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Though my husband is not Jewish, we are raising our children as Jews. They attend a Jewish school, and my daughter recently celebrated her bat mitzvah. Both are proud of their heritage, but also cautious. At their school, intruder drills are as routine as fire drills; armed security guards are as familiar as Friday Shabbat celebrations.

I was taken aback recently—when my daughter asked me to change my last name to that of my Italian husband.

“Mom, if anyone asked me my name, they would never know I was Jewish,” she said. “But yours is so obvious.”

Cultivating pride in my Jewishness took years. I was one of just four Jews in my high school class. (One of them had the same last name as me, and joked that we were destined to end up together.) Year after year, I fielded questions about why my family didn’t celebrate Christmas, and over and over, I explained that (gasp!) we didn’t exchange gifts on December 25, didn’t decorate a tree, and didn’t believe in Santa. I came to dread the holidays, even begging my parents for a Christmas tree.

It wasn’t only in December that I felt like an outsider. My friends all hung out at church; many joined weekly Bible study groups. They invited me to come, which I was forbidden from doing. I didn’t want to be a Christian, but I desperately wanted to be included. As a teenager, I resented my Jewish heritage for preventing me from having the same social experience as my friends.

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I spent the year between high school and college in Ecuador, a predominantly Catholic country, and I decided to hide my religious affiliation from my host family. At first, it was bliss. I could be anyone. I didn’t have to be defined by my Jewishness. As much as I tried to assimilate, though, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t belong. I played the part during their holiday rituals, but I was just going through the motions; none of their traditions were mine.

Despite my host family’s efforts to include me, I felt more “other” than I ever had. Not celebrating the High Holidays, Hanukkah, or Passover opened a void inside me. I deeply missed my family and the sense of belonging I’d experienced in our synagogue. Being Jewish wasn’t just a way of defining myself, I realized. It’s intrinsic to me. When I was a child, a rabbi once told me: “You can run from Judaism, but you can’t hide.” I finally understood what he meant. I needed that connection.

As soon as I arrived on campus the next year, I sought out the Jewish community. I became a regular at the Center for Jewish Life, and made Jewish friends who invited me home for the holidays. I attended services of my own accord. I was so grateful that no matter where I went, I could enter any synagogue and feel like I’d come home.

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I understand my daughter’s concern about my last name, “Goldstein”—but it’s entwined with my Jewish identity. I value the nod of recognition I get when I meet another Jew. Oh! You’re Jewish, too! As I told my daughter about how I’d come to embrace my Jewishness, I remembered what had happened at the end of my gap year in Ecuador.

One day in class, the instructor told the class that the Jewish people were a legend. Inch by inch, I raised my hand.

“The Jews are not a legend,” I said.

Everyone stared at me. The teacher scowled at me: I had interrupted his lesson and argued with him.

“How do you know?” he demanded.

“Because I am a Jew.”

I waited. I was relieved to finally spill my secret, even as I braced for the worst.

One girl’s hand touched my sleeve. She crept closer to me, crouching next to my chair. The others approached slowly, but not with hatred on their faces. It was something else.

“You are one of the chosen people.”

The others nodded reverently. I had completely misjudged.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

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Lindsey Goldstein is a writer, physical therapist, and mother of two humans and one furry child. She is working toward publishing her first novel, though she has published essays about love and parenting in the New York Times, Kveller, the Sunlight Press, the Chicago Sun Times, and Her Stories Project.

Instagram: @goldsteinlindsey

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

I wake in the middle of the night, shaken by a dream. I cannot remember all the details, but I’m sure that I was in danger. I am anxious and sweating. My stomach hurts and my mind is racing. It’s 4:02 a.m on October 11, and I make the mistake of picking up my phone.

After graduating from college, I decided to spend a year traveling alone in Australia. I arrived in Sydney with a working holiday visa and eight nights booked in a hostel. And now I’m in the bottom bunk of a house-share in Chippendale, and all I can think about is Israel.

I am 10,000 miles from my home in Pennsylvania, but only a few miles away from the Sydney Opera House where, just yesterday, over 1,000 pro-Palestinian supporters lit flares and chanted antisemitic slogans. My stomach churns and my eyes well up as I think about it, but I muffle my crying: I don’t want to wake my roommate. My fingers wrap themselves around the ring on my right thumb, which bears an inscription with my Hebrew name: סלע עדינה. I take deep breaths.

I don’t have words for the deep pain and sorrow I feel for my people. I go to my Instagram feed and see words bulging out at me, so terrifying that I have to hold my breath. “Babies beheaded…” one post reads. Another twitch of my thumb leads me to a post entitled, “Pictures From Inside a Bedroom on 10/7- Sensitive Content.” More posts, more stories. One reads, “Your Jewish Friends Are Not Okay.” Others show scenes from riots around the world—screams and chants that call for an end to the life of every Jew.

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As these words jumble together on my screen, my mind races. I think of my great-grandmother, who gave birth to my bubbe while on the run. I think of my great-uncle, who packed a small bag and jumped out of a two-story building to escape the Nazis. Then I think about the beautiful and innocent souls of the Nova Music Festival, fleeing from Hamas terrorists. How is this okay? How are we still running?

I think about the time, in my senior year of high school, that my classmates—so-called “friends”—doodled swastikas on my paper. I think about the time I posted a picture of the beach in Tel Aviv and received a message from a peer, telling me that I should be ashamed of enjoying a day in “settler” land. 

My mind returns to the Holocaust: I see children with yellow stars pinned to their chests. I think about the gas chambers and how, before entering, the victims were told that they were going to take a shower. I think about the Holocaust survivors themselves. How they must be feeling right now.

I think about my family, and how far away they are. I think about how badly I want to give my mom and dad and brother a hug. My grandparents. My cousins. I remember when I first began to learn about the Holocaust. I could never understand how it happened. How could so many people agree that it was okay to slaughter innocents? It must have been a different era back then, I used to think. It must have been so different.

I was wrong. The silence from the world hurts my ears. Where are the Instagram stories from the “activists?” The ones I walked alongside during the Black Lives Matter parade and the Women’s March?

Finally, I think about how proud I am to be Jewish. How connected I feel to every Jewish person around the world. How good it feels to walk into a synagogue or sit down for a meal with my family on a Jewish holiday. I think of my memories from childhood—late nights at my grandparents’ house during Passover; Jewish sing-alongs with my camp friends; days on the beach in Tel Aviv.

My breathing returns to normal and my eyes begin to feel heavy. I turn my phone to “Do Not Disturb” and set it down. I lie there looking at the ceiling, feeling—something. Is it pride? Loneliness? Nostalgia? Before I can figure it out, my eyes shut. I finally fall back to sleep.

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Not long after that night, my Chabad rabbi from college connected me to a Chabad rabbi in Sydney. At first, I felt hesitant to go to Chabad by myself, but the rabbi’s family welcomed me with open arms. It soon became my home away from home—a place full of loving people, delicious food, safety, and familiar prayers.

Through celebrating Shabbat every week, my perspective slowly shifted from scared to empowered, from frustrated to motivated, from alone to supported. I felt proud to be a part of something bigger than myself. When I look back on my year-long adventure, my memories at Chabad stir up the deepest feelings of all.

Now that I’m back in the U.S., I realize how much my time away strengthened my Jewish identity. Half a world away from home, I walked into a room full of strangers and immediately felt grounded—like there was nowhere else I would rather be. Strangers quickly became friends, who felt like family. Of all the things I am thankful for in life, I am most grateful to be part of the Jewish community.

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Emma Goodstein started writing on Substack last year as she began solo-traveling around Australia. Substack has been a place for her to express her thoughts, realizations, and questions about the world and human nature. 

Instagram: @emgoodstein

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

At the beginning of my career, between finishing college and starting my Ph.D., I worked at the Shoah Foundation in LA. For three years, I was steeped in the history of the Holocaust, and people often asked me—understandably—if the job was depressing.

“Don’t you hate hearing about horror and trauma all day?”

“How can you stand it?”

But I never felt that way. In fact, I found the experience to be life-affirming. It made me proud of my people’s scrappy resilience. Look at us! I would think. Look what we have overcome. The hatred that followed us for thousands of years has been dispelled!

I even felt, in some small way, that I was helping to move us forward. I am the new Jewish woman, I thought. I am educated, upwardly mobile, and fully integrated into the big bright world.

Alas.

I learned about the murder of Chabad rabbi Zvi Kogan (say his name) in Dubai while I was shopping for a hostess gift at the Bryant Park Christmas market. The news hit me hard. I have spent so much time, this past year, offering condolences—attending shiva and services for soldiers, friends and community members. It took only a few minutes to realize that Rabbi Kogan was a relative of a dear friend. There are so few of us Jews left in the world; we are all connected.

I dropped the tea towel I was holding and headed back to my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, wanting to write a proper note to his family. I took a shortcut through Times Square and stumbled, unknowingly, into a “Free Gaza” protest.

I was raised by Zionists — socialist, religious Jews. Idealism and the need to repair the world were ingrained in me. I grew up protesting all kinds of injustice, from apartheid in South Africa and the suppression of Soviet Jews to the illegal settlements in the West Bank. Speaking truth to power is something I celebrate and encourage.

But this gathering was not a protest. This was a hate rally. A young woman announced Rabbi Kogan’s murder over a megaphone, and everyone cheered. I am from Buffalo, New York, and this reminded me of how the crowd goes wild when the Bills’ running back heads up the field.

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I was carrying my Tel Aviv beach tote and wearing my hostage necklace, which I will wear until all the hostages are home. I was a target. My necklace is the new version of the yellow star—the thing that makes me recognizable.

I felt like all eyes—and there were thousands of pairs—were on me. Like I was the protagonist of some gruesome fairy tale: the forest getting dark, the trees closing in.

So I ran. I ran like I was running for my life, because I was. I ran like Mrs. Post, my kindergarten teacher with numbers on her arm, ran when the Nazis discovered her false papers. I ran to get home to my family to see if they were safe. I ran because I am a Jew, and that’s what we do. We run to fight another day. We run to save those we love. We run to find ourselves back to where we were; where we have always been.

Being Jewish now is no different than it has ever been. We deluded ourselves into thinking otherwise. Being Jewish now means strapping on your running shoes while speaking the truth— continuing to write, create and honor all those who were needlessly slaughtered. We move forward, not only for us, but for them.

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Rachel Lithgow has a celebrated 30-year career running Jewish museums and archives. She is the founder and president of Noga Agency, which represents small Israeli NGOs operating in the civil society space. She is the mother of two teenagers and lives in New York.

Instagram: @iamrachellithgow
Substack: rachellithgowwriter.substack.com

“What are you?” The question has followed me from all over the world, from New York to Vancouver to Europe. It’s come at me from men on dating apps and from catcallers on the street. Maybe it’s my dark hair, the olive undertone of my skin, or my sensitivity to other people’s struggles.

“White, I guess,” I respond—not fully buying it myself.

As a child, people looked at me and said they saw my father. I loved my father, a congregational rabbi who extended warmth and light to everyone he met. He was playful and kind to me. Still, I remember—at the age of six—seeing him comfort another family, coo over another child. An aching emptiness blossomed in my chest.

I was a curly-haired, bespectacled eighth-grader in 2001—the year The Princess Diaries became a cultural phenomenon—and I was sometimes mistaken for Anne Hathaway. Strangers would point at me, eyes wide, before asking. I usually kept walking, smiling to myself. For a brief moment, I had been someone else.

In high school, a classmate told me I was pretty—for a Jewish girl.

On a writing retreat in Oaxaca, a new friend, who was practiced in the art of Chinese face reading, studied the bridge of my nose and the way my eyebrows rose when I spoke. My face, she said, showed that I had been exposed to shocking events, and that I was destined to forge my own path.

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In the dark days of the pandemic, I watched Frida with my neighbor while her husband sat in the corner, getting drunk. Frida Kahlo “was a terrible artist,” he interrupted, and her self-portraits proved her “vapid narcissism.” I asked him what artist he admired. He named Vincent van Gogh. When I told him about the beautiful museum in Amsterdam that overflowed with his self-portraits, he spat fire. He couldn’t see that an artist’s duty is not just to perceive the world, but to perceive herself. That she won’t know what to do with a blank canvas if she doesn’t know who’s holding the brush.

Last May, I stepped off a bus in north London and started to make my way home. Ahead of me on the street was a man with a messy bun and Roman numerals on his temples. He turned to look at me and as his eyes met mine, his gait shifted, almost imperceptibly. My internal sirens blared as I considered my options: Should I pretend I’m going the wrong direction, turn around, and hope he doesn’t follow? Should I carry on, but risk giving away my location? The closer I got, the more agitated he became. As I was about to pass, his arm shot up in a Sieg Heil.

Earlier this year, I roamed the city of Athens, undisturbed. Almost every day, locals were surprised that my Greek vocabulary was limited to geiá sou, efcharishtó, and spanakopita. “You look just like a Greek woman,” Athenians insisted. One woman I met at the grocery store was particularly tickled that, despite my features, it really was all Greek to me. As we parted, she waved and sang, “Bye, Greek!” and we laughed. I was 36, and it was the first time anyone had assumed, based on my face, that I belonged.

One night in Athens, at a kebab restaurant, I noticed a server—a tall man with light eyes—looking at me quizzically.

“Are you Spanish?” he asked.

“Kinda?” I replied.

“Italian?” I shrugged.

Since October 7, I have rarely volunteered that I’m Jewish, instead keeping it close to my chest (metaphorically as well as literally: I wear a Star of David and Hamsa necklace). But for some reason, it popped out.

“I’m Jewish.” He smiled and switched languages, asking if I spoke Hebrew.

“Ani medaberet ktzat,” I replied.

The Israeli and I conversed in our shared language, then wished each other lilah tov. I walked on clouds for two weeks. It was surreal to engage with someone I didn’t have to explain myself to.

When I look in the mirror, I don't see my father, though sometimes I see his younger sister, or the middle of my three younger brothers. I don’t see a nationality. I don’t see someone who deserves to be hated or harmed; I don't see someone who wishes harm on others. I see someone who wasn't born with a straightforward identity—and had to forge their own. I see myself.

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Rebelle Summers is a debut author and digital nomad who writes about the strangeness of life with humor, heartbreak, and more questions than answers. They are a Blog Coordinator for GeeksOUT, sound engineer for Griftypod, and regular contributor to the Muddyum and Contemplate publications on Medium. You can find them in a new city or country every few months, revising the hell out of their first novel, and on Instagram @therebellewriter.

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

I.

I join a Jewish sorority in college. Our mascot is a giraffe. I go to frat parties where my boyfriend isn’t invited and even though I never cheat on him, sometimes it feels like cheating, how close I get to other boys. I don’t tell my boyfriend when a frat guy runs his fingers through my hair at a party.

“Looking for horns,” he says.

“They didn’t want to be paired with us,” our Social chair tells me. “They don’t like Jewish girls.”

I break up with my boyfriend junior year. I meet someone else over the summer. He says he loves me; he says he doesn’t know if love is enough.

When we fight, he brings up my ex-boyfriend. We only fight over the phone, and I can hear him smoking a cigarette.

“Go back to your f*cking k*ke boyfriend,” he yells.

I know I should hang up, but I wait for something else to happen, the phone pressed hard against my cheek.

II.

I'm at the movies with a new guy. We barely know each other, but everything is funny. We fall into our seats and I recognize a woman in the row ahead of us from my old writing group. I’d gone online and searched for some place I could bring my stories. I say her name and she spins around.

“Who is your friend?” she asks.

“I met him at church,” I say, and let the word hang between us.

I was raised Jewish, but my last boyfriend was Christian and took me to services every week. I went because I wanted to belong. When we broke up, I kept going, as if I’d left something behind and wanted to find it.

“I hope you come back to the fold,” she says, and turns around to face the movie screen.

I want to ask her how her writing is going. I want her to ask me the same, because I have been writing—a lot. I want her to read my mind. I want her to take my hand.

I don’t know yet that she has cancer. Two months later, she dies.

III.

The rabbi is an hour late to meet at my parents’ condo on the beach. I wait with my mom, my brother, and two friends. It’s required to have witnesses when I recommit to Judaism. When he finally arrives, we walk down to the beach and everyone watches as I step into the ocean—the mikveh. The waves are strong, but I recite the Shema and dunk my head at the pause of each verse.

I start going to temple every Tuesday night for a small Torah reading. The rabbi, who is also 25, has a wife and a newborn. Each week, he reads the Torah portion and we discuss its meaning. I am mostly quiet; I come to listen.

I meet his wife for coffee and she brings the baby. We sit outside and the baby sleeps in the stroller. I have so many questions for her. I want to know if she’s happy, if she likes being the wife of a rabbi, if the baby brought her joy, if she thinks I'm a bad Jew because I can’t read Hebrew, if she thinks she’s a good Jew, if she thinks anyone is really a good Jew, if she knows how to be happy, if she thinks anyone is really happy, if she believes you need to let happiness happen to you or if you must go out and find it, if she thinks I’ll ever be happy.

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VI.

My rabbi sends a message every Friday afternoon. Last week he wrote, “We need to hold each other close with love, friendship and Ahavat Yisrael.” I Google what it means: “Love for one’s fellow Jews.”

I give every message a heart, so he knows I’ve seen it. I'm not sure he knows how much it means to me, though, to still receive these blessings, these prayers.

When I thought about ending my life two years ago, I called this same rabbi. He picked up the phone right away and told me that my life was important, that I have so much to offer the world, that God made no mistake in creating me. That I have a responsibility to embody the Torah as best I can.

VII.

Two directors sit next to me at a cafe. They are casting a play. “She’s too…Jewy,” one says to the other. “That nose!”

For most of my life, I told people I was culturally Jewish but not religious.

My husband buys me a Star of David necklace from Tiffany’s and I'm nervous to wear it in public.

I keep my daughter home from daycare on The Day of Rage.

Well-meaning text messages wish me a “Happy Yom Kippur.”

There are so many gaps here, so many moments left out in my account of coming back to the fold. Somehow, none of these pieces ever feel like enough to tell the story of my Jewishness.

I think of my old piano teacher, who used to go outside while I practiced and stand beneath her live oak tree and talk to God. She would brush the leaves with her fingers and I would watch her mouth move, unable to hear her words. She would close her eyes and I would envy her proximity to the divine.

And now my husband takes my daughter outside each morning and they stand in the shade of the Silver maple tree. She reaches for a leaf and feels its smooth surface. She’s gentle with it, delicate. I find myself admiring her—the way she marvels at something greater than herself.

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Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She has led workshops for UCLA’s Extension, The Porch, HerStry, Write or Die, and Lighthouse Writers. She is a 3x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in The Sun, MUTHA, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. Her first collection of essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel, The Brittanys, is out now with Vintage. Her Substack is called taking the stairs.

Instagram: @suboatmilk

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

When life gets overwhelming, I make lists. Breaking down a challenging task into manageable chunks and then ticking them off, one by one, makes my world feel less chaotic. Ever since October 7, I’ve been overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising my three Jewish kids. And so, here’s my list.

1. Teach them to wear their Judaism proudly in their hearts, but maybe not on their shirts or hanging from their necks or around their wrists. If they do fall in love with that one shirt with Hebrew letters on it, let them wear it. Note that next time you wash it, possibly make it “disappear” to the other set of drawers they never look in. Just in case.

2. Send them to Jewish camp where there are no rules. Where they can be free to sing loudly and proudly about their Judaism and about Israel. Where they are only two hours from home but world’s away from news. Where they can meet kids from around the world so they don’t believe everything they see on TV.

3. Keep that camp magic alive. Let them breathe pride back into you.

4. Email the teachers and coaches in the fall with all the dates of things your kids will be missing because of the Jewish holidays. Rewrite the email four times. Make sure they know the reason, but also that they know you don’t expect them to change the schedule. (But wish they would offer.)

5. Learn to be okay with it when your kid comes home from school with a handmade plate for Santa’s cookies. Find a deserving home for this thoughtful craft.

6. Make sure your kid doesn’t know the truth about Santa. Will this make him or her look immature in front of her middle school friends? Perhaps. But this is critical. Your kid can’t be the one to find out first and then share the breaking news with his non-Jewish friends.

7. Look for the good ones. The friends who stand up for you and your kids. The ones who text you Happy New Year in September. The ones who check if your kid eats pepperoni pizza. The teacher who buys a special blue and silver ornament for your child to decorate while the others do red and green. Hang that ornament in your house as a reminder that people do see you.

8. Dig out that shirt. The one you hid in the back of the drawer. Put it on the top of the pile and watch them come downstairs the next morning wearing it. Kiss them goodbye for school and hope they only cross paths with the good ones.

9. Start a countdown for summer camp.

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Debra Arbit is a 44-year-old woman from Minneapolis who is a sucker for a goal. When she’s not wiping peanut butter off one of her three kids’ faces, you can find her cooking her way through cookbooks cover-to-cover on her Instagram. She loves to write and feed people to the point of bursting.

Instagram: @fortheloveofcookbooks

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

My grandfather (Z’’L) grew up on the Lower East Side after his parents fled Eastern Europe, escaping pogroms and the Holocaust. His name was Solomon in English, Yeshaia in Yiddish—but most people just called him Shike.

Growing up, I knew him in the way many kids know their grandparents. I knew that he snored loudly, loved our dog, and owned shoe stores. That he was a smart man who smiled infrequently.

But I got to really know him when I moved to New York for medical school. When I showed up in winter with only a jean jacket, he bought me a coat. When I got sick, he picked me up, took me to his apartment and fed me dinner (and a bit of schnapps for my cough).

During those years, he told me all about his life. How he lost his business during the Depression and had to start over. How a fire destroyed his business again. How he met my grandmother. How they used to sing their favorite arias together. How they rode motorcycles around New York City and, later, traveled to Israel. One of my favorite photos is of my grandparents in front of the Kotel—smiling, hair blowing, faces full of pride.

We talked about culture and Broadway plays: I used to check the Times for theater reviews, and he would buy us tickets. We talked about the stained-glass lamp he was making for me: Did I want an abstract pattern, or a specific Tiffany design? Despite his disdain for the excesses of sports fandom, we frequently discussed the Yankees (especially during the World Series in 1996).

On Yom Kippur, he would put on Richard Tucker’s High Holidays record and sing along in his apartment. To this day, hearing my grandfather chant Kol Nidre is one of the most meaningful religious experiences of my life. Sometimes, he would speak to me in Yiddish, to see how much I had picked up. (I mostly recognized phrases like, “Be quiet, the children are in the room.”) Sometimes, we spoke in Hebrew. When plans for a Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC were announced, he was one of the first patrons.

But, for all of these discussions, I do not remember us talking about being Jewish. We didn’t need to. We just were.

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I miss my grandfather so much—but every day since October 7, I have been grateful that he is not here. That he does not have to see videos of terrorists parading Jewish bodies in the streets of Gaza, or read about the rape of Jewish women and the murder of Jewish babies. That he will never witness, on the streets of his beloved New York, people celebrating these atrocities. Would he have survived it? Could his soul have endured?

My grandfather loved that I was passionate about medicine and women’s health. But how would I tell him what this last year has been like for me? How could I explain that my trusted colleagues have claimed there was “context” for rape? That my peers in women’s health have characterized Jews as white colonizers—when so many of his relatives were not white enough to avoid the gas chambers?

How would I tell him that the same leaders who encouraged us to speak out about racism and prejudice have ignored our complaints about antisemitism? How would I tell him about the academics who say that Jews need to be “deprogrammed” from Zionism? How would I tell him that Jewish doctors have been banned from science organizations? That student groups have been permitted to amplify Jew hate? How would I explain that a senior leader told me to separate my Jewish identity from my duties as a faculty member?

How would I tell him that his granddaughters are warriors in the midst of all this Jew hate—but that they are also scared? How would I tell him that they worry I will be assaulted when I wear my Magen David in the streets of New York?

What would Shike say?

I do not know what Shike would actually say. But I know what I would say to him: We are proud. We are strong. We are fighters. I would tell him that when his generation said “Never again,” we listened.

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Michal A. Elovitz, MD is a doctor, scientist, mother, disruptor and innovator. She is internationally known for her research in women’s health, her mentorship and her advocacy. She is a life-long unpublished writer with her husband, daughters and friends being the extent of her reading audience. She is a proud Jew and Zionist committed to advocating for and supporting the Jewish people across the globe. She is active in American Jewish Medical Association to help address and end rampant antisemitism in medicine and science.

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

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Since October 7, 2023, I have vacillated among so many emotions: despair, grief, agony, disillusionment, anger, frustration, sadness. Amid this never-ending nightmare, I have become alienated from communities I cared about. A dear childhood friend has been posting anti-Israel content on social media. A casual acquaintance shared explicitly pro-Hamas propaganda. A teacher at my daughter’s school accused Israel of genocide.

Last fall, I had to resign from my women’s coaching group. After I expressed my anguish over October 7, it became clear that I was no longer welcome. The facilitator said that politics had no place in the group, while another member let everyone know she disagreed with me. There was a place for politics in the group, I realized—just not my politics. Meanwhile, my anger with the left—a side I long identified with myself—grew and grew. On the night of October 7, 2024, when elected officials wore keffiyehs to a city council meeting, I felt it overflow, like milk boiling over on the stove.

It’s not my responsibility to educate these people or change their minds, but it feels personal. I tend to assume that anyone who posts anti-Israel content wants me dead. I know that’s a stretch, but it’s hard not to feel the generational trauma pulling out of its seams.

“There is always hate,” my mom says. “People always hate Jews.” Until this year, I never really believed her.

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This year, I have also felt a renewed connection to my ancestral roots, and a deep gratitude for my Jewish community. I have started proudly wearing a Star of David around my neck. When I made challah with my mom this year, it was even more meaningful than usual. As the dough softened beneath our hands, I felt the weight of our history soften, too.

I have accessed a small, still voice within myself. I’ve joined a support group for Jewish writers and gotten to know local Jewish activists. At an October 7 commemorative event at my synagogue, I shared a poem I wrote for Rachel Goldberg-Polin.

On the day that her son Hersh (z’l) and five other beautiful hostages were murdered in a tunnel, my stepsister got married. Celebrating her wedding while honoring the innocent lives lost was a brutal balancing act.

Participating in normal life in America while an all-too-deadly war rages in Israel is a brutal balancing act.

It’s been hard for me to look away from social media. I know it causes me pain, but it also connects me to something hopeful. Following the work of Jewish and Israeli activists and writers has been a balm—giving me a sense of belonging in a stormy sea.

Since the U.S. elections, everything feels even more precarious. I keep looking for something to hold on to. For something to help us all endure. For something to finally—finally—bring the hostages home. Living in a Jewish body is a massive burden right now. Being alive is a massive burden right now. But this body still holds on to Jewish hope.

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This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

Mol­ly Rit­vo is a writer and author liv­ing in Burling­ton, VT. She has been writ­ing for her whole life, begin­ning when she was select­ed as the class poet in the 1st grade. Her work has been pub­lished by Upstreet Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine, the Jew­ish Writ­ing Project, the Jewish Book Club, and more. She holds a BA from Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty and an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Emer­son Col­lege. Mol­ly has worked as a free­lance writer, a com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist for many dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions, and a jour­nal­ist. She is cur­rent­ly writ­ing her debut nov­el, a col­lec­tion of Jew­ish themed poet­ry, and work­ing as a grant writer. Her most impor­tant role is being a mom to her daugh­ter, Jimi.

I’m glad my mother is dead. I realize that sounds harsh, but I mean it. She died living out her Zionist dream, in a home that she loved in Migdal HaEmek. Her biggest regret was that her children and grandchildren lived so far away. She would visit each of the four of us no-longer-kids for a week each year. But she was as happy as she ever could be—my mother was never truly a happy woman—with my father’s paintings and her garden surrounding her.

She was the Zionist daughter of a Zionist mother. My grandmother—Sabta—left her family home on the Polish-Russian border in the 1920s to settle in the Galilee. Soon after, she contracted malaria and fled the mosquito-laden swamps for the US, marrying an American serviceman and bringing up her three children on a chicken farm in South Jersey.

My mom was raised on Sabta’s dream of an independent Jewish state. She fervently shared my grandmother’s Socialist Zionist aspirations: that the Jews would finally have a homeland, where they could sit at the table of nations and be treated as equal.

Yes, I’m sincerely glad my mother is dead, so she doesn’t have to see how unequally Israel is being treated at that table of nations.

As soon as Israeli independence was declared, Sabta left her husband and their farm to live in the outskirts of Jerusalem. There she grew figs and oranges, living in a three-room home with thick stone walls and arched windows. My mom tried to follow with my father and my older sister, then an infant. But my father, a chemical engineer with two PhDs, could not find work in that still undeveloped country, and the family returned to the States.

It wasn’t until 1973 that my mother would finally realize her dream of living in Israel. I was 15—not the best year to be uprooted. Yet I’ll never forget the happiness illuminating her face the first night we arrived and sat down to dinner in a Be’er Sheva ulpan.

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My mother’s politics were forged in the crucible of the Holocaust, where she lost half of her mother’s large family. We used to joke that she was to the right of Ariel Sharon. My liberal husband was more aligned with Peace Now, and he and my mother would hold pitched battles, full of passion (and some venom). She was delighted when Menachem Begin was elected. I can only imagine how she would feel about Netanyahu. But she loved Israel with all her heart.

My mother did miss one thing about life in the States. Not the conveniences—she was happy to adopt a simpler lifestyle. But she, like my sabta, was a gardener, and grew figs and oranges on her small plot of land. She would plan her trips to us for autumn, so she could see the trees change color. She often said that she missed that more than anything else.

She longed to see fall foliage closer to home—somewhere she wouldn’t have to get on a plane to enjoy. Being the planner and doer that she was, she began researching what trees might actually be able to grow in the northern tip of the country. She enlisted the help of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, an organization she had joined when she first moved. And somehow, thanks to her fierce lobbying, the Sarah Kreps Fall Foliage Forest was planted in her honor, far up north.

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With the north of the country under constant attack, there’s no knowing what has happened to her forest. A cousin of mine decided to check in with the Jewish National Fund, which in charge of all tree-planting in Israel, and heard back: “The situation there right now is very unstable, and the forest located in an area that is now closed for citizens. Only army is allowed.”

I can only imagine how my mother would feel, imagining those trees undoubtedly coming under rocket fire, burning to ash. And while this is such a small thing when considering everything else—how devastated she, like all of Israel, would have been on October 7; how she would have mourned every single soldier who has fallen defending the country; how the constant trips to the safe room would have taken their toll—she would have been 100 years old this year—those lost trees would have quietly broken her heart. Because what she wanted, more than anything else, was to create life in the country she loved. As the next fervent Zionist in that line of women, my heart breaks in her memory.

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Michelle Cameron is the author of Jewish historical fiction, with her most recent the forthcoming Napoleon’s Mirage, the sequel to Beyond the Ghetto Gates. Previous work includes Babylon: A Novel of Jewish Captivity, a finalist in religious fiction in the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the award-winning Beyond the Ghetto Gates and The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz.

Instagram: @michellecameronwriter

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

FYI, we didn’t publish this essay in about the Melbourne Synagogue but it’s also a must-read.

Future of Jewish

That was my Melbourne synagogue set aflame.

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7 days ago · 50 likes · 15 comments · Joshua Hoffman

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My parents were Holocaust survivors, and my brother and sister were murdered at Auschwitz—ghosts among the six million. I have interviewed more than 40 former death camp inmates for the Shoah foundation. I know something about antisemitism, and I was well aware of the Jew-hatred spreading around the globe in recent years. Even so, witnessing the world-wide support for Hamas’s October 7 barbarism changed me. It sickened me, body and soul. I never thought that the antisemitism of my parents’ era would arrive in America—let alone in New York, or on the bucolic California campus where I attended graduate school.

More than a year after the attacks, I’m trying not to fall apart. I obsessively follow the news of the ever-widening war, and recently visited the heart-rending Nova exhibition in LA. My friends tell me about their children being harassed on American campuses. I worry for my two teenage grandsons in the U.S., who will start college in a few years, and I worry for my nieces, nephews, and cousins in Israel. My warm memories of marching for Israel with 300,000 others in Washington, DC last November are no longer a salve to my conscience. So, what does this retired woman do when she needs a pick-me-up?

Retail therapy at Bloomingdale’s. I have a good excuse, too: I’ve barely updated my wardrobe since the Covid era. The clothes in my closet fit someone from a different time, with a different body.

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Upon entering the store, the musky scent of perfume lures me to the Chanel counter. A naturally beautiful woman, younger than me but not wrinkle-free, greets me and asks what I need. She doesn’t try to upsell me—just helps me pick out a new shade of foundation and an eyeliner that smudges just right. We walk over to the register, where I pay and ask if she’s giving away any free samples. She gamely doles out four tiny, golden tubes of expensive eye and face cream.

“Please, anytime you need something or have questions, ask for me,” she says. “I’m Michelle. I’m here most weekdays.”

“Thanks, Michelle,” I reply. “I’m Helga.”

“What an interesting name. German, isn’t it?”

Here we go again, I think. The question that has haunted me my entire life.

“It’s actually Swedish, too. I was named after a Swedish Red Cross nurse,” I reply—giving away more information than I usually divulge on a first meeting.

“How interesting. Sounds like a story.”

Perhaps it’s her kind, somehow familiar face that prompts me to elaborate on the origins of my name—a name that has, all my life, been both a burden and a privilege.

“My mother survived Hitler’s concentration camps and was liberated by a secret Swedish rescue mission. I’m named after the woman who healed her.”

“I just got chills,” she says, clutching her arms over her chest. “I lived in Israel for ten years.”

“You’re Jewish?” I ask, somehow not surprised.

“Yes. I’m Ashkenazi. My grandparents came from Austria and Russia.”

Our eyes meet, and we smile widely at each other. I extend my hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Michelle.”

Michelle takes my hand in both of hers, then shakes her head.

“We need to hug,” she says, and invites me in, both arms outstretched.

She holds me tight. I return her full-body embrace. We look at each other and then, for a long minute, we hug again. When we break apart, our eyes are glassy. We say good-bye, wiping away tears. I don’t look back. I can’t. The world has gotten smaller. Our shared pain brings us together. We are one family now, us Jews. No make-up can conceal that.

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Helga Berliner Weinbach holds a B.A. from NYU and an M.B.A. from UCLA. She is a retired commercial real estate broker and is working on A Good Name—a memoir about family, history and identity forged by her relationship with the son of the Swedish woman for whom she was named. Helga lives in Los Angeles with her husband and loves making Shabbat dinner for her two sons, daughter-in-law, and grandsons.

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

Hanukkah is coming up, which means it’s the perfect time to buy all of your friends the best gift of all—On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Buy from your local indie bookstore if possible!

More ideas? Zibby’s new gift guide has many Jewish-themed gifts, perfect for those Jewish advocates in your life. We also have a new limited edition Hanukkah bundle with 5 curated books, a Chutzpah mug, and a hat that showcases your Jewish pride, all for just $150! Get yours before they’re sold out!

Btw, did you read Zibby’s latest Substack post?!?!

ZIBBY Highights

Betrayed, Daily

The betrayals just keep piling up. Earlier tonight, a work friend took me aside at an event. Turns out, she’d overheard a mutual author friend of ours react with…

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9 days ago · 179 likes · 89 comments · Zibby Owens

December Events

Last month was filled with fantastic events and December is no different! In fact, we’ve already had two of them with the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in New Jersey with Lisa Kogan, Daphne Merkin, Jonathan Santlofer and Zibby, and with the Sephardic Women’s Group at UJA with Corie Adjmi, Alix Strauss, Elyssa Friedland and Zibby!

Please join us virtually and in person for some upcoming fabulous events!

Sunday, December 8th at 1:15 pm: The New York Jewish Book Festival at the Museum of Jewish Heritage with Zibby, Bradley Tusk, Ali Rosen, and Samantha Ettus. Register HERE.

Monday, December 9th at 2:00 pm EST: AJU Open interview with Rabbi Sherre Hirsch and Zibby. Virtual event. Register HERE.

Monday, December 9th at 7 pm: Sutton Place Synagogue with Zibby and Marjorie Shuster. Info HERE.

Wednesday, December 11th at 10:30 am: Sid Jacobson JCC Event with Brenda Janowitz, Amy Blumenfeld, and Jane L. Rosen. Register HERE.

Wednesday, December 11th at 7:00 pm: Zibby with Heather Reisman of Indigo in Toronto. In person and virtual. Register HERE.

Thursday, December 12th at 6:00 pm PT: JCF event in Los Altos, CA. Email for info.

Friday, December 13th at 9:00 am: JCF event in Sausalito, CA with Zibby, Tiffany Shlain and Julie Fingersh. Email here.

Saturday, December 14th at 10 am: Happy Women’s Dinner BRUNCH organized by Jill Daniel with Zibby. Private Home in San Rafael, CA. Register here.

Sunday, December 15th at 1 pm ET: Panelist signing at the Tablet Hanukkah Bazaar with Aliza Licht and Keren Blankfeld. Tickets on sale HERE.

Sunday, December 15th at 5 pm: Zibby’s Bookshop event with Zibby. Live podcast with Elisa Albert in Santa Monica, CA. Register HERE.

Monday, December 16th at 6 pm: Zibby’s Bookshop with Abby Stern, Beth Ricanati, and Samantha Ettus. Register HERE.

On Our Substack: Featured Essays

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In the late 1980s, while pregnant with my son, I responded to a Village Voice ad for a free Hebrew class being held on the NYU campus. I was determined to raise my child as a Jew (despite having married a Protestant with no interest in organized religion), and this seemed like the perfect time to deepen my own Judaism. I beamed with pride as I arrived at my first class, and quickly bonded with the teacher—a petite Orthodox woman named Lisa, who happened to live right across the park from my husband and me in Jersey City. I memorized the aleph-bet’s 22 letters, and soon found ample opportunities to practice my newly-acquired Hebrew skills. It was thrilling to be able to make out the words “Glatt Kosher” on Seventh Avenue restaurant windows, and to sound out the Hebrew signs in New York’s Garment District.

When our son was old enough, I enrolled him in preschool, and later Hebrew school, at our local Reform synagogue. I learned alongside him, attending his classes as a teacher’s helper. A few years after his bar mitzvah, I participated in an adult b’nai mitzvah class myself. At the age of 45, I—alongside a handful of others, including our temple’s Hispanic custodian—became a bat mitzvah. It was an honor to present the Dvar Torah for the week’s portion, Parashat Sh’lach, which describes G-d’s decision to make the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Like the Israelites of Parashat Sh’lach, I had been on a long, arduous path toward embracing Judaism.

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My husband jokingly calls me a born-again Jew. Despite having two Jewish parents and 99 percent Eastern European Jewish DNA, my relationship with Judaism has been a work-in-progress for much of my life. My parents neglected to enroll me in the religious classes my Jewish girlfriends were attending, and I spent the next 40 years wondering what I’d missed at that Arverne Community Center on Beach Channel Drive.

My lack of a Hebrew school education was partially mitigated by my dyed-in-the-wool identity as a New York Jew. In the 1960s and 70s, Nordeck, the moderate-income apartment complex where I grew up, was predominantly Jewish. As a child, I thought the world was 98 percent Jewish.

I’ve always felt drawn to Judaism. Every year, I looked forward to Passover seders with my observant grandparents in Gravesend—the symbolic menu and captivating stories. During the High Holidays, I would put on my best clothes and sneak into the Rockaway Peninsula synagogue where my friends’ families worshiped. Those crowded yontif services stirred my soul.

Since the devastating events of October 7, my Jewish belief system has been tested once again. Hearing people from all walks of life—reporters on TV; acquaintances on Instagram; a distant relative at my aunt’s memorial service; my fellow poll workers on Election Day—describe Israel’s incursions into Gaza as “genocide” has been painful. The war in Gaza and in the wider Middle East is one Jews did not start and do not want. But every day, my connection to a higher power grows stronger. I have faith in emet (truth) and tzedek (justice), and I pray for peace in the world.

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Susan L. Miles was born in New York City and trained as a visual artist at Purchase College. Newly retired from the textile industry, she lives in central North Carolina and divides her time between caretaking responsibilities and writing a memoir about her sister, Carolyn.

Instagram: @onemagnolia

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

Sometimes, I think I will always miss the person I was on October 6, 2023. The person who went to sleep in a world that was safe. A world in which You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah was one of Netflix’s top films, and the Jewish second gentleman had just hosted a Rosh Hashanah party. I wasn’t naive: I had even written a book on contemporary antisemitism and its impact on Jewish Gen Z-ers. But the prejudice I’d considered was mainly limited to the realms of rhetoric and celebrity—Kyrie Irving’s social media, Kanye West’s conspiracy theories. I argued that we were in a moment of Jewish strength, and should not succumb to fear-mongering. Never in my darkest nightmare did I think that if my son were ripped from my arms, the world wouldn’t care.

We woke up that Saturday to just a few fuzzy details. Southern Israel was under attack. Hamas terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutzim along the border with the Gaza Strip. A few people were dead. Then hundreds.

The first post that left me speechless: Yoni Asher, turning to Facebook to announce that his wife and children had been kidnapped. Begging readers to contact the army and the media.

“Did you hear?” my husband gasped. “A family of five was burned alive.”

“Did you see? There’s a woman being held hostage in her home, and she’s baking cookies for the terrorists.”

“Did you know? They took a grandma into Gaza in a golf cart.”

October 7 shattered the looking glass. That morning, we saw things that human beings were never meant to see. We witnessed bloodshed and sexual violence and utter depravity. And by the evening of October 8, we were reeling from another shock. We were seeing people’s immense capacity to dehumanize Jews— to the point of blaming the still-bleeding victims.

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I miss the time when the darkest questions were theoretical. When chats with my Jewish mom friends were about sleep deprivation, not about the primordial scream constantly threatening to come out. I miss walking down the street in my Magen David necklace and not feeling like this constituted an act of bravery. I miss the innocence of October 6 and I miss the hope of October 7, when—amidst the horror—I expected that solidarity would come. That the global outcry was on its way. How wrong I was. How I underestimated the mental gymnastics people will perform in order to maintain their own worldview.

Now, we find ourselves living in a time of Jewish vulnerability. I am more determined than ever to instill Jewish pride in my son, and I dread the day when I’ll have to look at his innocent face and tell him the truth: that when Jewish baby boys are torn from their cribs, people celebrate. My whole life will be dedicated to his Jewish joy, but it may not be enough.

We’re in a liminal time. The innocence of October 6 is gone. So is the rawness of October 7. But the next day has not arrived: there are still hostages in Gaza, and so we cannot join the world of tomorrow. Instead, we occupy the lonely in-between. We go through the motions of normalcy, interspersed with moments of clarity: everyone else in the grocery store is having a regular day. They’re not haunted by the ghosts of missing babies, raped girls, beloved elders living out their last days in darkness.

I don’t know if I’ll like being an October 8 Jew. I don’t know what raising an October 8 child will mean. But I know—just as I know that I escaped Egypt and stood at Sinai and danced at the birth of the state of Israel—that there is another chapter of Jewish thriving to be written.

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Dr. Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath is a lifelong Jewish educator and learner. She currently serves as the Senior Director of Knowledge, Ideas, and Learning at The Jewish Education Project and is the author of #antisemitism: Coming of Age During the Resurgence of Hate, a finalist for the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Education + Jewish Identity." A sought-after expert and thought leader on Jewish identity, Samantha lives in Westchester with her husband, son, and two beloved rescue dogs. She is currently at work on her next book. 

Instagram: @sam_vinokor

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

It was February of the darkest year. The winter had been mild—gray and rainy, but no slick roads or blustery cold. In Seattle, the days were getting longer, and the daffodil spears were starting to emerge. The baby’s mother felt the sharp pains that foretold a new life.

The child’s name meant “gold” in Hebrew. I am her grandma, and I called her “the golden one.” I would hold her tiny body, snuggle her, rock her, sing to her. I marveled at her wispy hair—the same shiny, golden-red curls as her mother. To those of us who had waited so long for her, she was our magical princess, our Sleeping Beauty.

Of course, even royal babies tax their parents’ strength. Sometimes, the baby couldn’t be comforted, even by her mother’s always-waiting breast. Sometimes, the baby’s parents were so tired that they cried. But the child became more accustomed to the world, and those days passed.

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Three short weeks before the golden one’s birth, we marked the first birthday of another red-haired baby: Kfir Bibas, the youngest person taken hostage by Hamas. Kfir and his four-year-old brother, along with their mother and father, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Kfir’s little face still shows up every day on my Instagram. His image is imprinted on my brain. Sometimes, I pray for him; sometimes, I just mourn. His face was plastered on posters all over the world, all over the U.S. Some, out of hatred and malice, ripped those posters down. (You can tell me they had other reasons, but I will not believe you.)

In the war that followed, many other children died. I should not have to say, “I mourn each of those dead babies,” but I do. When I tried to explain my pain to an old friend, she brushed me off.

“Oh, Kfir was killed by friendly fire,” she said. I looked for her source—and found a report from Hamas.

In October, Yahya Sinwar—the leader of the terrorists who kidnapped Kfir and murdered 1,200 Israelis—was killed. If this were a fairy tale, the tunnels would then fill with life. The remaining hostages would be freed. Kfir would celebrate his next birthday in a rose-filled garden, surrounded by loving family.

Sadly, this is real life. Every inch of me prays that the red-haired baby is still alive.

In another fairy tale, Kfir sleeps peacefully for 20 years, surrounded by thorny roses. He grows to manhood; our golden one becomes a righteous warrior. She enters the tunnels—with her Excaliber or her lightsaber or whatever futuristic weapon has been invented—and slashes through the briars. She kisses Kfir, he comes alive, and they live happily ever after.

But we live in no fairy-tale world: we can only wait and pray. In the meantime, our golden one delights in her newfound ability to clap her hands. She blows raspberries to say goodbye, and laughs when I respond in kind. Her dad hopes she will become an astronaut; her mom, a poet. I only hope that I always take joy in her magical presence.

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Kresha Warnock is a writer, mother, wife, retired Early Childhood Educator and FINALLY a grandmother living in the Pacific Northwest. She is working on a memoir, comparing her experiences as a student radical in the Sixties with her current role as the mother of a police officer.

Instagram: @kresharwarnock

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

As kids, we used to chant: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It felt like good ammunition against neighborhood bullies, and it may have shut them up in the moment—but was it true? Lately, I’ve doubted it.

I thought about this old slogan last summer, when I came home to find a parcel on my doorstep. It contained a flyer with a swastika on it, alongside words (among others) that read: “Hitler was right.” I wasn’t the only one on my street to receive one, and I know that others reported the incident. But hate speech is largely protected by the First Amendment, and we had little recourse. I dropped the packet in the garbage the way I might dispose of an object that needs to be handled with gloves.

In October, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 3024, which seeks to prevent so-called “hate littering.” This new bill is certainly welcome, but it’s unclear what effect it will have on the prevalence of hate speech in our communities. Because antisemitic words and symbols are ubiquitous. [You never know when one will appear.]

I often check social media in the evening, as I’m winding down. One night, just as I was about to log off, an oversized swastika appeared on the screen. A friend had apparently decided to reclaim this “sacred symbol,” which had been “appropriated” by the Nazis. They described a “childhood trauma” in which a teacher had seen a swastika on their lunchbox. I was pretty sure they would never display a white supremacist hand sign, or let their child wear a Halloween costume that looked like a KKK hood. I wanted to ask if they cared about the harm this image might inflict in the here and now, and whether their own pride outweighed that potential injury.

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I didn’t reply, though. I’m not sure if my courage failed me, or if I thought that it would be pointless—that they would retort with something like, “You don’t get to deny my trauma,” or “Don’t look at it if it bothers you so much.” I shut down my computer without responding, and told myself the swastika was only a symbol. It couldn’t hurt me. Right?

But I noticed my body shaking. It took an hour to dissipate. I stayed up late, hoping to ward off bad dreams.

It didn’t work: I had one anyway. In my nightmare, I went to the bathroom and discovered that I was bleeding internally. I went to my mother—a Holocaust survivor who is no longer alive—and asked her what to do.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she said. “It should heal by itself.”

At first, I felt reassured. Despite the profuse loss of blood, I would be okay. But then my adult brain kicked in, and I remembered that hemorrhaging can be fatal. If I wait for this to heal, I thought, I could very well die in the meantime. With that, I woke up.

My first thought was to check that I wasn’t bleeding. In the same instant, I remembered the swastika, and knew that that was what the dream was about. Its message was clear. Yes, we can heal from the hurt caused by symbols and words. And no, we can’t let words break us. But leaving a wound untreated isn’t the solution either. If we don’t want to bleed out, we have to respond.

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Jude Berman is an author whose novels include The Die (metaphysical speculative fiction) and The Vow (historical fiction). She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked as a freelance editor and writer for more than three decades.

Instagram: @jude.berman

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

On the night of Kristallnacht in Berlin, my mother Joan, then four years old, was at home with her mother, Bella, and baby sister, Dina. Her seven-year-old brother, Herbert, was out shopping for a loaf of bread. If not for the kindness of a non-Jewish woman who hid him in her skirt folds, Herb might not have survived the attack. Weeks later, my mother and uncle were put on a Kindertransport train with other children they did not know and then transferred to a boat to escape the Nazis. All my mother remembers is being given flowers and chocolate and a kind older girl who took her hand.

I’ll never know, but perhaps the trauma of Kristallnacht helped my grandmother have the courage to send her children away to try to save them. Bella and baby Dina died at Auschwitz, taken on the very last transport to the camp. Mom’s father, Franz, died of illness and starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he had gone to find work. All my mother has left of them are a few sepia-colored photographs, two letters, and a postcard. Her brother Herbert, who lived outside Nashville for many years, recently passed away.

Other Kindertransport kids say my mother was lucky to have been sent to family, an aunt and uncle in Southport, England. But she had never met them. The uncle was strict, but the aunt was loving. They were elderly, though, and ten years later, when Mom was fourteen, she was separated again from the only family she knew, and sent to Aunt Charlotte in the United States. Charlotte was not as warm a woman as the English aunt. But the new uncle was far worse, abusing my mother for two years until he died of what was then inoperable coronary disease. This is perhaps the only time I have been happy about the timing of available medical interventions. I didn’t know this horrific fact about Mom’s journey until last summer, when she broke her hip and was heavily sedated. She didn’t mean to tell me.

She was mortified when she realized what she had relayed. When I asked her why she hadn’t told her aunt about the abuse, she said “We had nowhere else to go. No one who wanted us.” Can you imagine?

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Mom went on to marry and have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She has had beautiful moments in her life and lots of love. But she is damaged in many irreparable ways. She has become somewhat paranoid and delusional. It is hard to parse what is just her personality, the result of her separation from her family at four and again at fourteen, the abuse once she reached the US, the stroke she had ten years ago, or the dementia that has set in.

This is not to say that Mom isn’t ever entertained or, for that matter, entertaining. Just this week, by accident, she purchased a pornographic movie on TV. I snorted when I received the email from the carrier asking if I’d enjoyed ‘Cage Girls Gone Wild.’ 

But feeling secure and trusting people comes hard to her. And, to some degree, those insecurities have been passed on to my brother and me, the next generation—intergenerational trauma… the gift that keeps on giving. Mom has never accepted my husband or my brother’s wife. They were and continue to be outsiders in her mind, a threat to the family she recreated for herself. At least, this is what a therapist told me years ago. Though I understand it psychologically, it has not been easy to deal with day-to-day… in real-time. She now says untrue and hurtful things about them both… out loud…loudly, in the presence of family and strangers. I cringe and find myself increasingly setting boundaries in the amount and frequency of time I spend with her and the time she spends with my children. It is indeed ironic and a sad thing for a woman who has only wanted the family she lost.

When news of the October 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel reached US news stations, Mom called me, terrified. "They're killing us again!"

We are in the fight of our lives, both Jew and non-Jew, American and non-American. A battle against Islamic fundamentalism. Of Anti-Americanism. Anti-Zionism. Anti-feminism. When will the world wake up?

I don’t have an answer for my mother, whose worst nightmares have come true. Whose short-term memory may be suffering, but whose long-term memory is intact, and whose Costco hearing aids, and the very patient Costco technicians allow her to hear the TV news, perhaps too well, again.

I try to console Mom with words about eventual peace in the Middle East that I’m not sure I believe. I want what will most likely be Mom’s last years to witness a growing acceptance of Israel and the Jewish people. Neither my mother, Israel, nor the Jewish people can ever be made whole or recover from the entirety of the suffering we have experienced in our history and the current trauma we are going through, but it’s enough already. DAYENU.

Do you hear me, God? DAYENU. Or do I need to suggest a visit to Costco?

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Debra Green is the author of The Convention of Wives and Mahjong at Mara’s.
Instagram: @debragreenwriter

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

My Jewish roots were planted by accident. In 1971, when we relocated from Brooklyn to Staten Island (which was considered practically rural), my parents sought out a neighborhood with a synagogue. They didn’t intend to join it; they just wanted to live in an area with a Jewish presence. They identified as Conservative Jews, but their religious observance didn’t go far beyond affixing a mezuzah to the front door and putting an electric menorah in the windowsill in December. 

My parents didn’t realize that Young Israel of Staten Island was an Orthodox shul. The sidewalks of our street were filled with observant families. In the fall, I saw decorative Sukkahs go up in their backyards; in the winter, menorahs lit up their living rooms. My parents couldn’t have known that “Good Shabbos” would enter my vocabulary, or that—through the dining room window—I would watch our next-door neighbor don tefillin and daven every day.

Despite the absence of rituals like this in our home, I grew up with a sense that being Jewish was important. Matzah brei was a treat during Passover, and we occasionally spent the holiday with family on Long Island. Every other Sunday, my grandfather would visit from Queens, bringing us lunch from his local Jewish deli. In the run-up to Rosh Hashanah, he delivered blank New Year’s cards and a yahrzeit candle, and he gave each of his nine grandchildren five dollars at Hanukkah.

While the Holocaust wasn’t discussed in my house, I knew that my grandmother’s family in Poland had been killed. My mom scolded me when—as part of a sixth-grade history project—I drew a swastika. On my last day of middle school, my eighth-grade English teacher—a Jewish woman—whispered: “Don’t forget where you come from.” 

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These breadcrumbs gave me a connection to my Jewish faith, even if I didn’t quite know what it meant. But I pointed my compass in its direction. I hoped to one day give my own children firsthand knowledge of Judaism. 

When those children arrived, we joined a temple, celebrated holidays, and created traditions I hoped would last for generations. Mezuzahs adorned all our doorposts, and our shelves were stacked with Jewish books. I filled our home with the scents of cinnamon noodle kugel, brisket and chicken soup. My children attended Jewish sleep-away camp and study-abroad programs in Israel. While they were entrenched in their Jewish education, I wanted to do more than just drive them to Hebrew school. I embarked on my own educational journey, and became a B’nai Mitzvah in my forties. My Torah portion was Leviticus 19:14: “Do not put a stumbling block before the blind.” 

Alongside a sense of belonging, my children also experienced their share of stereotypes and cruelty. In elementary school, their classmates asked them where their horns were. Their high school peers threw pennies on the floor and taunted them: “Watch the Jews dive for money.” 

This year has challenged our concept of what it means to be Jewish. Stopped at a red light a mile from home recently, I was startled to read the super-sized font of the bumper sticker in front of me: “F— ISRAEL.” I often think of my cousin in Tel Aviv, and of the sirens that send him running to the nearest bomb shelter. Amidst a resurgence of swastika flags, antisemitic placards and one-sided social media posts, I wake each morning to check the outside of my house for vandalism. It’s exhausting to continually assess every situation and wonder if I’m safe.

Fear has driven some Jews to remove the mezuzahs from their homes and the Stars of David from their necks, while pride has brought others back into temples and classrooms. Antisemitism is baked into the experience of being Jewish—but this doesn’t extinguish my pride in being Jewish and giving my children a Jewish community. They will always know where they come from. 

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Melissa Giberson is an author, occupational therapist, and a proud mama bear to two children. She’s the author of Late Bloomer: Finding My Authentic Self at Midlife, and her essays have appeared in multiple online and in-print publications. As she adjusts to empty nest life, she wonders why she still finds her kid’s socks in random places. 

Instagram: @melissagiberson031

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

Happy early Thanksgiving! We are so thankful to all of you for helping make our anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors and Advocates a USA Today Bestseller three weeks in a row, plus #7 on the IndieReader Bestseller list and a Heather’s Pick at Indigo in Canada — and for making our community right here so vibrant.

Let’s keep this going! Start ordering Hannukah gifts! Buy from your local indie if possible. (For example, Shakespeare & Co on 69th and Lex in NYC has a stack of signed copies on sale. Go snatch them up!)

By the way, did you see Zibby’s new gift guide with many Jewish-themed gifts over on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Substack?!?!

We are trying to bring joy to an otherwise terrifying time. If you haven’t read or watched Bari Weiss’s speech, you must. (Well, after you finish reading this important newsletter.) Click here. Despite all of it, we are speaking out, creating connections, and hopefully serving as a helpful resource to our community. None of this is okay.

Thank you for a FANTASTIC month of events

We had a jam-packed month of events for On Being Jewish Now. Zibby and the rest of our 75 contributing authors had an incredible time interacting with everyone. You all make this community so special and we’re excited to continue building it!

Here are some images from a few of our featured events. Thank you to everyone who attended! Please keep an eye on our Substack and Instagram so that you can attend one of our many December events across the country, either virtually or in-person! DETAILS BELOW!

November Highlights — not too late!

1. Watch the Miami Book Fair panel here with , Lisa Barr, Keren Blankfeld and . (Thanks, , for the video!)

2. Watch the Hadassah Magazine panel here with Zibby, Naomi Firestone-Teeter of the Jewish Book Council, Lisa Barr, and Lisa Hostein of Hadassah.

3. Listen to the Streicker Center panel with Lihi Lapid, Annabelle Gurwitch, Talia Carner, Nicola Kraus and Zibby on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books in two weeks! Stay tuned.

4. Watch the 92nd Street Y’s video tribute to Zibby with Anna Quindlen and others and watch the hour-long event celebrating Zibby with the Champions Award as a 2024 Extraordinary Woman of the 9nd Street. Y!

5. Watch the 70 Faces Media conversation with Zibby and Deborah Kolben.

   

Plus: The Bedford Playhouse hosted Amy Blumenfeld, , Jane Rosen, Zibby, and ; Temple Israel NYC hosted , , Zibby, and Courtney Sheinmel; The Yale Club hosted Zibby in conversation with Lauren Willig; The Jewish Book Council Jewish Writers' Conference hosted , , Alison Hammer, Jill Santopolo and Zibby; Zibby’s Bookshop hosted a Challah Bake Online with Beth Ricanati, Zibby, and Rabbi Vanessa Harper, plus Whitney Wright from Une Femme; Sue Shapiro’s Publishing Panel featured Zibby; Caffe Aronne hosted a book signing with Zibby and Corie Adjmi; the Katz JCC Arts and Culture Festival hosted Zibby, Rochelle Weinstein and others; Zibby’s Bookshop hosted a launch party with 20+ contributors; did an event with Jennifer Lang and Jodie Sadowsky in Hartford… and MORE!!!!

DECEMBER EVENTS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS!

Wednesday, December 4th at 7 pm: Kaplan JCC Palisades will host Lisa Kogan, Jonathan Santlofer, Daphne Merkin and Zibby. Tickets here.

Thursday, December 5th at 1 pm: UJA event in NYC with Elyssa Friedland, Corie Adjmi, Jane L. Rosen and Zibby.

Sunday, December 8th at 1:15 pm: The New York Jewish Book Festival at the Museum of Jewish Heritage with Zibby, , Ali Rosen, and . Register here.

Sunday, December 8th: Private — school book fair.

Monday, December 9th at 12:30 pm: Park East Day School Book Fair with Zibby.

Monday, December 9th at 2:00 pm: AJU Open interview with Rabbi Sherre Hirsch and Zibby. Virtual. Info here.

Monday, December 9th at 7 pm: Sutton Place Synagogue with Zibby and Marjorie Shuster. Info here.

Tuesday, December 10th at 1 pm: Hillel Global Assembly with Zibby in Boston.

Wednesday, December 11th at 10:30 am: Sid Jacobson JCC Event with , Amy Blumenfeld, and Jane L. Rosen. Register here.

Wednesday, December 11th at 7:00 pm: Zibby with Heather Reisman of Indigo in Toronto. Private location. On Being Jewish Now is a Heather’s Pick at Indigo! Email here for details.

Thursday, December 12th at 6:00 pm PT: Los Altos, CA - private home through JCF. Email here for details.

Friday, December 13th at 11:30 am: JCF event in Sausalito, CA with Zibby, and . Email here for details.

Saturday, December 14th at 10 am: Happy Women’s Dinner BRUNCH organized by Jill Daniel. Contact Jill to book a spot for brunch.

Sunday, December 15th at 1 pm ET: Panelist signing at the Tablet Hannukah Bazaar, NY.

Sunday, December 15th at 5 pm: Zibby’s Bookshop with Zibby in a live podcast with Elisa Albert in Santa Monica, CA. Sign up here.

Monday, December 16th at 6 pm: Zibby’s Bookshop with Abby Stern, Beth Ricanati, and . Sign up here.

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We are so grateful to each and every one of you. This community would not be what it is without you. This idea started as a way to build unity and find strength within each other and it continues to evolve every single day. We can’t wait to see how we grow next.

This week on our On Being Jewish Now podcast

NEW EPISODE WEEKLY: Listen to Natalie Shushan share “Reclaiming My Israeli Identity”, her beautiful essay on being Israeli in a world where that is not always the safest thing to be, inspired by On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates.

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Jewish Notables Featured on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books

This week, Zibby was joined by French writer, philosopher, filmmaker, and humanitarian activist Bernard-Heri Lévy to discuss Israel Alone, a powerful analysis of the global response to October 7, the new virulent waves of antisemitism, and why Israel is waging an existential war against barbarism alone.

Other recent Jewish-themed podcast with Jewish authors:

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On Our Substack: Featured Essays

We have TONS of new essays up about what it means and how it feels to be Jewish now. Scroll through right here on Substack for some amazing content.

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Zibby Owens, Founder

Sasha Astrof, Coordinator, On Being Jewish Now