By Julie Zuckerman –
A friend mentioned that October 7th has revealed everyone’s truths.
My truth is this: I am a Jew.
It’s not lost on me that these are the same words Daniel Pearl, z”l, was forced to say before he was brutally beheaded by ISIS.
But also – in my core, if I am to be stripped of all identities but one, I CHOOSE to throw in my lot with my people, with all the beauty and pain and scarring that comes with it. I am a Jew. More than my identity as a woman or a feminist or a mother / wife / daughter / sister / friend or as a writer or biker or reader or high tech product marketer, though I am all of those things. Being a Jew is the most defining thing of my life.
I am a Jew, with our long, tormented history. But also, and more importantly: I am a Jew, with thousands of years of blessings and questioning and Jewish joy. Even in this terrible, horrible year, which is now more than a year, which feels like an eternity, I push ahead, move forward, and struggle to heal the wounds. The scars are always with me, etched into my bones and flowing through my capillaries, but I force myself, daily, to work, cook, write, exercise, go out into nature. To find the balance between despair and resilience, between bearing witness, doing what I can to help, and living.
I am a Jew, and stronger than the sorrow of this post-October 7th world is my gratitude for moments of Jewish meaning, celebration, and connection to this land. The pure, unadulterated rejoicing and high of dancing at a wedding, where two people have created something, love, from nothing. My great fortune that the miracle of the State of Israel exists in my lifetime, and I get to live here and be part of the project. The exultation that comes from joining my voice with others in powerful song and prayer, instilled in me from an early age at Camp Ramah, and continuing to this day at my partnership minyan in Modiin – whether through our musical Hallel on Yom Ha’atzmaut or our beseeching Avinu Malkenu on the high holidays or the dozens of other melodies on a regular Shabbat.
Since Covid, I’ve been part of a garden minyan on Friday nights across the street from my home. How great is it, I often think, that I can stand in a public park, singing L’cha Dodi to usher in Shabbat, and no one passing by bats an eye? How great is it, that I get to walk and run and bike in the land of my ancestors? That I can witness the wonderland of hundreds of rakefot peeking up from their rocky homes or the glorious fields of red kalaniyot in February and March? That my eyes are trained to seek wild fruit trees – figs and dates and mulberries and pomegranates, depending on the season. How I savor finding such bounty, each time. How I delight at finding p’sukim that tie me to this place and history.
So yes, there are scars. Yes, there is pain, over what has been done to us in the past and what is being done to us now and what will surely be done to us in the future. We are pained, too, that this conflict has caused death and destruction on the other side, much as we have tried to minimize the suffering of innocents. These pains can never be swept away. It feels like even babies born into our tradition do not have unblemished bones. But how we handle the blemishes and scars is up to us.
We Jews do not have a monopoly on resilience, but we’ve been honing it for all of history. The thing we sign off our missive and memes and posters and graphics and music is Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live.
Even in the depths of Rachel and Jon’s deepest pain, they have said, “We will live.” They have spoken of a future in which they will laugh again, just as the Nova survivors have said they will dance again. We Jews know how to pick ourselves up from the ashes and survive.
I am a Jew. Scarred. Resilient. Grateful. Blessed. Alive.
