Say nothing, risk nothing. Say something, risk everything.

 I’m a Jew in the United States.

And I’m positively fucked.

Israel touts itself as a real democracy where all of its citizens have the same rights.

Arab citizens of Israel say that’s not true, that they have been singled out for discrimination all along and that it’s grown worse since October 7.

The Palestinians under Hamas’ rule in Gaza say that they are innocents caught in the line of fire.

Israelis who survived the attack and those who were able to escape captivity say that Palestinians working in the border area in southern Israel, people they’d been on good terms with for years, had in fact fed Hamas with information about businesses and homes in the region to facilitate the Hamas attack and the capture of Israelis living there on October 7.

Israel shows video that they say is of tunnels beneath hospitals and schools in Gaza. Gaza doctors and teachers categorically deny that tunnels exist (though one doctor purportedly admitted to a tunnel under his hospital after he was caught by Israeli troops.)

Not being there, I cannot know what is real.

The only thing that is real to me is the mountain of hatred that stands between Israelis and Arabs, a mountain that has existed since before I was born, and which I fear will exist long after I’m gone.

I’m a Jew who was born and raised in the United States. 

I’m an American Jew. 

Can I also be a Jewish American? 

Am I white? 

Am I not white?

More and more it seems that the answers depend on whom I ask.

No one seems in agreement.

Just as everything is about race in the United States, and probably will always be because of the great stain of slavery that spills over our entire nation’s history and our national mindset,   It would seem that Jews and Arabs keep nurturing a mountain of fear and hatred so tall and wide and deep that it probably can never be mowed down. Is the establishment of Israel the reason? Or are there reasons older than that, as old as the hatreds that keep feeding the fire of war today.

If I am to believe what my pro-Palestinian friends tell me, I can atone for my Jewishness by renouncing Israel as a Jewish state and working towards Palestinian sovereignty.

If I am to believe what my pro-Israel friends tell me, I can be the truest kind of Jew by “standing for Israel”. But what does that even mean?

How do I live in this world and maintain any shred of hope?

How do I live in this world and hope to maintain any shred of meaningful Jewish identity and communal connection?

Is it even possible to maintain both and still be who I am?

I feel more and more like I’m on the margins, both as an American AND as a Jew. Its an authentic place to be, and it feels like a damning place to be as well.

The more this goes on, the more alone I feel.

How can I choose where and how to be without betraying myself?

And how much of those choices have been made by others anyway?

Do I die alone, or do I die in the bosom of community?

Either way, I eventually die.

As we all do.

In the end, will it matter how or why?

I don’t know.

But how I LIVE has got to count for something, and that’s why I’m putting this out here, in spite of the risks.

I won’t even duck.

I’ve grown tired of ducking.