On Holding Grief Together - 5/26/2024

Hello everyone, and thank you for coming. Today marks the 232nd day of the on-going genocide in Gaza. As we come to another Sunday, I find myself angry that we continue to have to count the martyred. According to the tracker on Al - Jazeera, over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed across the West Bank and Gaza, there are over 85,000 people injured by Israeli violence, and 10,000 missing. All of these people are so much more than numbers. I pray that the injured return to health, the missing are found, and that those who have been killed live on in the memories of their communities. 

Despite typing these numbers week after week, I question how this is the reality. How is it that people can go about their lives day after day and not fall apart? I go to work, send my emails, do my chores, all while knowing that the horrors of the world continue. It seems impossible that other people are willfully ignoring the news. They think it is too complicated or too far away to care. The fact that other people seem to be living life as usual doesn’t make sense to me and sometimes I literally feel crazy in my grief and rage. 

This week in particular has been really hard for me, and as a result, I have found myself leaning toward and into disconnection more and more. I do not want to talk to other people, and find it harder and harder to lean on my friends and loved ones despite knowing that that may be what I need. I started this weekly kaddish to give people space to find each other, and yet, I am struggling to do just this.

In the Bible, Moses experiences extreme fatigue as he is leading the people through the desert. His father and law Yitro, or Jethro in English, pulls Moses aside, and according to Exodus 18:18, he says: you will surely wear yourself out, and these people as well. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone. In this passage, Yitro is saying that isolation will not only tear Moses apart, but also all of the people that rely on his leadership. The only solution is to lead together. And in our case, the only way forward is to grieve together, to fight together, to hope together. 

Many of us have likely experienced some sense of isolation and withdrawal over the past months. The capacity to keep taking in information seems impossible as we see the ongoing horrors.  There are times where we organize and protest, and call our congresspeople, and take these actions fairly automatically. We continue to keep calm and carry on, finding those pieces of something that keep us going. It could be watching how Palestinians demonstrate “samud”, or resilience and have for decades to centuries. It could be watching aid workers risk everything to get food and medicine in the hands of Gazans. It could be the strength that we take from one another. Regardless of what it is, we keep returning to action to end the genocide and for a Free Palestine. 

For me, it matters that the push for action come from a place of connection to something that is bigger than anger at my government for committing genocide in my name, but over the past weeks, as I have felt this emotional disconnection set in more and more and in trying to find that fire again. I have found myself turning toward religion even more. Not because I believe in god, I don’t, but because I believe that there is power in going through ritual and text that people have turned to in times of trouble for centuries. Maybe there is wisdom that I will find in these old words. There have to be reasons that in times of loss, grief, rage, sadness, people find connection to some deeper meaning in Judaism. 

It was in this quest that I finally listened to Judaism Unbound, a podcast hosted by two lefty Jews, one of whom is a friend. This past week, the podcast spoke with Rabbi Elliot Kukla, a trans, anti-Zionist and disabled rabbi. Rabbi Kukla talks about grief and all the ways that grief can either separate or connect us. For example, over the past few years, over 1 million people in the United States died from COVID-19. Not only this, but many lost jobs, houses, friendships, relationships, etc. and we have not really had any public memorials, or widespread opportunities to hold this grief together. Because of this, people have to sit in some of the most intense feelings imaginable by themselves, fractured and broken. He suggests that if people came together to grieve the pandemic losses together, they would find more connection and strength.

Experiencing grief alone sits in a deep contrast to how we share this grief together. We mark the ongoing genocide and the lost that flows from it week after week. We do this work together because the moment demands it, and because grieving together is powerful. It unifies us as a community. As this group, we make the statement week after week that this grief not only exists, but it brings us together in strength and love. So not only is our presence here necessary on an individual and moral basis, but even more so because of the ways that we hold each other up. 

Our gathering is revolutionary. In a Capitalist world of individualism, and grind mindsets, we act in opposition. We are also making a statement that we as Jews (and allies) are grieving as we see our Palestinian siblings killed in the name of our safety. We refute Zionist lies and we let our sadness bring us together so that no one be left to mourn alone.

I want to end with selected lines from “Blessing over Organizing” written by Shelby Handler, a poet and organization with Jewish Voice for Peace.

 

Bless all the sacred architectures we craft to catch our people, how our efforts stretch across time & space to weave a place for our folks to land in.

Bless all the mundane work it takes for us to be dangerous together. Bless calling our friends & family to ask, “Do you want to get involved?” Bless what we really mean:

Do you want to build a new world together? Do you want to build a new ‘us’ together?

Bless how we link arms & lock ourselves to buildings

to forge a chain that pulls us closer to the world we need.

May we win real safety this time. May we create new kinships along the way—

kinships that can outlive all forms of supremacy.

May we reach a belonging our ancestors never got to have. And may we call out to those who are not yet with us:

If your heart is broken, may that breakage be a doorway. There is a family waiting for you called a movement.