I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

Before I share my writing, I have started asking myself if it will create more division or more unity. More harm or more good. I never want to add to the polarization and divisiveness. We have plenty of that already. Sometimes I share something that I think is benign or even keeled and it turns out it is not. I know I can’t please everyone or say just the right thing so that everyone everywhere will approve of me or my message, but I never want to cause harm.

I realize that any attempt at questioning or challenging “archies” and “isms” and movements and parties and governments and ideologies (on all ends of all spectrums) can end up pitting us against them, and me against you. Word-savvy as I am, I haven't learned how to speak in non binary terms. Sometimes words fail.

But writing helps me, and I have heard from others that my writing helps them too - especially liberal and progressive Jews who feel awful and undone about what senator Chuck Schumer articulated so succinctly:

“Not long ago, many of us marched together for Black and brown lives” Mr. Schumer said. “We stood against anti-Asian hatred. We protested bigotry against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. We fought for reproductive justice, out of the recognition that injustice against one oppressed group is injustice against all. But, he added, “apparently, in the eyes of some, that principle does not extend to the Jewish people.” -NY Times

Feeling into what I could share that would be authentic and heartfelt, and as non-violent as possible, I consulted one of Kim Krans' oracle decks. I picked “The Tear” card. “It is likely this card appears when there is grieving yet to do, a sinking down to disappointment or despair…”

“The Tear” is about emotions that need to be felt and expressed, and I realize that what I haven’t shared with you is my heart. My heart feels hardened and broken simultaneously. Since October 7th I have been in preservation and mobilization mode because, quoting Chuck Schumer again, “For many Jewish people today, the rise of antisemitism is more than a crisis — it’s a five-alarm fire.” 

True. It’s a raging fire that needs to be rapidly contained because Jews know how this goes and where it could end up. Thousands of years of history has taught us this. We have an instruction manual written in our DNA. So we do everything in our power to recognize the sneaky and insidious nature of antisemitism, and to take immediate and decisive action to stamp it out.

So I have been busy... busy pouring water on that fire, and sharpening my mind, and consulting with other Jews, and communing with my ancestors, and when I have anything left in me at all, I sing and I pray and I cry, and I apologize to those in my lineage who lived through hell and died in camps, and I promise them that I will not let them have suffered in vain.

My heart is broken. And I don’t want people sending me Gabor Maté videos about how to regulate my nervous system. That is not the medicine I need. I need to tear my clothes and shave my head and cover my mirrors and sit low to the ground because I am in mourning. I am in mourning because innocent and unsuspecting women and children and old people were beheaded and immolated and eviscerated and raped to death on a joyous Jewish holiday. 

It's perfectly reasonable to criticize Netanyahu’s government and protest against Israel’s policies and actions without condoning or promoting terror sects, the killing of civilians, or the spreading of menacing antisemitism. But I am in mourning because people who I thought were moral and decent and kind cannot seem to tell the difference between those things and act accordingly. I am in mourning for Raya and Marina and Dinah and Milla, Russian and Ukrainian Jewish friends and colleagues who are seeing their worst nightmares brought to life. I am in mourning because Jews have been hated and hunted for millennia and because I don’t know if "the oldest hatred” will ever die.

I NEVER thought that I would see this level of antisemitism in my lifetime. I knew vaguely that it still existed in the shadows and on the fringes. I read the FBI statistics a couple of years ago that reported 57% of religious based hate crimes in the USA were perpetrated against Jews. But this, right now, is on another level entirely.

I used to scream “Never again means never again to anyone anywhere” to my family members who were too tribal minded for my peace and justice loving taste. They sounded racist to me, and I sounded hysterical to them! But to be honest, I didn’t understand what “Never Again” actually meant to the Jews who coined the term... 

“For Jews, ‘Never Again’ is less an expression that hopes for a general end to genocide. It’s a resolve that we will do whatever it takes to make sure it never again happens to us. Never again will another Anne Frank be a helpless little girl with no one to protect her. Never again will the Jews be led to the gas chambers without putting up a fight. Never again will we ignore those who declare their intention to exterminate us.” –Jew Oughta Know: Never Again 

I don’t know what else to say. 

Dagara Elder Malidoma Patrice Somé said: “We need more prayers, we need more poetry, we need more stories, we need more song! I don't know how to teach people to become mythologically aware! We need to stop using mundane English to talk to each other. If there's something about you that makes me uncomfortable, I'll come and read you a poem, and that will settle that!  Maybe together we can go out and sing a song to the trees…”

In that spirit, I share this poem…

Adrift by Mark

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.