On Counting - 9/1/2024

Hello everyone and thank you for joining me for today’s community kaddish. Today marks the 330th day of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the mass land grab and escalating violence in the West Bank. Though it always feels as if things could not be more horrifying, here we are, mourning the growing list of martyrs while our government sends even more arms to the Zionist entity. The official death counts feel too circumspect to trust, and these numbers will never be able to capture the devastation that Palestinians are facing every single day. I am still praying and hoping that this violence ends soon, and that Palestinians will be able to return to peace and safety in their land. 

There are many reasons why it feels important to mark each week with an ongoing count of the days since October 7, 2023. One is that we should have to be keenly aware of the violence that our government is committing with our tax dollars. We may not want to claim this government as our own, and though it is tempting to do so, the veil of democracy is growing more translucent, and corporations and AIPAC own our government. And as an American, even if I condemn the government's actions with every breath, it is still essential that we remember that the people who “represent” us, are using their powers for genocide in Palestine and have done so every day for the last 330 days and 76 years. 

One of the reasons that I count the days the way that I do is because of an innately Jewish practice of counting days. Throughout the Jewish calendar, there are several occasions where we count the days either as we are leading up to a holiday and the act of counting is a ritual itself. I know that Jews are not the only people who do this. Christians mark the days leading up to Chritians with advent. Muslims count the days of Ramadan and figure out the start and end date based on the cycle of the moon.

Though counting days as a ritual is not unique to Judaism,  it feels really natural and important to me because unlike rituals which are commanded to take place on a certain day or time, counting becomes the ritual itself, and as a result, we change the fabric of reality. Our days are filled with time and space and by making time itself holy, we are able to draw the divine into the day itself. 

And as I go through the past 330 days, I have realized just how many ways I have been counting and accounting for the on-going genocide. There are the things that we have been counting together each week: the number of days since the beginning of the genocide, and the number of people who have been killed (estimates are anywhere between 40,000+ and close to 200,000). I will often share some of the news highlights from the week as a way of drawing time into the ritual of grieving together. 

Outside of the space that we have here, there are many more ways to count the many events, contexts and sequelae of the past 330 days. Some that come to mind are:

The 600 arms shipments, comprising 50,000 tons of military equipment, that the US has shipped to Israel. The IOF has dropped 70,000 tons of explosives on Gaza as of June, 2024. The IOF, in conjunction with occupying terrorists, have seized 9.15 square miles of land in the West Bank since October 7th, bringing the total land seized to 19.3 square miles since 1998. AIPAC has spent millions of dollars on manipulating elections. In 2024 alone, they have spent $24,840,467 in contributions, and close to $2 million in lobbying. 

To me, even though these numbers feel horrifying to me, they still feel far away and hard to imagine. They are the numbers that I see people on social media counting the genocide, and do not take me wrong, these are all important numbers, but they are not the ones that I count every day. 

Every time I wash my dishes, or cook, or shower, I think about the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have access to 3 liters of water a day. Every time I leave my house, I remember that 70% of all housing units in Gaza have been destroyed, and that 1.9 million people, about 90% of Gaza’s population, have been internally displaced. When I play with my friends’ child, I think about the at least 17,000 children who have been made to be orphans or have otherwise been separated from their parents over the past 330 days and the at least 21,000 children who have been murdered.

I have the luxury of counting these days, events and sequelae as someone who is not directly experiencing loss. I am not in danger of losing my home or my family from bombs being reigned down. As someone who isn't Palestinian, I do not have to deal with the Islamophobia, racism and general dehumanization that has been coming from many different sides. My people have not experienced apartheid, illegal occupation and genocide over the past 330 days and 76 years.

 In fact, as an American Jew, I grew up embedded in Zionist institutions and have certainly given money, time or other resources to institutions that directly responsible for the ongoing genocide in Palestine. And so while this was in the past, I contribute to this math. And so when I count and turn time from an abstract into something concrete, it is only as an attempt to grasp the suffering that Palestinians are experiencing directly. Our accounting, whether public or private, is the very least that Palestinians deserve. They deserve to be so much more than numbers and casualties. Our counting does not bring safety or freedom, or an end to the genocide, but it may be a way for us to reckon with and give us the smallest understanding of the totality of the past 330 days and 76 years.