I am looking. I am looking for liberated people. I look and look and I find no one. It is Passover. Pesach. A holiday formed to commemorate liberation from oppression. It is with a scarred and sad and heavy, no, leaden heart, that I watch people who are MY people commit massacre upon massacre unchecked and then JUSTIFY it. All during the holiday of Pesach. A time to acknowledge those who are not yet free. And a time to free them. At my home Passover Seder, we used to remind ourselves that no one is free until we all are. My parents no longer say that; now, they say “Next Year in Jerusalem.” And I say nothing, if I am eating with them, because I do not feel entitled to Jerusalem. This year, I led my own Seder. It was rough and unstructured and done the disabled way, with cooking taking all day so I could take breaks. I had a different Seder plate, with watermelon and pomegranate on it for women’s and Palestinians’ rights. I stare at the watermelon. I know my parents would disown me for this. The watermelon stares back, I am broken.
I grieve the children, the doctors, the nurses, the mothers and wives and daughters. I grieve the sons, the fathers, the husbands. I grieve the long lists of family names, in Palestine for centuries, that will never get to continue on for the next generation. I grieve the loss of libraries, museums, universities, and with the same heart I grieve lost markets, lost shops, lost trees, lost livelihood.
I work hard to not be a villain. I try my best, I always have. Sometimes I joke that I got sober so I didn’t have to be a bad guy anymore. It’s not always a joke. I go to protests; I stand in front of my Black siblings and take hits for them. My privilege can take it. I dance on land that used to be someone else’s, and I fight for it to be returned to them, consequences be damned. I scream at politicians, online and in person, beg them for women’s rights, reproductive rights, JUSTICE. I cry for my fellow trans individuals who have been silenced. I live loudly, queerly, as out as I can be, in their honor. I spent my childhood allowances on care packages for Darfur. I did not know what was going on then, but I knew they did not have what I had. I fight for the abolition of prisons, of the death penalty; I fight so hard for the rehabilitative process that I made it my career. And yet every moment that I do not open my mouth about Palestine, I am a villain.
Judaism: the Abrahamic monotheistic enthoreligion of the Jewish people.
Zionism: “Zionism is the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel,” (The Anti-Defamation League).
Judaism is not Zionism. I do not have to be Zionist to live in my Judaism. This took me years to learn, to unlearn my parents’ position and formulate my own. I have respect for why Zionism came to be, the fear and the trauma ripe in the hearts of those who needed a state, a homeland. I do not respect Zionism, or what has been done in its name, any longer. My faith, the way I practice, sees people in the position Jews have been in countless times, and urges me to be brave, be strong, be honest in the face of political division. I cannot use my religion to justify death, war, bloodshed. I cannot. Instead, I look to my religion in the hopes of finding a way to correct what Netanyahu has done.
On Tu BiShvat, which I choose to see as a Jewish Earth Day, I sent money for olive trees to be planted, to replace those razed by the Israeli Defense Forces. On Hanukkah, I said the Shema, the prayer for peace, each night before lighting candles. And this Pesach, I ate watermelon. I am proud to be Jewish, I am proud of my traditions, my culture, my faith. I am scared of war, scared of bloodshed; I long for peace, for liberation. I sing the MiSheberach, the beautiful song and prayer for healing, for every hurting soul that is not free. I am so scared that I am the only one singing for them.
My prayers are small ones in the washing machine of modern-day society. I will not stop sending them out. When a people is in bondage, from their own government, other governments or both, I know it is my job as a Jew to help them toward liberation, as we have been helped towards liberation previously. I will be scared and angry and joyous and loud, I will risk my relationship with my family, I will risk being called a traitor by fellow Jews.
I will not stop until Palestine is free and war is over. And even then, I will never stop. Though I wish it were not the case, I suspect there will always be another reason to push onwards, upwards, forwards, outwards.