Tag: israel

  • The privilege to choose where you’re murdered for being a Jew

    The privilege to choose where you’re murdered for being a Jew

    A reaction from a lot of Americans (including the State Department, apparently): “You can always come here.” I do feel guilt and appreciation around this, rooted in the well-meaningness and love of my friends and family; I understand how irresponsible? selfish? it might seem: “You have American passports. You can always come on a plane…

  • Dispatch after 72 hours into whatever comes next

    Dispatch after 72 hours into whatever comes next

    If there’s a teudat zehut (ID card) in your pocket, it’s like this: whether you were born here or moved here a year ago, your life is intertwined with whatever is happening outside your own mind and body. Whether you asked for it or not, whether you agree with or not, whether you fully comprehend…

  • Who is *really* ready for אחדות in 5783?

    Who is *really* ready for אחדות in 5783?

    It’s a big week ahead. The timing shouldn’t be lost on any of us. We’re on another eve of Temple destruction anniversary. We’re on another eve of Knesset voting the judicial reform issue. Will the labor unions strike again? Is the IDF really at risk of falling apart? Will Bibi’s new pacemaker slow the pace…

  • Unbalanced

    Unbalanced

    It’s not the end of the world, because nothing ever is. Maybe it’s eventually the end of my world, or yours. More likely, it’s a transition into a different world, one where… one where a lot of fears become reality, where others don’t, where things we never imagined happening do happen, where things we hoped…

  • Undressing Israel.

    Undressing Israel.

    A set of giant concrete blocks that serve as guard posts at the checkpoint near my house now has a fancy sign on it: עמדה 2 Things here have always felt concrete – heavy, burdensome, temporary but permanent – but they’re getting more and more more concrete over time and experience and murder and terror…

  • Bleak.

    Bleak.

    Some make a habit of exaggerating the bleakness of our civil future here in Israel, many many more make a habit of not relating to it enough. The reckoning is creeping even slower than you’d imagine; bursting those bubbles is harder than you think. So tonight was the second in a series of motzei shabbat…

  • Go forth.

    Go forth.

    What a weird twist… to be exploring Jewishness and Israeliness and what this peoplehood means these days when it’s appearing more and more difficult to understand the meaning of what’s happening in the world…  …during the week we read parshat Lech Lecha.  What does it mean to pick up and leave something you know? Swept…

  • Twenty Years

    Twenty Years

    Political Violence (part 1) It took place in an off-the-beaten path classroom, not a modern lecture hall. We were maybe 30 students, and the few times we had met before – maybe it was two? Three? – we had already covered some ‘basics’: what peacebuilding is, Rwanda, a bit of Bosnia. When I registered for…

  • Sometimes it’s what you don’t say

    Like there isn’t enough… in what seems like one long endless day since Monday, a single period in a calendar that has been one long endless battle since the beginning of time… …is how fucking horrible Israeli comms handling has been. Between the IDF spokespeople and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This has been true…

  • Hi from a new chapter in an old story.

    Hi from a new chapter in an old story.

    After a year and a half of emotional exhaustion, it’s shocking and also not shocking to learn that it’s possible to be even more deeply emotionally exhausted. With each passing rocket or gunshot or stabbing or counterstrike, another slice of the next generation loses the chance to grow up not knowing what we know. More…

  • Hindsight is, after all, 2020: My end of (the longest) year review

    Hindsight is, after all, 2020: My end of (the longest) year review

    “It’s the year of cliche conference names! The year of too-easy cable news slogans! The year that will produce endless ‘hindsight is…’ memes!” That’s what I was saying this time last year. So here we are, and it really wasn’t. Something as frivolous as a year’s round, meaningful number just… barely came up in 2020.…

  • The national condition of feeling stuck

    The national condition of feeling stuck

    Everything feels stuck. Every post on my feeds is “hoping for the best, but…” “I didn’t know what to do, so I just…” “well, nothing’s going to make a difference, so…” I sense the stuckness in the street, I sense the stuckness at work, I am pounded over the head with the stuckness over social…