Never Again
I grew up fortunate to have both sets of grandparents in my life.
My father's parents were Holocaust survivors from Poland and Romania. My mother's parents were from Tunisia; my mother was raised in France and didn’t know she was Jewish until she was 12 years old.
I grew up living close to my father's parents, and as a kid I noticed the tattoos on my grandparent's forearms ... the kind they didn’t choose.
My father grew up in the first generation of parents who were Holocaust survivors, where it was the norm for him and my aunt to hear constant & never ending stories about all of their parents and survivor friends' suffering.
By contrast, my brother and I are the second generation, where for us, everything became more unspoken and “understood”… probably as a reaction to my father's fatigue of it all growing up. Even so, I always had a sense of how the effects of those traumas effected and rippled through the relationship from my grand father to my father, and my father to me.
Even though I grew up without the intimate stories about my grandparent's suffering, the genetic download was received loud and clear. Mostly, “Never again” was the bottom line.
I grew up and have remained in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where I’d occasionally experience the sprinkling of Jew remarks, but nothing that big of deal. And yet, it was clear that antisemitism was a thing to remember and that is always alive and well, regardless.
Skip to Oct. 7th: My attention was immediately glued to the events of Israel, because even though I love America, I still know I’m Jewish, and therefore Israel is of extreme importance to us/me.
Not only was the event itself tragic, and still continues to be, but the hostages still have yet to be returned. Also, a shit-storm of antisemitism quickly became unearthed, even before Israel began to defend itself. Gone was that false sense of security that I grew up with; we thought we were past all of the Jew hatred, especially considering the horrors of the Holocaust of WW2, and the witnessing by the entire world of the almost complete extinction of our people.
It was a cold swift bitch-slap of a wake up call that antisemitism is alive and well. This is the scary part. We’re an extremely small minority, yet we always have and probably will always need to rely on careful measures in how we deal with it all.
On one level or another, we are awoken. Our collective PTSD of the past has been activated and all of us have a silent understanding of this without the need to speak about it.
Where do I stand, besides with Israel and America? I’m angry, and I feel protective. I’m reminded of the reality of what I was told growing up, and am a little anxious and scared without the clarity of where all of this is going to end up … and I think most Jewish people feel the exact same way.
I’ve been taught well, to understand where I’ve been a victim in my life, and where I’m not, but am still acting like one.
Having said that, Israel & all Jewish people know they are victims of this event, contrary to some who disagree.
However, and unlike the past, I think it remains glaringly clear that both Israel and Jews from all over the world, are not interested in acting like perpetual victims.
Rather, we as a collective understand that we must protect our land and those we love, regardless of what people think of us. We all know this without the need to speak about it.
We’re clear about our rich and painful place in history and all that it entails, but we’re also tired of it. We’re not interested in continuing it, and we’re steadfast in making sure that a new narrative is created.