A Letter to My Jewish Friends

After October 7 I fell apart. And that’s not like me. For those who don’t know: I’ve been in hiding with four kids under the age of nine from violence, ended up homeless with said kids, got us safe and stable then spent almost a decade wheelchair dependent. As I got sicker without diagnosis, I ended up in the basement of a nursing home with mold dripping down from the ceiling, legally blind, on liquid-only nutrition. I’ve had over 50 surgeries. I’ve been burned, cut, poisoned….

And yet I was not prepared.

And I feel so guilty that I fell apart. All 4 of my children are no more or less in danger than the rest of the world’s Jews. They are not being held hostage like rats in tunnels underground. They have all of their limbs. We have not had any immediate family members tortured or slaughtered.

And I am so deeply sorry to all of the families of over 220++ humans being held captive. I am so unbelievably sad for every funeral. I am overcome with grief and pain looking at every picture and hearing each testimony. I stand with you. I want them to come home. I want peace. I do not look away. I face the pain to stand beside you in this unthinkable unimaginable pain.

This letter is specifically to my Jewish friends and colleagues. Our non Jewish friends and supporters are more than welcome to stay with us here. I am grateful for those of you who have been brave enough to engage in painful, difficult discussions during this time. But this letter is not to dialogue with you or find pathways of understanding, as important as those conversations are.

This letter is definitely not for the haters. I am not writing to dispute, argue, prove, defend or otherwise engage with people who spew rhetoric about or take real actions towards my people’s destruction. I’ve heard you. You want me dead. ‘From the river to the sea’. It’s got a memorable beat, so don’t worry- I’ve heard you. ‘The whole massacre was made up’, or ‘it happened but only because we made them do it so it’s justified resistance to decapitate babies’. Got it. You want to ‘clean up the world’ so need those Jews to go into the toilet (another catchy image). I am not here to argue with you. I’m not here to defend myself or my people. So save your comments, stop reading. I’m not talking to you right now. You’ve taken up plenty of my feed and brain and air time lately. Thanks!

This is a family letter.

So dear friends, family and colleagues, those I’ve known for years and those I’ve not yet met- pull up a chair, have a seat, let’s get down to brass tacks. Let’s talk tachlis. Let’s start with naming the feelings:

Betrayal. I feel it deeply. I hear it from so many of your posts and videos and messages. They start like this, “I do not usually (or ever) post about non-business/personal matters/Judaism/ Israel/parenting…...but…” And then it’s some version of “how could you be silent?” Do you not see? Do you not know? Little children, whole families, holocaust survivors, disabled children…

Like most of you, I would consider myself basically one of the good guys. I’ve spoken for the Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change. I believe everyone should be equal under the law regardless of race, economic status, gender identification etc. In my younger hippie days at SUNY Binghamton, I drafted the equality statement that added discrimination clauses across all of the New York schools- a joint effort between the Gay Student Union, the Black Student Union and the Jewish Student Union- that are still used to this day. I stand up for women’s rights internationally. My first company was a cause-related marketing agency. My second was for wellness in the workplace. Now I’m helping change financial incentives in the US healthcare system so we can profitably pay for doing the right thing.

I have decent-moral-person cred.

And I thought the people I’ve worked with for years, the people with whom I’ve stood side-by-side advocating, the friends who have known me to be consistently decent and loving, I naively thought that they stood for all people. Not all people except the Jews. An old story, yet still so surprising.

Decades ago some terrorists with advanced skills at public relations attached the cause of the Palestinian people and their violent elected representatives and glued the entire package to the academic-liberal agenda. This has been so successfully packaged that otherwise intelligent people who fight for gender-identity-equality and safety-from-sexual-violence and vegan-bioethical-sustainable-farming now completely miss that the very objects of their parade-ground affections are savages who gang-raped and mutilated other leftist farmers and gender-neutral kids who dance for unity, peace and free love in the desert.

We have become a generation of cognitive dissonance.

Then there is the silence. The what-aboutism. The language of nuance and compromise. The looking-away. The refusal to look. I know you hear the silence. I know because I have heard you begging your intelligent, rational, decent friends, colleagues and neighbors to remember that mass decapitation is not something the good guys do, and that it’s just off any moral barometer to throw a parade and party in the streets with women’s mutilated bodies.

I also know how much it takes to look. To look literally at the face of evil and not look away. And for many people, they just are not capable of getting so close to that much intractable pain.

I received a call from one of my non-Jewish friends. We cried together. We raged. He sat with me in the pain and for that I will always always be grateful. One of the ideas we shared is that most people can not get that close to the pain. And even more people just simply lack the moral fortitude required to say, “I was wrong and I want to change my opinion and/or my actions.” Most people dig their proverbial heels in, defending themselves to themselves. That is how otherwise good people can look away.

The feeling of betrayal from people, leaders and policies is as old as the rest of this story of the Jews among nations of people. Up to 90% of the early 20th Century American Communist party were Jewish. They shared a common thread with today’s academic left of rejecting historical religious connections and holding on to what a deep belief in justice and freedom and equanimity among people looks like when one removes concepts like God and religious doctrine.

These American immigrants volunteered to fight side-by-side with Spanish workers in the Spanish Civil war. They were then absolutely devastated when communist Russia signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler- siding not with the workers’ rights and freedom for the everyman but with fascism and terrorism. You can go forwards and backwards in history to find again and again Jews fighting for freedoms for all people to have those same allies in mission turn against them when Jews were more useful as scapegoats for a society in pain.

Then the Jewish psyche so oddly and so often turns to another deep emotion within: shame. If you say I’m a dirty Jew, maybe I really smell. If you say my ancestors murdered your messiah, I guess I should pay the price 1,000 years later. If 2,000 years later you throw a grenade at my home and I catch it, then I throw it back before dying, and then when it lands back in your backyard someone dies, and then if you tell me it’s all my fault because I started it or because it was my hand that touched the grenade last before killing an innocent bystander, or maybe because my ancestors murdered your prophet- then, well, you must be right. Surely the world wouldn’t call me a dirty Jew for thousands of years if there wasn’t some truth to it that I can’t smell …. Right?

On the next stop on this emotional roller coaster since October 7- let’s name it: FEAR.

We are the grandchildren of victims and survivors of the latest genocide of the Ashkenazi Jewish world, the Holocaust. Far less talked about in the American-European centric skewed view of the world: our Sephardi and Mizrachi families who lived for well over 1,000 years in relative peace and prosperity side-by-side the Muslim Arab majorities in Syria, Iraq, Persia (Iran), Tunisia, Morocco…. Whose existence and contributions in these countries has literally been erased in less than 50 years of genocide and expulsions.

Even more recently- our Jewish family members who grew up in the constant fear of being Jewish in Soviet Russia- over 1,000,000 emigrating to Israel after the Iron Curtain fell. Or our Ethiopian family members- persecuted until our Israeli family members airlifted them to safety.

We have grown up and raised our children to think about who would hide us or which child looks most Aryan to send for bread; we’ve committed to ourselves that we would be among those who risked life in a ghetto uprising or a partisan army, not among those who walked to their death.

As a student of history I will tell you (this again is not a letter of evidence- the internet will provide you plenty right now if you care to look) that we have begun another genocidal event. The Jewish people will survive. The fact that we always do is truly the biggest thorn in the side of every civilization in all of history that has tried to destroy us. We have outlived every single group of people that sought to destroy us. Unquestionably we will survive this one. But many Jews will die. And more than the danger that many other people’s will be under, more than the loss of all the good and inventiveness these now-dead Jews would have brought to the world, and more than the rewriting of history that will invariably occur after this genocidal period, each of the good human beings, the big bucket that makes up humanity, will be irreparably damaged. Because every time there is a genocidal event against the Jews, it requires, just like today, that good people with decent-moral-person cred will look away.

Half of you reading are thinking that I’m an alarmist. I may be well intentioned but I am exaggerating the likelihood that we have witnessed the beginning of another dark dark dark moment in history. Surely these are isolated evil-doers. Again, I’m not going to reiterate the evidence, you can find it online. I will sum it up with one fact:

By the time they burn Jewish babies and the world looks away- it has already started.

So now what?

I know that many are thinking, “I hear you, BUT….I’m not a smelly Jew because I wear the latest deodorant. …..I changed my name, I changed my clothes, I look and sound and smell just like the non Jews. I’m a tenured professor in their university. I’m an atheist. My spouse isn’t Jewish. My Dad isn’t Jewish. I am not a Zionist. I don’t even believe in the modern state of Israel. I converted. I marched, boycotted, defended….I am not the kind of Jew they want to kill.

If only those Zionists would compromise. Give back a bit of land. Stop being occupiers. Take less. Meet in the middle. If only those religious zealots would act less like fanatics- this is all caused by fanaticism. If only Jews would be a bit less Jewish. If only they’d wear more deodorant the world wouldn’t blame the smelly Jews.

So let’s go back to the historical origins of this “conflict.” Not 1948- go back much much further. Quite simply, the Muslim Arab-Jewish conflict is literally the oldest sibling rivalry of all time. A little over 3,900 years ago (yes, Jews have a LONG memory), there was this dude Abram (who later became Abraham.) Abraham had two women who each gave him a son: first Hagar had Ishmael. Then Sara had Issac. The mothers were not besties. Abraham was pushed to choose, kept Sara and Issac by his side (leading to the creation of the nation of Israel also known as the Jewish people) and banished Hagar and Ishmael- who then became the first ancestors of the Arab-Muslim people.

So you know the aunt that no one will talk to and no-one remembers why? The brothers who go to their grave hating each other? The divorced parents, three decades later, who make their children choose between them for the holidays? Now multiply that by 4,000 years and convince me that an upstart country of a bit over 200 years young can make a treaty that will solve this family rift. Seriously?

The second is a quick reality test in geography. For this I’ll need you to literally look at a map if you’re not totally clear on the geography of the modern state of Israel to the Gaza strip as well as all of their not-so-friendly neighbors on all sides except the Mediterranean sea (the sea the chanters want to push the Jews into).

Since Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza strip in 2005, the people of the neighboring Sderot, of the neighboring kibbutz farms of Be’eri, of the many others whose name you may not yet have memorized, lived with regular violence: bombings that did not stop when Israel withdrew from Gaza but increased. Bloodshed and fear that were minimized not eradicated over the past twenty years. In Kibbutz Be-eri the preschool playground doubled as bomb shelters; just imagine the daily life that requires a farming community to build integrated toy turtles and missile protection.

Tens of thousands of Jews have been evacuated from both the North and South of Israel right now. Many have no home to return to after this war. Even more will be returning to shells previously called home now overtaken by emaciated feral cats, insects and vermin.

If these Israelis will not return to their home communities after the war, Israel will have to shrink into half of itself even if no more land is sacrificed in the name of peace. Without getting further into history, geography and other mundane lessons, suffice it to say that if the devastated and traumatized communities of people, people who watched their families mutilated in front of them, communities that collectively were already living with daily Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder before having their eyeballs ripped out or their limbs cut off and then somehow miraculously surviving….If these remaining families do not feel safe to return home- Israel as an independent modern state will cease to exist.

So there is no negotiating with a people whose entire organizational structure calls for the extermination of me and my family (though, have no fear- the Jews will try!) There is no possible end to this war other than the total destruction of Hamas, in other words: there is no possible way for an end to this war until the people of Sderot and Kibbutz Be’eri and the rest of the evacuated South feel confident that they will not return to then be massacred a few months or years later. By destroyed I don’t just mean dead. I mean so humiliated in defeat that their hungry Islamic jihad brothers and sisters on arms think long and hard before trying again.

This is not about politics. This isn’t solely about land or religion. It is about the basic ability for the Jewish people to have a tiny place that won’t kick them out, and to have that in the middle of yet another time where across the world it is becoming more and more difficult to live anywhere else.

If you need a reminder of what got us into this- start with 4,000 years of sibling rivalry and end with burnt babies and decapitated peace-loving holocaust-survivors and wrap it up in a bow of: there is nowhere else to go.

So let’s go back to our emotional cornucopia and I’ll add another in: Pride. Overwhelming pride of the young people who are fighting for my right to exist on this planet. Pride for the boys and girls who slept on the floors of airports and airplanes, dropping everything to fly back into war to serve. Unbelievable pride that there is a breed of Jew who says “never again” not because the world will not rise up to wipe us off the face of the earth again. They say never again because never again will the genocidal enemy be met with silence from within. Never again will there be Jews who seek to compromise themselves away from our very right to exist. Never again will we be sheep to a slaughter.

The Jewish people have been a warrior nation for many years. With the creation of a modern state, the Jewish people continued this tradition via one of the most elite forces in the world. And these soldiers- men and women so young that I can only still call them children, just barely getting started on living this life- they are not fighting just for land. They are not fighting only for conviction. They are fighting for your very right to exist anywhere in the world.

It’s going to get ugly. Very ugly. For now, accept that the IDF has no other option other than the destruction necessary to grant a peace of mind necessary for people to be willing to live within miles of Gaza again, because we still have some ground to cover today. By this point in our conversation I hope that you have at least set aside the incessant craving for the non-Jewish world to like, care about or want to understand you. The world hates you far more than you’ll accept. And it does not at all matter. Politically, economically, socially….the world will support and protect those whom it needs. The world needs a strong Israel. The world needs smart Jews. This is not a popularity contest. Let it go.

Israel spent three weeks trying to get people to move so they could end Hamas and end fighting with minimal loss of non-combatant lives. The same PR masterminds who linked baby murders with the agenda of the generally life-loving-academic-left realized that it would be far more impactful to enable an environment that creates optics of women and children being crushed in the rubble of bombed buildings. Forget that every other war in the history of mankind has tragically killed women, children and other non-combatants. You must set that aside and fully accept a double standard when it comes to the Jews.

Following the public relations strategy, Hamas built armories under hospitals. They’ve stolen massive amounts of fuel from their own people that’s warehoused to provide ventilation to their tunnels of mass destruction - leaving pictures of the same women and children trapped without electricity or running water. The pictures are going to get bad. And if anyone ever thought of the 40+ burnt babies in their cribs or the 1,000+ peace loving farmers and dancers who were masacred, or the hundreds of women brutally raped or the tens of thousands left homeless, if anyone in the general public thought of it the first couple of weeks. As the images change, they will forget.

And you may have moments or hours or days or weeks of forgetting that Ishmael hates Isaac or that the world has hated you without “just cause” or that the liberal institutions you’ve given your life to have betrayed you. You will forget and be ashamed.

Because murder and destruction is anathema to the Jewish soul. The very things these Jewish children must do so that you and I can live will cost a bit of their very being. And if you’re not convinced by now, you’ll just have to accept for a moment that they are fighting for much more than the right of Israel to exist. They are fighting for your right to exist anywhere in the world.

And I am so sad for the real sacrifices these hundred of thousands of young Israeli soldiers are giving up- including if not especially the Christian, Arab, Muslim, Bedouin, Druze and otherwise not Jewish Israelis who wear the IDF uniform and are fighting today for their right to live free of mass mutilation.

And I am so grateful and so proud. And so as a people, our number one priority must be supporting these soldiers and their families. The support the past few weeks have been one of the greatest sources of pride and joy. Hundreds of millions of private dollars were given immediately to support Israel. An entire country is mobilized to help each other. The stories are so unbelievably positive. In the time of seeing the worst of mankind, the Israeli people are showing us the best of who we are capable of being.

You haven’t heard about a humanitarian crisis of homeless Israeli refugees despite tens of thousands of people being dislocated right now. Why? Because other Israelis have opened up their homes and hearts. Just one example: 6,000 families from the South needed a place right away. Someone put this on a whatsapp posting. Within 45 minutes all 6,000 had been given free homes from other Israelis who took them in.

For a minute Israeli Jews forgot who they are and diaspora Jews forgot that they are our heroes. This forgetting led to the world seeing the streets of Israel filled with Jews protesting other Jews. This forgetting led to public fist fights in Tel Aviv, Jew against Jew on Yom Kippur, arguably the holiest day of the year. The forgetting led to baseless hatred of Jew against Jew, the very same baseless hatred that led to the destruction of our Temple 2,000 years ago. What hard-headed people we are!

And the greatest joy, the beauty that goes hand in hand with this horrific, disgusting, unimaginable pain and destruction of October 7- is called “achdus” in Hebrew. Achus means: unity and harmony, the ability to come together and coexist peacefully even if you do not agree with each other, or even more, despite not agreeing with each other. The opposite of baseless hatred among Jews is “Ahavas Yisroel” love of one Jew to another. If baseless hatred has historically been the cause of our demise, radical love for each other will be our salvation.

Look around Israel today and you will see love.

Ahavas Yisroel and the power of achdus also fuels the other Jewish front line that will be protecting Jews around the world.

In the 1950s Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the 7th Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Chabad Lubavitch Chassidus movement, started sending emissaries out around the world to establish “Chabad Houses.” Today 4,900 Chabad emissary families (aka shluchim) operate 3,500 institutions in over 100 countries and territories. As the world inevitably erupts in a new, current fury of violence and hatred towards Jews, in many areas the local Chabad house may be the only haven for Jews in a moment’s notice. As they have done for decades, these families will not only be providing spiritual support for Jews from any background or set of beliefs, but these homes and buildings will turn more and more into the disaster relief and embassies that they have done in the past in times of hardship- whether it was the Chabad of Mumbai during the terrorist attacks or the Chabad of Maui during the recent fires.

And really of course this all comes to the ultimate protection for us now and always: a kept promise. 4,000 years ago, when Abraham was choosing one son and not the other, a series of other choices were also made.

As in last week’s portion, the Torah reports: “God said to Abram: Go forth from your land, and from your birthplace and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make unto you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and you shall be a blessing.”

And so began the unbroken love affair between the Jews, our Creator and the land and the Torah He gave us. If you may die for being a Jew, why not learn to live a bit more like a Jew? Of the many fantastic projects that bloomed out of this month, www.sharejustonething.com is providing a way for us to lift ourselves up together.

For over 4,000 years, this resilience called the Jewish problem has poked at every civilization. Every great empire has risen, every empire has sought to solve their Jewish problem through extinction, assimilation or banishment, and then the Jewish people have outlived every single great and mighty civilization. Every. Single. Time.

We have been slaughtered. We have been enslaved. We have been persecuted. We have had to live in ghettos. We have been forbidden from owning land. We’ve had to live on the run. We have been humiliated. Our women have been raped. Our babies have been burned.

We have outlived every civilization. And we have done more than survive. We have led the world year after year, century after century, in the arts and sciences, in medicine and technology, in governance and in morality. We not only introduced monotheism to the rest of the world, we introduced purpose, mission and an idea that life is more than survival.

We have lived. Every. Single. Time.

Not a single army could destroy us. Not an inquisitor chasing across the ocean. Not a pope. Not a crusader. Not a pharaoh. Not a fuhrer. Not a king. Not a queen. Not one thousand rioting masses. Not a khomeini. And definitely never a group of uneducated rag-tag punks who hide in tunnels like rats and kill unprotected babies because they lack the courage to fight like men. Not them either. Not ever.

We live. Am Yisroel Chai.