WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS; fast this Thursday; concert Oct 19
David Seidenberg
I wanted to reach out to you all in this time of horror and trauma.
My experience of the past few days has been one of disbelief as each new story comes out and seems more horrifying than the last one. When horror momentarily yields to grief and sobbing, tears have their measure, and then I swing back and forth between the two, between horror and sobbing, with lengthening pauses that feel like normal time. In those pauses, the reality that is so emotionally present but so far away gets displaced by the physical present that is here and now, that is safe and quiet.
Almost every Jewish person I know is reliving ancestral trauma right now, on top of any lived trauma, any experienced and perceived anti-Semitism, and so on. So much of this emotional trajectory is beyond what words can express. I wish for all of you receiving this letter that you recognize that you may need to cry at odd times, that you may be suddenly completely worn out, that you may feel uncertain about sharing your feelings and maybe even afraid to share them with non-Jews.
On top of that, we can expect more traumas and terrors to unfold over the coming days, which makes it hard to move from shock to processing all these feelings.
These dynamics are going on for Jews all over the political map, however they feel about questions concerning Israel and Palestine. One thing that is happening that might help with this is that a wide spectrum of the Jewish community is going to fast from dawn to sunset this Thursday Oct 12, as a way to confront this pain and to pray for strength and healing and for the captives and all who are endangered.
But where we go from there when we think about politics can vary widely. Most of the organized Jewish community is unified around the idea that the only rational option as the eradication of Hamas. I surely do empathize with that perspective.
And yet, how can that goal be pursued without killing thousands of innocent Gazans, and without all the Israeli hostages getting killed? The moral argument for such a course of action, despite the “collateral” damage, is that something so deeply evil must be uprooted at any cost because of how threatening it is.
But somehow I think the calculus would be different if the innocent people who were going to lose their lives were not Gazans, and that terrifies me morally. I would ask every one of us to think about that question before being so sure of what needs doing. And yet (one more and yet), I still end up at the point where I believe uprooting Hamas is a necessity.
In any case, there are no clear answers without moral costs, except one, though it is not for now: Ultimately, there can be no peace until the matzav (situation) of occupation and siege that characterizes the Israel-Palestine relationship changes. But that is for a coming day, may it come soon; today is not the time for peace.
Now, I want to speak to the diversity of people on this list. If you are new to this list or less familiar with the other people on it, you may not know that among the people who receive these posts are those who are deeply-felt Zionists, and people who are non-Zionist or anti-Zionist.
I doubt I can write something that would satisfy every person, but my priority in writing you all is to help in some small way to make more space for people to process all this trauma. So now I want to specifically address folks who are anti-Zionist: Trying to fit the atrocities committed by Hamas under the rubric of “resistance”, as some radical supporters of Palestinian liberation would like to do, short-circuits the process of dealing with the trauma that any human being must instinctually feel when confronted by the fact of decapitated babies, may God help us all. If you are coming from a radical left perspective, I urge you not to go that route, but rather to feel what you must feel.
Each of us who is Jewish must also ask, how can you, in your authentic identity, whatever your politics, be a useful ally to your people? Non-Jews should also ask, how can we be allies to the Jewish people?
But for everyone, even those in the mainstream Jewish community, we all must also ask—as soon as we are able to—how can we be an ally to human beings, and how can we be allies to the people of Gaza, who were already suffering under the repression and corruption of Hamas, and will also suffer from the Israeli assault on Gaza? But it is hard to ask that from people who are still finding their dead, let alone still burying them.
One last important thing: on the matter of trauma, there is a way to donate, among many ways to donate, to help Israelis dealing with trauma. Staff from AMEN - a healing center for women survivors of sexual violence (https://www.ohelaenglish.org/) have relocated to the south where they are working with survivors of the Hamas attack. One of those staff is the daughter of Rabbi Ruth and Michael Gan Kagan, dear friends of mine from the Jewish Renewal movement in Israel. They want to raise $5000 more to reach their $15K goal to help this work. You can learn more and donate here: https://my.israelgives.org/en/fundme/Deadsea23
If a similar way emerges over the next week to donate to help innocent Gazans, I will certainly share that as well. And I want to acknowledge that it feels scary to say that because of how so many folks feel right now.
Wishing you all strength,
David Seidenberg
P.S. Next week, Thursday October 19, there will be a concert of my music at Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity in Florence MA and live-streamed, at 7 PM EST. I hope you can come — you can get tickets from Bombyx.live/events/bird-morning/ — proceeds to benefit Beit Ahavah Reform Synagogue. The occasion is also my birthday.
I want to add that the sudden events that might unfold in Israel and Palestine might also make a celebratory concert feel out of place, in which case we will reschedule. Please still buy tickets; you will be first to know what is happening, you will already be ticketed for a future concert, you will receive some advance tracks from the concert, and you will be invited to any alternative gathering that we do on the day of the concert.