On Strength and Discomfort - 7/20/2024

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining me today as we mourn those who have been killed in Israel’s most  recent genocidal campaign that started 288 days ago. Given that so much infrastructure has been destroyed, it is not possible to know how many have been killed. The estimates are between 40,000 and 189,000. So many more are injured, displaced, under the rubble, imprisoned. I am scared that it sounds disingenuous when I say that I am praying for Palestine. I am praying the prisoners are freed. I pray that the blockades are opened and people can access medical care and basic resources. I pray the missing are found and that the killing ends. I pray the memory of the martyrs lives on. 

I have been volunteering at Providence’s Fringe festival for the past few days. I am blown away by some of the thoughtfulness that permeates from the art. There are many people grappling with some incredibly heavy things like climate anxiety, the harms of masculinity, the state of human suffering, grief and more. 

On Friday, I was helping with some shows hosted at Public, a Black-owned art gallery space. I walked in and was taken with how beautiful and comforting the space felt. The space is clearly run by people who have a certain ethic and way of approaching the world that I really resonated with. On the walls were large pieces of art about Providence’s segregation and the environmental hazards that are disproportionately concentrated in neighborhoods of color. There were banners about Palestinian liberation, and the ways that the fight for Palestine is tied to climate justice, Black liberation, and the land back movement. In the back corner, among dozens of other protest signs, was a cardboard sign that said Jews for a Free Palestine.

Before one of the shows started, a woman was looking at a banner that tied Black and Palestinian liberation and asked the owner of the space if she could cover it with this movable gallery wall. The gallery owner said: absolutely not, but she was welcome to leave if it made her too uncomfortable. She turned around and sat in her seat. I was standing next to the gallery owner and I said that I would be happy to help with any Zionist escalation if it was necessary. I told him that as a Jewish person in the Palestine solidarity movement, I was there to back him up. We went on to have a nice conversation about what solidarity means. I asked him about his art, and about the business that he ran. 

I have been thinking about this interaction and the greater lessons that exist with it because like every Jewish scholar before me, I love to find torah in my day to day interactions. 

Discomfort can be just as unifying as it can be separating. This woman’s discomfort gave us a moment to stand together. Up to this point, I had not talked with the gallery owner much except to make sure that he had what he needed and that the performers had what they needed. Responding to this woman, and her discomfort was an opportunity for solidarity and empowerment that would not have happened otherwise. And this makes sense when you think about the fact that how one responds to discomfort is a good heuristic into seeing one’s politics. 

It is really easy to stand for something that you believe in when you do not face any opposition, when your point of view is within the norm of wherever you find yourself. And on the contrary,  it is harder to stay resolute in moments of conflict, when it becomes apparent that there are individuals or groups in some shared space that do not hold the same ideas. In these moments, at least for me, it can feel uncomfortable to say something and instead of rattling a cage, I might just be quiet. There is a time and a place for staying silent, but how often does that silence come with a sense of guilt or regret? 

It took me many years to lean into the discomfort that came from family conversations about Palestine. It took me a year and a half to tell my parents I went to Palestine, and they found out that I left my synagogue over Palestine because they read about it in a Guardian article.  For years, my parents or brother or cousins would say something Zionist, and in an effort not to deepen the discomfort or start a fight, I would say nothing. This is much less true these days than it was years ago and it has become more apparent to me that there are dangers that come with complacency and choosing comfort over morality. 

Globally, arguments about Jewish comfort are used to delegitimize every call for Palestinian liberation. This is not that different from white people using discomfort to justify racism and police brutality, or white discomfort leading to  anti-immigrant sentiment that has led to the militarization of our border and construction of concentration camps. We live in a cruel world that gives passes and excuses and justifications for violence because someone in power felt threatened. 

So as much as my pulse still elevates every time I think about conflict, it is more important than ever to embody the idea that we must be strong and resolute - or in Hebrew chazak v’amatz.

Now this phrase, chazak v’amatz is said for the first time when Moses is passing down the leadership mantle to Joshua. He tells him to be the strong and resolute leader that the people need as they leave the desert and into the “promised land.” Following this recitation, the phrase is used throughout the post-Torah books of prophets and is a value that is central to Judaism. The historical nature of a people being uprooted, exiled and vilified through the middle ages, inquisitions, Holocaust and rise in white supremacy demands a certain amount of strength and resoluteness to continue. So it is with this that I look to my ancestors. I look to the people throughout history, both Jewish history and non-Jewish history who have stayed resilient. I look to Palestinians who are resilient, and have been forced to be so, by the Zionist regime. 

Being chazak v’amatz is something I strive for every single day because our world does not have the time for us to be anything else. R- imagining and fighting for a better world, and  sticking to that vision especially when it opposes many systems of power is a daunting task and one that requires individual and communal strength. As we carry our grief together, we also carry our strength. We must keep each other accountable, and hold each other up not just in discomfort but also in safety and solidarity.