Speaking Up: Now Is the Time

Jewish Pride and Resilience

Peaceful Zikhron Ya’akov, 2022 (author’s pic from her balcony)

Knowing when to shut up and when not to shut up—a basic life skill that we learn from experience and an understanding of “read the room.” At times, though, this needs to be balanced with a certain “to hell with the room, I need to speak,” which comes more from a fire within than noticing social cues.

Perhaps the lesson, then, is to know when not to put others first, but to push to the head of the invisible speaking line.

When I was much younger, I was far too quiet, unsure of my ideas and thoughts, and so I let others take up my space and theirs. When I was teaching, the “expert in the front of the room” persona easily (thankfully!) took over my personality, even when I wasn’t near a blackboard. There was a certain brashness to speaking over others that was thrilling, especially for an introvert.

Knowing, finally, that I don’t need to be an expert with a PhD to speak on a topic that I have been learning about much of my life has been a pivotal lesson. I finally grant myself credit for lived experience. (Can I get a doctorate in Life?)

This lesson also involves turning the critical mirror away from myself and toward the people I imagine questioning me. Do they really know more than me? Who among them has read the books and gone beyond the headlines for years, adding layers to understanding? Why should I cede my space to them? Who has the lived experience that I have? And how many of them only speak from a façade fabricated from other people’s word assemblies?

Since I’m not the only one in the world who thinks of the right thing to say after the time to have spoken has long since passed, I’m professing here to no longer letting that be another reason to stop me from speaking up.

At a recent multi-faith dialogue potluck, the conversation turned to Israel and Gaza, unsurprisingly. (This was before we could have been speaking of Israel and Iran.) A woman from a local Unitarian Universalist church started off with how horrible the Israelis are. With my mediation certificate self-shredding in the wind of my indignation, I spoke as soon as she took a pause for breath. When I said that is untrue, that the reality is not reported but a stilted, biased, partisan, view coming from people who are propogandists or activists more than they are journalists. (Maybe not in those exact words, because as I just said, it’s always lovelier when there is time to compose thoughts.) She looked at me with disbelief and asked if the NYT and the Washington Post could be wrong. Yes, they are. And, no, I am not the one in on a conspiracy theory.

And now—DEEP SIGH of distress and fear and anger and worry and hope—that Israel is demolishing Iranian installations that have sought to destroy Israel and murder Jews (the horrific bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 and wounding over 300, is clear evidence that this is not a passing whim of the ayatollahs), and now the Iranian regime is bombing Israeli population centers and hospitals, I’m proclaiming that I’m committed to not being silent, not invisible, not a bystander—not letting the nonsensical tit-for-tat narrative stand. And, please, can we pause to ask what the ayatollahs want—death to all Jews—and realize that it is an abomination that must be defeated.

As life goes on as usual here in the Pacific Northwest, with my heart and attention in Israel, I know that AS A JEWISH WOMAN I cannot pretend that life is normal. It hasn’t been normal since October 7, 2023, and the outburst of Jew hate around the world.

What does that mean?

Circling back to where I began: speaking up, not letting politeness excuse ignorance or misinformation or callousness to pass unchallenged. And not letting other Jews simply lalalalalalala it away by caring for all causes but our own as if the time hasn’t come to stand as a lion for our own people, even if you have issues with the current government.

What matters at this moment? It is life, it is my Jewish family, my tribe, Am Yisrael, and it is also those people who support us and don’t think of us as an aberration but as people among people. It is also a bit of “whataboutism” for other groups (Gazans and Iranians) who are harmed because I do not want a hierarchy of suffering. We shouldn’t need that. A human heart can be a tremendous thing, beating for all.

After having grown up in NYC and having lived in Israel for most of the 1980s and ‘90s, my perceptions of what is happening in Israel is different from most other Jews here in the States—having been forged by that reality, that could be so much lovelier if its neighbors would decide to live and let live. (Which continues to be the fervent hope!) I will continue to share my perspective that is driven by this deep connection to the land of our ancestors and origins, the place where I experienced what it means to be Jewish as identity without a hyphen—and why it’s important to care and support your Jewish family beside you and in Israel.

This is not to ignore other pain, this is to acknowledge my pain, our pain, your pain so a new path can be found, finally, halavi, let it be your will. Within the depths of sorrow and fear, hope is still within our beating hearts. Hope that love and peace and compassion overcome.