*This post is part of a three-part series. An audio teaser of this post is directly below. If you would like to hear part two in its entirety, as told in my own voice, the full audio is available for paid subscribers beyond the paywall at the end of this post.
A Jewish American in the time of Palestine has the privilege of amplifying from the safety of her bed
by Maverick L. MaloneI wake up in the night and begin:
this is my right, a privilege,
to write
bringing that pain to exist in one more place
it shouldn’t ever have to live.
But sin must be pinned to the prison of a poem.
The poem must bear witness to the suffering of the oppressed,
the grief stricken, the murder of love and freedom;
I must try
to hold a Palestinian’s hand as gently as I can –
to listen, to whisper, friend I see you.
Such atrocities are not so easily forgiven.
A Jew remembers when the rest have forgotten.
My ancestors did not burn for this – to burn another.Our history is not buried under rubble.
It is happening right here in real time:
excessive force, hatred, violence,
tattooed into the flashing embered sky;
bombs and missiles to a knife fight.
Call it by its name: a genocide.
Have we learned nothing as a species
of what it means to die choking on our ashes?
An open-air grave is no place to raise a child –
just the voices of a generation the volume of simple.Please do not close the door and go quietly.
Noise may be the only thing left we haven’t tried.You cannot erase or eradicate the thousands of innocent lives
ghosts haunting their own forced gallows
a smoke chokehold outstretched for solidarity
the killings, the burnings, the bombings
and still
you look away
and still
the world falls silent
and still
another slips through the cracks
and cannot be exhumed.I am asked, what is a Jew?
I am asked, what is a life?
I am asked, what is a human?Not this, not this, not this.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend slid into my DMs.
“Could I ask you a personal question about Jewishness?” she asked. “Yes, of course,” I said.
She proceeded to tell me a bit of her personal relationship with Judaism, where it lay in her lineage, albeit small and loosely tied, but present, and that she herself was trying to figure out its meaning, its relevance. Her message culminated in the question that sparked this very article and brought forth the words I have been struggling to say.
She asked in earnest curiosity, “What does your Jewishness mean to you?”
A profound question, one that I had swept under the rug for years, choosing to view my Jewishness as background noise, as something that was always present but not always relevant to and certainly not prominent within my own personal identity. She, along with the world, are asking the same questions now not only to Jews and those with loose ancestral ties to Judaism, but of all humans: what does it mean to be Jewish today? In many ways, I feel I am just now myself figuring that out.
I am a bit of an anomaly. My mother and her entire side of the family is Jewish, but my father was born in Cuba and raised Catholic, converting to Judaism before I was born. I am of both Jewish descent and Hispanic heritage, but have always felt a little out of place. And while I was always instructed to check “Caucasian” rather than “Hispanic” on forms (though my maiden name of Garcia gave it away already), part of me has always wondered why there weren’t more options.
For years, I was confused. Was I white or Hispanic? Was I Jewish if half my family wasn’t? Why did I have to be either this or that? Why couldn’t the world see me for the amness that I am?
I attended Sunday school, Shabbat services, and all the high holidays. I was encouraged to become bat mitvah’d though I chose not to (more so because I had a debilitating fear of public speaking and could not fathom myself reading Hebrew in front of the entire congregation). I was encouraged to join BBG (the Jewish equivalent of a sorority), but after a couple of mixers, I bowed out. Half of my family celebrated Christmas and the other half, Hanukkah. We were in the Hanukkah camp, but as I had virtually no Jewish friends, I was the odd one out during December. I felt guilty doing anything even loosely tied to Christmas, but I always appreciated the sentiment it inspired. I participated in events and services at the temple I attended, but always felt a quiet disconnection to it. Despite Judaism having a presence in my life, it was not a strong one.
Growing up Jewish in the south, I went to a predominantly white, Christian school and encountered my share of antisemitism. Over the years, I began to feel ashamed. The world taught me that was not ok – to believe and think differently, to align with what many other groups so vehemently disagreed.
In fourth grade, a girl told me I was single-handedly responsible for killing Jesus. In sixth grade, I was teased and bullied by a Middle Eastern boy because he was taught to hate Jewish people. In high school, everyone felt it was their right to cruelly or jokingly comment on my “Jewish nose.” In my twenties, I had surgery to make it smaller so I wouldn’t disgust myself in photos.
My entire life, I have been the shiny prize for someone else to “save.” As if I was the one that needed saving.
I’ve been the target of ridicule, bullying, hatred. And for many years, I went quietly. I felt ashamed and disconnected simply because I did not yet know myself. I only knew that I did not fit here nor there, and within my small group of friends, I desperately wanted to fit in. So I shrugged off subtle antisemitism and made jokes about my own religion, enunciating the “ish” in my faith like I didn’t know my own strength.
It has taken years to sift through all of this, to arrive here during these unprecedented times, while another asks from the other side of a screen what being Jewish means.
My Jewishness is just another aspect of my identity that I am learning to integrate, to see where and how it fits. I find it a beautiful religion, but I do not actively practice – to which I now understand why. My world views and perspective are much, much larger than those that can fit in the confines of religion. As a spiritual person who holds ideas and beliefs that are much more expansive and esoteric than what I was taught, it is nuanced and layered. I accept and honor my Jewish heritage because it is present in my family; it flows in my blood. Just because I do not practice, does not change that fact.
Because I am Jewish, I have always been different. There has always been this air of separateness about my life, that I am some strangely shaped jigsaw piece looking for where I best fit. To whom did I belong? If not that religion, if not that ethnicity, then where?
As Jews, this is a common experience, this need for refuge, safety, community, belonging (though I do not identify with Israel as the end-all-be-all place for this, especially given its problematic creation). I searched for years until, after sifting through my many experiences, and finding God in every leaf, every cloud, every poem, I arrived at the simplest answer: I belonged to myself.
The ongoing conflict has asked us Jews to take a magnifying glass to the Jewish experience and sift through what resonates and what doesn’t; what it means; what we were taught. My Jewishness is simply a part of me. It is most certainly not all of me. I think the issue with any religion or aspect with which we identify is exactly that: to not allow any one thing to consume the entirety of your individuality. It is simply a part, not the whole, and there must be room for nuance, paradox, and multiplicity.
To be a Jew is to embrace differences; to always stand up for what’s right – to ingrain the phrase “never again” like a tattoo on the brain.
To be a Jew is synonymous with love. To speak love. To embody love. To stand up for love. To become love.
I know what it’s like to be bullied, teased, or flat out hated for what I am. I know what it’s like to have someone make a judgement based on that one fact alone. I know what it’s like to be silenced. So I have always – will always – resonate with and stand up for the oppressed, the minority, the underdog. I think these are what make society and the world a beautiful place, so my Jewishness has contributed to my fire in a sense, my hunger and passion for justice and equality, my ability to see things from many sides.
To be a Jew is to persist when times get tough, to lend a hand and a voice when no one else will. To be a Jew is to be brave in the face of hate and to advocate for those who have been silenced. To be a Jew is to understand history so as not to repeat it. To be a Jew is to understand wholly, deeply, truly – at our core, we are all the same.
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