The Writing On The Wall
For the last 9 years I have ministered. I have been a minister of unity. I have united people in marriage. I have stood with them, taken them under my wing, and advocated for them no matter what their family/religion/culture of origin had to say about it, no matter if they were rejected, disowned and cast out by family or clergy because they were something other than cis/white/hetero/Judeo-Christian. Regardless of color, culture, country or creed, belief or background, gender identity or sexual orientation I married them. I have seen SO MUCH about how religion divides people. And I have done my best to stand up in front of communities and deliver messages of togetherness.
I have done my best to learn and be sensitive to and be skillful about intersectionality, decolonization, BLM, critical race theory, LGBTQIA+ rights, etc. and to engage in social justice. I have done my best - as someone who lives on stolen land, as someone who works and profits from living on unceded land - to acknowledge the indigenous people whose blood was spilled (and who continue to be denied and disappeared) in order for me to live on this land. I have put land acknowledgments in my wedding ceremonies. I have donated money to land rematriation and land sovereignty efforts in California, and in NY where I grew up, and paid Shuumi Land Tax. I have done my best to bring some awareness, especially on days like Columbus Day, to the plight of the indigenous people of this land - their erasure, their holocaust.
I have made relations with native people. I have sat in sweat lodges and tipis. I have learned beautiful, powerful Native American prayer songs, and I have received indigenous teachings that have benefited my life in countless ways. I also know in my blood and bones what it is to belong to a nation that is hunted, persecuted and systematically obliterated.
I don’t share much of who I am publicly in blogs or on social media. I share my ministerial work, my passionate love of ceremony, my desire to help people reimagine rites and rituals in this increasingly secular world, and to reanimate the sacred inter-connectivity of all life without the overlay of dogma, doctrine and deities. But behind that heart of service, and that deep devotion, is a human person, a Jewish person and right now I am ailing. I am seeing things I am horrified by. And I have to share them. I have to use the tiny platform I have to name it, and put it in front of you. I have to ask these questions... Why did they not march with the same passion for the six million who died in The Congo, or for the other six million who have been displaced there?
From Tablet Magazine “The Protests of Fools” 10/25/23
Jews around the globe need you (especially the “woke,” liberal progressive / TikTok generation / social media influences / armchair warriors) to ask yourselves these questions for real, to see through the fog, to wake up from the spell you are under, to see your bias, and your complicity, and to take a stand.
“Today, your progressive friends need a scapegoat. For imperialism, for colonialism, for white supremacy. For the indelible sins etched into their own histories. Will they leave their own “settler colonies”? Will they stick out their own necks to be cut by the ‘oppressed’? No. They’ll outsource that to the Jews.” -Boaz Munro
I am standing up as a minister of peace and a minister of unity, and I am using my voice to say that what is happening right now is not okay! This isn’t alarmism or ancestral trauma speaking, this is the writing on the wall. This is pernicious, insidious, calculated, targeted hate. This is total exploitation of young, hyper indoctrinatable “progressive” minds. This is lack of critical thinking and lack of nuance made manifest. This is co-opting, misusing and weaponizing words, phrases and slogans. This is dangerous.
So please see it, see what is happening, acknowledge it, and don’t gaslight Jewish people when they share what is happening. Then use your voice and your platform to speak up about it. Do your equivalent work around antisemitism - with as much vigor and sincerity and righteousness as you did for all of the other social justice causes and movements you have mobilized and rallied for. And please do it right now. Get as riled up about that venomous hatred, that poison of consciousness, that exists everywhere in the world.
Please understand that what is happening in the Middle East isn’t about freeing Palestine or liberation from oppressive colonizers. Please understand that this is about fanatical religious zealotry, 7th century barbarism, extremist attempts at world domination, and glory to the martyr/millenarian apocalyptic terror/death cult jihadism. But it’s also very specifically about antisemitism. Jews have been hunted for millennia, and they are being hunted again now. This is history repeating itself in the ugliest, most nefarious way. It’s happening in front of your eyes. The othering, the desensitization, and the “justified” hate is just the beginning.
In August 2021 the FBI released its hate crime stats for 2020. Of all crimes motivated by hatred of the victims due to their religion 57.5% targeted Jews. Staggering!! Since October 7th there has been an enormous global uptick in antisemitic hate crimes against Jews. "Free Palestine" protests have quickly devolved into chants to “gas the Jews,” crowds waving swastikas, blood thirsty lynch mobs, and people carrying signs that say “keep the world clean, throw out the Jews.” What you are seeing right now and will continue to see is Hilter level hate times a trillion. This time with a global platform and better branding.
If you are a friend, or a client, if the 1:1 coaching or ceremonial work I did with/for you had a positive impact on your life, if our friendship has enriched your life in some way, then just know that now is the time I NEED YOU. I need you to stand up and speak up and not be complicit. I need you to advocate fiercely, passionately. I need you to see the writing on the wall and do something about it. And, if you have a Jewish person in your life that you care about, let them know that you are unequivocally there for them right now, because your silence has been DEAFENING.
