Having spent most of last year researching and writing a novel set in 1938, I can draw parallels to our Western society and world, which are nauseating to watch on the news and read daily. It’s 2024. It’s not 1938. As the wise once said, if we do not learn from history, we will repeat it. Yeah, I said it, kids; # sorrynotsorry, your TikTok education course is made up of a series of pundits spewing hatred for Jews while the IRGC claps giddily from their Ivory Palaces.
When someone says antizionism isn’t antisemitism they are wrong. The Jewish people and Israel are inextricably bonded. We are Am Yisrael, and if someone has told you or made you to believe otherwise I’m sorry to say you are sorely misinformed.
One of our commandments is to find Hatikvah, to find hope, to be a light among the nations. Rise up, find some light, and speak up. I see the look on people’s faces when my children say their holiday is not Christmas. I see the look on faces when my star stares at them. I received the vitriol in the carpool as a seven-year-old being told I’d go to hell while sitting in a 1990 van in Alaska. Well, it sounded warm? I jest. The world has had a problem and continues to have a problem for millenium.
This is not a problem with Israel. This is a problem with Jewish people. Saying “I’m an antizionist Jew” would not have saved anyone from being assaulted on the streets of Amsterdam two weeks ago.
Once a scapegoat, always used as a scapegoat. But the challenge and benefit now is that we have the proof, we have the tools and the ability to speak up. So do so.
That’s my birthday wish today, Dec. 6th, for people to be braver than they have been. To speak up for the Jewish people. To call out antisemitism. If we pick and choose our “causes,” that’s rather disgusting. Pick humanity for all and call a spade a spade. This attack on the largest synagogue in Australia one day ago was an antisemitic attack, not arson.
Question what your child is being taught about oppression in school, read the article they were given, request to see the curriculum. Ask your children, your neighbor, your family: do you follow geopolitics? What do you think about what’s going on in America, Europe, Australia, the world in terms of antisemitism? What do you think about that? Gear yourself up for a plethora of responses. Get curious.
Perhaps what I have written makes you feel a qualm of nausea, good. Perhaps what I have written makes you feel uncomfortable, good. The root of all growth takes place in discomfort folks. If we are here on this Earth to do anything it is to learn. Often times, when we learn an uncomfortable truth we wish to flee, to turn away, to shut it down. What if we were to sit with it?
Stew in the midst of the discomfort.
Consider the alternative perspective.
The narrative the media feeds the world about Israel, about Jews, is untrue.
Uncomfortable and unpopular truths seem to be the theme emerging for me in this next year. I’m here for it, as the kids say. Let my forty-first year be the year that my wisdom does not stay encased in my mind. Call it whistleblowing, call it the canary in the coal mind. “It’s me. Hi. I’m the canary you hear.” If you sang that in your head, iykyk, you’re welcome.
Question what is happening in your midst. Because if anyone learned anything from WWII: First they come for the Jews, and then everyone else with any semblance of independent thought.
Call for the humanitarian cause: BRING THEM HOME.
I highly encourage you to read the most recent article by Eve Barlow on her substack and step out of your comfort zone, especially if you love me or my family.
startwithsparkles 