historically, only 20% of Jews have remained Jews, going all the way back to the slaves who left Egypt with Moses. The others, for whatever reason—usually because they were forced to or made the calculation for themselves and their families—took the “let’s join the majority” route. This explains why so many people in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa have Jewish DNA.

But those of use whose families stayed the course, didn’t lean on their victimhood, as painful as it was, because to be Jewish is to live, to move forward even when your heart is leaden, to try to be better—in whatever situation life brings your way. It feels like we are at a moment like this now where the world has erupted against us. It’s so clear that this is not the time for appeasement. For what? For whom? For those who think killing Jews is a cleanse?

In a conversation with two Jewish friends the day before flying to the conference, we talked whether we wear our Jewish identity in public. One woman puts the tape with the number of days the hostages have been held on her phone. I said that I generally wear my Jewish star. But now I commit to making it even more of a habit. Showing that I am a proud Jewish person will be my base-line. Writing here is another. Now I need to think about what else I will do.

What are you doing or will you do to not be a bystander or witness who lets evil against the Jewish people happen unchallenged?

The difference was stark: the best of humanity and the worst of humanity on a stage in the middle of Gaza. Four young women, Israeli hostages held by terrorists for 477 days in darkness and deprivation, overcoming whatever new fears arose as they were finally out in the open, but now surrounded by hundreds of masked, armed terrorists still chanting for their destruction, smiling, supporting each other, giving a thumbs up—which seemed to me to be a glorious middle finger—to the assembled horde. 

Humanity vs. inhumanity. Love vs. hate. Hope vs. destruction. Light vs darkness. Good vs. evil.

How does “the world” give validation to these terrorists, all men, in new uniforms, faces completely covered, standing shoulder to shoulder, lacking in individuality or signs of humanity for whom intimidation and brutality—in displays and actions—are their essence and existence. The scene felt like a thin veneer covering the flames of hatred bred from birth. Not a drop of remorse for what they made these women endure. An entire society raised to hate with their putrid intentions aimed at Israelis and Jews, for now. These women survived that. What will they see when they close their eyes, trying/crying for sleep, for the rest of their lives? My heart continues to ache for them.

So much light coming from the four young women who survived hell and were about to return to the heaven that is home: family, friends, and a community that cares for their well-being. They seemed to reflect the light that hearts have been sending to them for 11,448 hours of prayers.

Watching them on that stage, alive!, in pain and joy, is to know what it means to love someone you will never know. A pure love. One soul, somehow, connecting to another. This is what it means to be part of the Jewish people. It must be an essential part of the Jewish survival instinct.

קול ישראל ערבים זה לזה

Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh.

All Jews are responsible for one another.

(I thought I should talk about the masked men brandishing their weapons, directing the red cross and these four young women, and last week the three young women who were transferred in the middle of a mob that was barely tempered by civility, coming out of tunnels to chant for death, proclaiming that this is victory. But I decided that I don’t have to think about them or the people who think they are heroes. No. This is all they get. Perhaps the next generation (of both), or the one after it, can be saved from barbarity?)

“What three words describe how you feel now?” was the prompt in an online Havdalah service for women that I attended Saturday night.

“Relief. Anger. Hope.” My response. I wasn’t surprised to see that many of us included “anger” in our trio.

Relief for the hostages who have already been released (exchanged for terrorists, murderers, but that is another discussion).

Anger that the Jewish people are again/still suffering from antisemitism, and that there are those who see Jews as less than.

Hope, Tikvah, תִּקְוָה. The sentiment that binds us, that the Torah inspires in us, that our history demands of us.

My fourth word: community. I am not alone. You are not alone. We are. We are here for each other. We will be.

Fiddler on the Roof on Christmas Day. Great idea. Connecting to my traditions on a day when everything closes for other people’s traditions. I bought tickets as soon as possible.

When I taught Hebrew school, I showed the movie to my students, explaining that it depicts what life was like for most of our ancestors before coming to America (most of us were Ashkenazi Jews). Often, they had no idea that their roots traced back beyond Virginia (where we lived) or New York (where so many grandparents lived).

The movie theater was full, with people (me!) ready to sing-along. But as soon as the fiddler’s soul sounded, so achingly mournful, I teared up. Then, when Tevye ruminated about Tradition (see below) as images from around the shtetl appeared, silent tears fell. If I hadn’t been in a crowded movie theatre with my mother next to me, I might have bawled.

In the past, I saw this movie as an homage to our ancestors, honoring a way of life they lived for generations, amidst economic and physical challenges simply for being Jews. It recreated the life that the Holocaust destroyed. Images of the wooden shul, a sacred place, made me anxiously sentimental, imagining it going up in flames a few decades later.

Now, in the aftermath of October 7, with surging antisemitism (Jew-hatred, Israeli-hatred, Israel-hatred) it feels too real. Less story and history, more future possibility.

The state-sanctioned pogrom that drives the Jews from their homes in Anatevka is frightening in a new way. I’m more aware of the process by which pogroms prepared the ground for the Holocaust, when six million Jews were killed, and millions more were displaced and haunted, living with pain even as most managed to overcome and live new lives in new places. It is also to remember the neighbors who watched or participated.

Hatred of Jews—for whatever imagined, scapegoating reason—is a stain on humanity, generation after generation. It never went away, as we, I ! , had thought / hoped it had / would in this era of universal human rights. This failure of humanity is another source of anguished tears.

This movie is not only a glimpse into life before the Holocaust incinerated it, it is a warning shadow cast long into the future. I didn’t pay attention to that before.

In that art house cinema, I felt no joy, even as I sang familiar songs and reconnected with the past embedded within me.

Why did our ancestors have to leave the Land of Israel, most to live in the diaspora for thousands of years? Why did they have to flee their homes in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Tzfat, Hebron, Gaza, to then live in and be expelled from Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Poland? Why did they have to seek protection and do jobs no one else wanted to do, as they rebuilt their lives? Survival would not be denied.

Watching that movie filled me with sadness and anger, mixing with determination, commitment, and love. Traditions give strength despite having been punished for holding onto them, believing in them, continuing them. They are what sustains us—and we deserve sustaining.

Tonight is the 8^th night of Hanukkah. I will light the candles with my mother, younger daughter, and her boyfriend. We will eat latkes (traditional and vegan), brisket, vegan cholent, and vegan sufganiyot (jelly donuts). Old and new. Adapting traditions to keep us and strengthen us.

What drama or musical will come from the experiences of this past year and two months, and the continued torture of the hostages?

There are the rips to the fabric of our daily lives. But there will be—there must be—a new version of “Tradition” to sing, as painful as the memories it summons.

A defensive person creates community by changing. That’s the facile answer, though one with lots of truth.

Both the change and the community may take time to develop, and the shape they take is influenced by the other, but time and need can do magic.

Recently, I participated in a community event at my synagogue where we practiced having conversations on divisive topics with no talking over, no disruptions, and lots of “I hear that you’re saying’s.”

Me, with my master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution and mediation certificate, should have done so well. Yet, I got upset when a woman in my conversation triad said to me, “I hear that you’re saying you want more control over immigration [the topic we were discussing].” If I was a porcupine, my bristles would have been up! A red button was pressed. I was about to turn her off, not listening to her rephrasing of my points and then her own points. But I wasn’t just there for the potluck, I was there to grow in my interactions, to be a better practitioner in my daily life of the skills I had studied (clearly, the learning was still in-progress), and to grow in applying them, as well as learn some new ones.

Control. A trigger word for me.

A few years after my divorce, I briefly lived with a boyfriend. In one of our first conversations, we talked about what we needed from the other that we hadn’t gotten in our marriages (he was twice divorced). For him, it was not to be walked out on during an argument. For me, it was control: not to feel that he is telling me what to do. I had enough of that in my marriage, which was a key reason why I’m no longer married.

So, one day, when he said, “I’d like you to wear dresses when we go out,” I didn’t feel his appreciation of how I look when I get dressed up. No, I heard “Do this.”

Had he been paying attention? This was telling me, even if through a compliment, what to do. Also, I rarely wore dresses. Between having to wear them when I was growing up (parental control and a bit of rebellion when I could get out of wearing the dreaded dress and torturous stockings) and feeling that I look like a barrel in a dress. It didn’t matter how I looked: I was uncomfortable. Why did it matter to him?

Sometimes defensiveness protected me, helped me stick to my decisions. At other times it closed me off from realizing what was bothering me or how I was being a bother.

We will never know all a person’s triggers, or even our own, which is why it’s so important to learn how to do a better job at having conversations. Bitterness and defensiveness aren’t building blocks. How to transform them? The why is clear to me, because I have come to value interactions as much as solitude.

Thinking of the “how,” I realize that I need to stand still within myself, noticing my reactions to what other people say, and their reactions to what I say. We all react through the filter of our experiences. Which means that I need to not expect more understanding from anyone than the moment gives. They don’t see into me and I don’t see into them. We may be creating a relationship, but that could only happen if walls aren’t up, and ears and hearts aren’t blocked with histories. I need to want this moment to exist, to breathe, to not let triggers overtake me.

“For me, ‘control,’ is a trigger word,” I said, willing myself to speak up, not to embed anger or frustration into the moment. And with that, we talked about how a conversation could be diverted so easily. Underlying every conversation is the connection itself, because without it, topical conversations can’t move forward.

For those 40 minutes of honesty, the three of us created community. I went home humbled, disappointed in myself, but also a slightly better version of myself. Community is not simply created by individuals meeting; it is created by individuals overlapping with purpose and respect.

The other night, in preparation for my study session with my Mussar partner, I read about the soul trait of zerizut (zeal, enthusiasm, promptness, engagement), which is “our capacity to bring our choices into action.” Before I could think about where I am on the scale (from procrastinator to serial project-completer), my mind, as usual, went to my interactions with my mother.

Looking out into the early autumn darkness, before my reflection in the window became clearer than the scraggly winter garden, I started to cry. Not a sad cry. An angry cry. This living arrangement is impacting me—the inner me, not just the spending-so-much-time-organizing-her-life me—more than I realize. Can’t I just be me?

When I moved out here in May, I knew that I would bring her, but now that she’s here, I feel what I’ve lost, not what I’ve gained. I miss my independence and solitude. I miss thinking of myself as a good person, not one constantly confronted with shortcomings: impatient, annoyed, selfish. I know that we don’t get to choose the challenges we face, but the degree to which they can force us to redefine ourselves is annoying, to put it lightly.

While I refuse to sacrifice myself to her, it’s not easy when confronted with degrees of her helplessness and dependence; and my pity and sorrow for her coupled with my, still, lack of privacy, even though I have my own physical space.

Knowing that assisted living is a viable option, peeking and tempting, helps keep me from completely losing it.

Her stubborn (yet understandable) desire to think that she doesn’t need any help makes her assert that we’re just two women living together and that “I’m fine on my own, don’t worry about me, I can manage.” This from a woman who finds pants increasingly complicated, as is taking a container out of the refrigerator and putting it on the kitchen table. Moreover, her lack of acknowledging what I do for her feels like it diminishes my actions and is a bit of a betrayal. It’s not that I need a constant “thank you,” but an understanding of what I do for her feels necessary for a better home atmosphere (read: my mood).

Now, calling up my zerizut, I need to figure out how I can adjust my perspective to be less impacted by her. This is my life and I need to stop feeling that I’ve been “invaded.”

In talking to my Mussar partners from a previous course, they suggested that I focus on the soul trait of equanimity (menuchat hanefesh) or inner calm, to re-balance myself. The idea here is that you should be a surfer riding the waves of life, not letting the waves overpower you or disrupt your inner peace and presence. By working on this, too, perhaps I can figure out how to protect myself—the person I am outside of being daughter and caregiver—so that I don’t let resentment become a huge wave crashing down on me.

Thursday, Nov 14

1:47 PM: “Hi, I was wondering if a caregiver will be coming to stay with my mother tomorrow from 10-2, as I talked about with the in-take nurse on Monday.”

“Let me check with our scheduler and someone will get back to you.”

5:30: “Hi, Laura. We don’t have someone to start tomorrow. We do have someone who picked up the job for Monday, so we’ll start our services then.”

Monday, Nov 18

10 AM: The doorbell rang and a lovely young woman was there, ready to help my mother and give me a break for four hours.

Friday, Nov 22

10:18 AM: “I was wondering what’s happening with the caregiver who was supposed to be here at 10?”

“I’m so sorry, but she called at 10:05 to say that she’s vomiting. You were my next call to make, but I got inundated with calls.”

“Do you have someone else who could come?”

“No, we don’t have a back-up. I’m sorry.”

Monday, Nov 25

9:44 AM: “I’m calling to let you know that the caregiver who was going to stay with your mother today has a temperature, so we’ll have to cancel. I can see if someone else can pick up the job. We do have someone who picked up the job for Friday.”

“Later today doesn’t work for me. What about Wednesday?”

“I’ll put it into the system and see if anyone picks it up.”

Tuesday, Nov 26

1:17 PM: “Hi, I’m calling to see if someone picked up my job for tomorrow.”

“I’ll have to check and I’ll have someone get back to you.

4:06: I called another agency. When the woman I had been in email contact with answered, she said she had called me a few times earlier in the day. Turns out she dialed the wrong number. We made an appointment for her to meet us on Tuesday.

Wednesday, Nov 27

9:55 AM: I left the house for a couple of hours, knowing that no one was going to stay with my mother, but I had plans and I needed to get out, and I told my mother where her lunch was.

10:20: My brother in New York: “Mom just called to say a girl is there to give her a bath. She said she called you but you didn’t answer.”

There had been no calls from my mother. Using the phone has become a technological challenge that sometimes confounds her.

10:21: “Hi, Mom. Who’s there with you?

“The girl who came last time is here.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Hi, thanks for being there with my mother. I didn’t know you were coming today, but I’m glad you’re there.”

10:24: “Hi, scheduler. I was calling to find out what happened today. No one told me that someone was scheduled for today.”

“When we talked on Monday, I told you I would reschedule the Monday person to Wednesday.”

“You said you would try to find someone to take the job and that you would get back to me to let me know. I’m really annoyed. I called yesterday to check and no one got back to me.”

“Do you know who you spoke to?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ll try to clarify and I’m sorry about that.”

In Florida, the caregivers who came for five hours once-a-week were mostly middle-aged women from around the Caribbean. There was never a time that I scheduled someone and no one showed up. Here, apparently, it’s mostly women in their 20s, setting out on their careers. I’m not sure what conclusions to draw. Maybe it’s cold and flu season here in the Pacific Northwest (someone suggested handovers), and, clearly, this is not a smooth-sailing process. It (as in my mother) is all on me, even as I try to dump it on someone else for a little while. I also see that as much as I think I may not be organized, at least I’m not in a job where that’s all I need to do and I’m failing at it.

Another conclusion is that it’s lonely being a caregiver. While I love my mother, who has always been supportive of me, I don’t want to hang out with her, even if it means that I miss some of her childhood-in-the-Bronx stories. What I get out of her living with me is that I’m doing what I feel I should do, with a smattering of want-to-do, as well as a heavy feeling tinged with guilt and the responsibility of “honor thy father and mother.”

Wednesday, Nov 27

3:38 PM I received an email saying that today’s caregiver felt that my mother wasn’t kind to her and that she wouldn’t be returning.

Of all the issues relating to caregivers, it never occurred to me that there would be a clash of personalities. A young Oregonian meeting an elderly New Yorker. Ok. I see the possibility of misunderstanding forthrightness and brusqueness, and my mother’s general frustration (which says more about how she feels about herself not being her usual self than how someone is helping her). Onward.

Friday, Nov 29

10:00 AM A knock on the door. The scheduled aide was there, ready to start.

I could have hugged her before she even came into the house. She’s a woman in her 60s who looks like she can handle my mother. When I left, she was putting my mother into my new winter coat (she was not letting my mother wear just a vest) and my gloves (we need to do some winter shopping), getting her ready to take a walk around the neighborhood. I’ll hold off on my “Hurray for mature women!” but I’m letting myself feel optimistic.

The image of a rollercoaster comes to mind when thinking of the past two weeks. But so, too, is the insight that life is for living, which means to “expect the unexpected” and deal without getting angry or losing my equilibrium. I’m living, making the best out of what happens, being responsible, and making time for myself and what I need. Maintaining an inner calm despite the turmoil is essential self-care and self-preservation.

2:54 PM I received an email that the caregiver enjoyed spending time with my mother and that she would be back on Monday.

That email made me glad I hadn’t lost my balance within when dealing with this external issue. Caregiving my mother is certainly not a challenge I expected, but it’s the one I have and I’m going to use it to try to become a person version of myself.

Stairway in Vizcaya Museum

“They all want to kill us.”

They: The most obvious of them are in marauding mobs of violent young men and the pundits, academics, leaders—people—whose mouths and pens expel contorted words, encased in hate, racism, and ego. Bullets in disguise. They barely see through their blinders. Just because they think they are otherwise does not mean that they are. (Do they see that Israel continues to be bombed daily? Do they see that Jews are people? Alas, does it matter to them?)

A caring person—Jew, non-Jew—wonders who those people would be without the Jew to condemn. Living life as a negation of life is neither a fulfilling nor a good life. How does it feel to be contorted with hate for the other—an other who you may never have met? What would it feel like to live motivated by love and compassion, by being kind?

Us: Israelis. Jews. People. A family. A tribe. A nation. We have a 4,000+ year history in the Land of Israel. For half that time most of our ancestors have lived in the diaspora: forced from our homeland and prohibited from returning. Still, what a glorious thing it is to be a people connected to and guided by our ancient religion, language, and customs, while also committing to the places where we live, accepting their customs within our own. Adaptable. To be part and apart. But always cautious, fearing, that the time will come when they will turn on us. (My generation has been so very naïve: our naivete a gift that has been snatched from us.)

Scapegoated. Oppressed. Faulted. Robbed.

Their antisemitism against us. What is with the constant condemnation? Will we ever break free from the longest hatred? The ill-logic of those who are unable to accept an other while preaching for human rights.

Once again, they are trying to draw a shroud over us. Their twisted, twisting words that lie and mislead. Shouldn’t creativity be used for good?

Jews are stuck in a cyclone into which we were picked up and held within for more than 2,000 years. Speak of generational trauma. And yet, we move forward, always trying to improve, to better the places we live, the societies in which we participate, the world as it functions. 

How would you feel if this was you? How would you react to only being seen as negative?

Our answer is to keep working on bringing light, improving the world, and protecting our people.

We're each slugging along at our own pace.

Once the decision was made, the rush was on to find an assisted living community for my mother. The plan was for her to live there until she was strong enough (or convinced enough) to move out to where I live. This temporary solution in assisted living is called respite care, which is a way to hike up the monthly rate by providing a furnished studio apartment for up to 90 days, but at least you don’t have to pay the community fee (a one-time fee of several thousand dollars) or move in with any more than your clothing and a few family photos.

Being there would also be a break for me from being around and on-call. After having put my new life on hold to return to a place where I never felt at home, I was increasingly feeling that it was a sacrifice. I needed to leave before resentment billowed.

In a month, I’d return to take her to a follow-up medical appointment (after, thankfully, my brother and sister-in-law flew down amid Hurricane Milton for the procedure that should have happened when I was there but had been postponed) and pack up the clothes she wanted to bring with her. They will barely fill a suitcase, since so few clothes fit her since she’s shriveled in the past year. After living in Florida for more than ten years, her wardrobe is decidedly not appropriate for anything chillier than an air conditioner on full blast in 100-degree weather.

I’m trying to envision and manifest us living together in joyful harmony, her in her part of the house and me in mine, having an aide come regularly to help her and free me from taking care of her bodily functions. Would this test the limits of honoring one’s mother? What would I gain and lose in the arrangement? And, being honest with myself and my roommate limitations, I also wondered what she would gain and lose in the arrangement. To be ready for the failure or the reality (framing is key) contingency, I already visited an assisted living community in her soon-to-be hometown.

How people do the assisted living search when they work full-time or live out-of-town and possibly with youngish ones at home is beyond me. It was all-consuming: finding the places (even with the help of ‘A Place for Mom’) and getting input from people who’ve been down this road, conducting phone interviews and checking out websites, to winnow down the list of places to visit for what the standard mid-day hour-long tour. At least it was a short burst of time, but still, thinking about where would be best for someone else to live is not an easy task. It’s like looking for a present: when does what they want overtake what you would want to receive?

After visiting six places in one week, I was ok leaving aside the tainted word “facility” and using the more pleasant “community.” But “facility” had been hovering over me as I began the search, remembered the overwhelming smell of urine and decay from visiting my grandmother when she was in an old-age home. I had feared what I would face, and how I would rise to the occasion of needing to have a life but also respecting my mother’s right to live in a stink-free environment. Is the smell, I wondered as I was told the costs, the difference between what each could afford?

When I started the search, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but when I finished, I realized that there were a few pass/fail elements. Obviously, no smell. This was a challenge that each place I visited passed.

Next was length of hallways, which was not something that had been on my list before I started my visits. With most residents using walkers (my mother now included in that number) or wheelchairs (where they propel themselves by their feet, shuffling while seated) this turned out to be very important. It was surprising, then, to see that some corridors were so long that I figured this was how they got around providing daily exercise classes, since just getting to the dining room was an exhausting hike.

The dining room and food were, of course, important. This was one item that my mother was interested in, asking to see sample menus. She was pleased to see that pork wasn’t the mainstay of the place that I thought best for her.

The daily activities were also important for me, and I studied the calendar from each place as if it was a college course catalog. My mother, who thought that she would get out of doing any exercise and just sit in her room like at home, was less than enthused about the daily chair exercise and brain twisters that I was excited to tell her about. Once she won a round of trivia with her knowledge of baseball, thanks to my father and his love of New York baseball, she found this activity to be worthy of her time. We were both pleased to see that bingo was only a weekly event and that she could nap in the afternoon when the card players took over. I bet the dollar I put on her refrigerator door for bingo is still there.

Still to come. The people I met during those assisted-living community visits, with some positive stereotyping. How my mother turned from a non-believer to a believer. Re-living the stress of a high school cafeteria.

Have you been through this journey? I’d love to hear from you.

In a recent conversation with my 90-year-old mother, she said, “Someone asked me what’s my last name and I couldn’t remember.”

“Did you eventually remember?” I asked, stunned.

“Yes,” she said, before moving onto telling me what she had for lunch, which she had already told me.

When we spoke, I was in my relatively new home in Oregon, where she is to join me, and she was in the assisted living community in Florida where I brought her a few weeks ago. The distance was tangible.

Have I been delusional about her mental acuity, I wondered. I had noticed that she was forgetting things (thankfully, this was after she stopped cooking for herself, so we skipped the burning the toast, the kettle, and the house phase) and repeating stories, which I had (mostly) stopped calling her out on because what’s the harm in her telling a story again (and again and again) when the telling gives her so much pleasure (and, surely, I can survive a little boredom for her to feel that she’s having a wonderful conversation with her delightful daughter). But this does seem to be another step in her cognitive decline. On the plus side, it’s an opportunity for me to work on the character trait of patience.

It was sudden. At 90. This need to go to assisted living, even if temporary. It was a before-after experience, where before she was out and about, driving herself to visit sick friends and shopping for new clothes, until she had an undiagnosed illness (with virus being the vague explanation) that resulted in a brief hospitalization at 89, and health issues every few months since then. Prior to that, she had been hospitalized in her 50s for women’s issues.

Which means that I’ve had many years of her good health during which I would see how other people’s parents have gotten cancer, or body parts replaced, or rapidly declined, or withered away. I expressed my concern for them and their parent (practicing the character traits of compassion and humility), giving them the opportunity to take all the space they needed to figure out their thoughts and, hoping—praying—that I would never have to deal with any of that myself. Now it’s my turn. And it is a lot. The switch from carefree retired adult to caretaker of parent (at any level of care) is not easy. On the bright side, I still respect her even after seeing her naked and being confronted with my extreme dismay at having to deal with someone else’s bodily functions, when that person is not an infant. There’s definitely a reason I never went into the medical field.

After a few weeks in rehab and then back in her apartment when I was visiting, she didn’t follow the plan and return to her old spry self. There were falls, because how does a woman who strode along the avenues of Manhattan ever get used to using a walker? And there was the confusion, not to be confused with her general lack of interest in anything other than her meals. Once I started cooking for her, I appreciated the “You know how to cook eggs” (stated daily), but not the “What’s for lunch?” while still eating breakfast.

Realizing that I couldn’t take care of her 24/7, as in couldn’t and wouldn’t, I decided (with the support of my brother and daughters) that she would need to go into assisted living until she’s strong enough for me to bring her to Oregon.

Next. Those visits and my insights gained from them. As well as the guilt-not guilt accompanied by my shuffling her off to assisted living.

October 7^th and its aftermath have become a new part of Jewish identity. This event seems to be within the canon of the stories of our honey-and-horseradish history. Will it join the “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat” events of our past? I wonder how long it took for our ancestors to transition from a tragedy to a holiday for which we now use the word “celebrate”? It’s hard to imagine this loss being anything other than painful. But it also seems necessary to ensure commemoration of lives lost, injuries endured, trauma experienced, breaks on so many levels, and the uncompromising perseverance to overcome—together.

Meanwhile, we’re still fighting to live in peace in our homeland (and not be threatened by antisemites in the lands of our homes); and we’re figuring out how to experience the fall Jewish holidays when there are STILL 101 HOSTAGES being terrorized in Gaza, and Israel is being attacked from seven entities, and far too many Israeli citizens are spending more time on battlefields than playing fields or in the fields (literal and figurative) in which they live and work. While those left at home (and for far too many these are temporary homes), and these are mainly women, who are burdened with so much: it is as if they have become the national Stress Absorbers so that their partners can focus on their role as protectors and defenders. It means that the “I’m spent” that a friend recently expressed is part of the national mood. It also means that those of us not living there, especially Jews and Israelis—me—constantly feel our connection because, to rephrase Hillel, Who am I if I am not for my people? And if not now, when?

And while this painful situation—this war—results in more deaths in Israel, and Gaza, and Lebanon because hate is so powerful, it has also made the backbone of Jewish history upright and defiant. What do we need to move forward toward acceptance and empathy, leading to peace and not another round of war? We are determined.

One wish is for the morally deprived mouthpieces around the world to stop distorting reality and to start caring about living Jews. I know that this is a rhetorical question, though it shouldn’t be: How hard is it to care about everyone when that is precisely what you claim?

It occurs to me that this must be what it felt like to live within a bible story, wondering about the Light and from where it will come—and sometimes, in the darkest of nights, if it will come. Belief, emunah, as I am starting to realize, is something that you do, that you commit to, because you can’t bear the unfathomable pain that life can bring if it is only the finiteness of each of our lives. Existence—purpose and love and loss—must contribute to a unifying crescendo.

At a reading of the names of the victims of October 7^th at a memorial service, I noticed that so many Hebrew names relate to light. We, as a people, as a religion—as parents imagining our children—are always looking to create the light, to bring the light, to share the light. This as our intention: it could be a start if you let yourself see it.

Each time during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services and during the memorial service, when we sang the Acheinu* (Our brothers and sisters) prayer/plea, I was overcome with emotion. I wasn’t remembering a specific person I had loved, rather it was a profound moment of loss surrounded by others in similar pain, and being comforted by the energy and emotion emanating from each of us. A powerful moment of connection, making me realize that I am never truly alone.

Perhaps, at this moment when my religion and my people are being maligned, it is when I find most meaning and support within them. Not just in the traditions, observances, and learning, but in the people who connect now and in time and space for millennia.

I am not alone. I am not broken. I am strengthened.

* Acheinu: Our brothers, our sisters, the entire family of Israel, the entire world, all who are in distress or taken into captivity, whether on the sea or on dry land, may the Ever-present One have mercy upon them and bring them out from narrowness to expanse, from darkness to light, from subjugation to redemption, now, speedily, and soon, and let us say, Amen.

An Israeli town: people want to live peaceful lives.

It is relentless.

It is not new.

It is always shameful.

Century after century, there are those who want to kill Jews. Too many succeed. That is not a reason to forfeit anything, especially one’s identity. And for what alternative? To become one of the haters, one of those with no capacity for tolerance and compassion. Being Jewish teaches you many things, but it especially teaches you about other people and their capacity for self-centeredness, closemindedness, intolerance, and evil.

We are here. Hineni. I am here.

How absurd it is that our haven, Israel, the one place where we can live without facing the impositions of a majority culture, is so dangerous for that very reason. Why are acceptance and acknowledgement so hard?

How absurd that we cannot be allowed to live in our sliver of land uninterrupted by rockets and unending attacks that counter our flourishing life with noxious hatred. Which is preferable?

How absurd that the world cannot let this minority (15 million people, a mere 0.2% of the world’s population) live in peace, a people amidst people. Perhaps if we could be called a critically endangered species we would be protected.

How absurd that we face the old, repeatedly debunked libels because antisemitism still festers like an epidemic that is never fully defeated. Again, this says more about the antisemites than the Jews who have tried to adhere to whatever rules have been imposed upon us only to be used, repeatedly, as scapegoats and checkbooks, and then thrown out.

How absurd that compassion has been perverted to demonize one group while lionizing another? If you only seem to care about one group, is it compassion or hatred that is truly guiding you?

And, of course, there are those who see this happening, century after century, standing by, letting it happen. Are they afraid to be seen as different, to think for themselves, to care for the other? Does it matter? Complicity is still guilt.

There are pictures of people cheering on these deadly attacks on Israel—the deaths of people—calling for more.

Jews are being attacked for being Jewish, maligned for standing up for their lives, their people, their homeland. A barrage of all 3 Ds of antisemitism (as formulated by Natan Sharansky) daily in the media: demonization, de-legitimization and double standards pertaining to Jews. The media and politicians blame Israel for fighting back, telling Jews that their lives don’t matter. Why should anyone listen to their voices? Certainly not us.

There are far worse humanitarian crises happening. And the world, as always, is silent about them. They only have the capacity to focus on one group. How intellectually and morally starved. A starvation that leads to real starvation around the globe—and in terror tunnels.

Why does our mettle, our commitment, need to be constantly tested? Those of us who are Jewish know that our ancestors resisted attempts at forced conversions throughout our history. Who are we—who am I—to give up now, and to barbarous regimes that are antithetical to everything we believe in. 

Perhaps you could ask us how we feel—and then care about the answer. I keep explaining how I feel because I need to be heard, because my soul craves connection to my people—and your people. My identity is a source of strength that I want you to see, not to overcome or challenge, but to accept and welcome.