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This evening, I
participated in an event called The Listening Room, held at the Mahone Bay
Center. There were 9 storytellers, and
an audience that was limited to 50. Our
job, if you will, was simply to tell a story, some story that we had
lived. The single condition was that it
was simply a story: there was no debate, no discussion. It feels as if I’ve been telling this story
for 2 ½ years (well, I have, actually), but not in a public space over which I
had no control. Not in a place in which
I knew not one other person. But I thought
(and still think) that it’s a story that deserves to be heard by people who are
not Jews. On y va:
There’s not a
human alive who hasn’t experienced all manner of loss – people die, we lose
jobs, we fall out with friends, things that are often situational. While our sense of loss is real, any one of
these things generally doesn’t translate to an ongoing series of losses. Recently, I’ve learned what happens if one
loss spirals into something that doesn’t seem to have an end.
October 7, 2023,
is a day often referred to by Jews as Black Sabbath, because that is the day
when Israel’s border was breached, and more than 1,200 Israelis and visitors
participating in a music festival were attacked, murdered, and taken hostage by
a terrorist group.
When I first
heard about this, as word trickled in from friends mid-morning, I received the
news with a sense of complete bewilderment.
I didn’t understand what was happening, how such a thing could even be
possible. As a Jew living in the
diaspora, at a time when Jew hatred in Canada was spiking, I knew that we
weren’t necessarily looked upon favourably.
I’d been called names and insulted, right outside my own synagogue in
Halifax, just because I’m a Jew. But
this seemed impossible.
Like most people
faced with the unbelievable, I sought community and went to my synagogue. In
fact, much of what I said then was said to fellow Jews – it felt unsafe even
then to say much to people outside our community, because even then it felt as
if there were people who believed that we somehow deserved whatever horror was
inflicted upon us, no matter where we were in the world.
A huge change for
me has been that bigotry really has come out of the closet – what people used
to maybe think to themselves was now being said aloud. In my workplace, my own union hosted events
that were not only misleading but that offered no opportunity for anybody who
had a contrary viewpoint to speak up.
Jews I worked with, across Canada, felt more marginalised than
ever. Some of my colleagues no longer
wear a Star of David, anywhere, because they feel unsafe. In the city where I lived, there were posters
accusing Jews of genocide, and if we were in groups, we were harassed by even
bigger groups, who were also much louder. We weren't even left in peace at prayer vigils, to mourn our dead and pray for those still held hostage. Police presence at Jewish events and increased security is now vital,
even in Nova Scotia.
Since October 7,
I have lost both friends and family members who are not Jewish, and I’ve been
learning how it is I can grieve when the person for whom my heart has broken is
(I hope) alive and well in their world.
I have a niece who’s just a few years younger than I am, and I was there
the day she was born. She has always
felt special to me. We had become friends, and even though we lived in
different provinces, we visited, and we were in frequent contact on social
media or by phone. I was her go-to when her children had questions about
Judaism or Jewish holidays. Then October
7 happened. And I disagreed with
something she had shared on social media – it was an article with a claim that
had been thoroughly disproven, and media sources who’d reported it on the first
page eventually published a retraction somewhere in the middle of the paper,
where, let’s face it, it doesn’t get as much attention. She hasn’t spoken to me since then. We’re still friends on social media, but I can
no longer see anything that she shares. The most recent thing I see on her
timeline is my birthday greeting to her in August 2023. I don’t know if she
looks at anything that I post, but she no longer comments.
People I’ve
considered friends for decades, who have spoken up about many hot topics, have
said absolutely nothing about October 7 – I don’t know if they read about it,
or if they’ve seen any of the documentary films about it – but I do know that
they don’t address it. And I think to
myself, “Well, you think this doesn’t affect you, because you’re not a
Jew. But I am right here, and it affects
me, so can’t you muster some care for that?”
Or perhaps they, too, think that we’ve done something to deserve this? People’s silence says so much more than their
words can do.
Even when I’m
specific, there is not the care for me or my people that so many people
demonstrate for what feels like the cause of the day. Dear friends, who are kind of my surrogate
parents in Israel, are both Holocaust survivors. Mirjam is rather pragmatic, which I think is
necessary if you live in Israel; her husband Avraham, however, will never
celebrate his birthday again, because it falls on October 7. He has nightmares, flashbacks to being a
small boy who was being hunted. Since
2023, they’ve spent more time in their safe room than in the world, as missiles
fly over Haifa. This is their life now,
and I worry so much about them.
Alex Dancyg, a Polish-Israeli historian and long-time Yad
Vashem Holocaust educator, was abducted from his home at Kibbutz Ner Oz and murdered
by Hamas while in captivity, though his family hoped for 9 months that he would
come home to them. I had studied with
him at the International School for
Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem, and when I was there in early July 2024, there
were posters of him everywhere, and a yellow chair symbolising that he was
missing from us, in every classroom. A
couple of weeks after my return, we all learned of his murder. It's hard to imagine what threat was posed by a 75-year-old scholar.
Like it or not,
it’s not hyperbolic to say that Jews are not as safe here as we thought
ourselves to be. When my small synagogue
in Halifax can be tagged with a swastika, and the people who care most about
that are Jews, that tells me that either it just doesn’t matter to non-Jews, or
that they believe if we were somehow better (or maybe just gone), this wouldn’t
be a problem. I have learned to expect
hatred, and I am learning to not allow that to control my own feelings. I don’t greet people with suspicion, and I
don’t hide my Jewishness, because it’s not problematic for me. It’s problematic for people who’ve chosen to
hate me for reasons that simply don’t make sense to me. When I told my daughter about this event, and
my participation, she was concerned and felt that I could be putting myself in
danger, or setting myself up for trouble.
“What if someone follows you home from this thing?” she asked. “What if they see where you live and just…
wait… and come back later to do something?”
One thing to know about my daughter is that she is not given to drama
and hyperbole. She’s really concerned
about this.
And what if
something does happen? I have no
answer. Because things we thought
couldn’t happen in Canada are happening in Canada. What I know is this: the Jews who were ‘good
Jews’ between 1939 and 1945 were not protected and kept safe from
extermination. I’m not going to be a Jew
with trembling knees, hiding my Jewishness because I’m afraid of what someone
else might do.
It seems that no
matter how often we point to history – a history in which Jews participated but
which we did not write – we’re told that we’re wrong. My story isn’t just about the event and
aftereffects of October 7, 2023. Jew
hatred existed long before this, and it seems that it will continue long after
I’ve left the planet. It matters because
children are being taught to hate, and because they will grow into adults who
continue to hate, assured that they’ve got it right. Judaism teaches us that we probably can’t fix
everything that’s wrong with the world – and these days, there’s a lot wrong –
but we are reminded that even if we don’t complete this work of repair, we are
not free to walk away from at least trying.
And so I try – I talk, I educate, I cite sources – and I will tell you
that it is exhausting. But that is at
least marginally better than doing nothing or pretending that this isn’t
happening.
And I’m so very
grateful for two friends – two (who are not Jews) – who specifically came to me on the heels of
that very black Sabbath to tell me, “If it comes to it, if you need to hide,
you come to us. We have a place for you,
and we will keep you safe.” In
Canada. In the 21st
century. There are people who understand
that it could come to this and who want me to know that they will help me. I’ve learned that it’s possible to hold two
painfully opposite thoughts together.
There’s not a Jew I know who wants everyone in Gaza to die. It’s not what I want, either. But I also believe in Israel’s right to exist
as a sovereign nation, and in the right of Jews like me to be alive on the
planet.
And all these
thoughts are things I never imagined I’d have to say at all, much less
in Canada, still less in Nova Scotia, with its Jewish population of fewer than
3,000. But here I am, saying it to you.
When all the
storytellers had finished, and the event was wrapping up, one of the others
said that it was difficult to stand up to tell his story after mine. Two people came to me to thank me for telling my story – they didn’t
have any idea. One of the two asked if I’d
be willing to have coffee with her next week.
She’d like to talk more about it.
I’m very glad I
did this. Funny, I am quite used to
being the person on the stage, or at the lectern, and I’ve never been nervous
about speaking in front of any group. In
this case, it felt different, because when you’re a Jew, there’s always a
possibility that there are people in the room who already know they hate you, because
you’re a Jew. I didn’t sense that in
this room. While I was speaking, a
number of people were looking intently at me, and seemed to be very engaged in
what I was saying. If you get a chance
to participate in a Listening Room event, as a storyteller or an audience
member, I recommend it.
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