I don’t know if it is unusual,
I suspect not;
I, like every parent, think continuously about my children.
I contemplate their feelings,
Their situation,
Their progress in life, ups and downs.
A bond connects us that only a parent can understand.
It is good and bad.
Good in that it is special, life affirming,
Bad in that it never gives you peace,
It is a constancy,
A niggle that pulls at your heart.
Before this past fortnight I, and here I and being very honest,
Never really thought or considered,
Despite what I have just written,
My children’s Jewish identity.
They were just my children.
I exist in a void,
My DNA recognises generations of Ashkenazi Jew
And yet,
I don’t pray, I don’t believe in God, I don’t follow the rules of Kashrut (which is moot, given my avoidance of all animal produce) (My daughter, at this point smiles, ‘But what about my challah, it’s made with eggs, and grampy’s birthday cake last night? Oh, and the Yorkshire Puddings, eggs, eggs, and some butter…)
OK, I am my own vegan. Enough to cause my bodily iron stores to deficit, not enough to get my through the gates of Evergreen Heaven.
I’m a similar kind of Jew.
I say Jew, not because of religious practices but because of my strong cultural identification with the past of my people. I’ve watched every Jewish or Israeli show on Netflix except for the Jewish Wedding one.
And, over the years, I have related this to my children.
My cultural essence.
I had not however, realised that they identify as Jewish too.
According to the rules of Halacha, the day-to-day rulebook for the Jewish People – prayer three times a day, avoidance of pork, rest on the Sabbath, there is the regulation about parentage; you are a Jew if your mum is a Jew. I am if you like, double-Jewish as both my parents were Orthodox Jews.
The modern world and other authorities over the millennia have stretched this definition, sometimes called the Nuremberg Laws, to include anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.
In Nazi Germany, that was sufficient to remove all your belongings, gas you and then extract the gold from the teeth of your lifeless body.
Israel has adopted a similar ruling. Jewish grandparent is enough. This was used extensively in supporting Jews to leave Russia after the fall of Communism.
If it is enough to have a Jewish grandfather, does that make you a quarter Jew or the Jew with the full-set, a four-times Jew? I don’t know and don’t really care. It isn’t a game.
And what I experienced leading up to the Massacre, in the years and months before and in bas-relief afterwards, is my children’s identification as Jew.
And this has caused me angst.
You see, just like that six-year-old child at primary school in Glasgow, with the taunt of ‘Jew-bug’ thrown at me, it is as if I have passed that contagion to my kids. They are also afflicted.
Sure, for me, I am pleased to be Jewish. It is after all a major component of my identity, it features in the books I read, the films I watch, even sometime the music I play.
This is a fantastic heritage.
The remote bond that connects me to Feynman, Einstein and Auster has been a source of pride that I have worn, mostly hidden, for decades (Cultural tzitzit).
And yet, the angst, the anguish, the paranoia I would not have wanted to bequeath. The isolation, ‘It’s Christmas’ has never had the same resonance for me as ‘The Candles’.
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Barch attah adoni, eloheynu melech halolam asher kidishanu bimitzvotav vitzivanu le-hadlik ner shel shabbat.
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Being Jewish is being different, yet part of the crowd.
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During Covid I talked to one of the directors at work about the risks to my contracting the infection. ‘The rules are for BAME only,’ he said.
I reflected.
Was I BAME?
Am I?
I am different enough for my genetic analysis to shout-out ‘Jew’ yet not enough to warrant special measures.
It’s a paradox that I have frequently Googled.
And Jews, that is me and my children are similar enough to blend into the milieu yet sufficiently different to be called-out, ‘Where you from? Greece? Spain? Yemen?’ I’ve had it all. These are microaggressions. Perhaps I am microscopically ethnic.
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And it is this inheritance that I had not considered.
I had not thought I would pass on to my children the weight of being different.
The burden of being outside.
I am an outsider, a stranger if you will. My recent personality survey says so. And for many years I had not reflected on the why. I had not considered the risk of passing this on to my children.
Jew bug, they are infected.
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And with the Jews, no one really bothers us if we keep quiet. That is what they thought when the Transport came to take them away. ‘Things are bad here (the ghetto), they can’t possibly be any worse, let’s see where this train takes us.’
And the story is wrought in pain.
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And like I said yesterday, the world loves a dead Jew.
Look at the recent international Holocaust best sellers – dead Jews, so many you struggle to count; the Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Boy in the Stiped Pyjamas, The Book Thief.
Dead Jews, it’s such a laugh.
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For reasons that are beyond my understanding the dead Jews of Be’eri, Sderot, Nachal Oz and Supernova haven’t registered in the consciousness of some.
Perhaps they have been reading the wrong news or accessing spoof websites.
Reading and absorbing the distorted information transmitted by the Guardian these days is bad enough, it is far removed from the clips shared on Tik Tok.
‘It’s all lies.’
So easy to call reality a lie.
Have you ever considered your own existence? Yet, the dolts who shout the twisted propaganda are unlikely to ever read my words.
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Free Palestine.
Jews are Nazis.
Netanyahu is Hitler.
End the murder.
Some of the slogans I have seen. No innocent person should ever be killed. Unfortunately, it happens. That is war, that is what it is to be a human prepared to threaten the existence of another, in your actions, you sign a contract accepting your preparedness to accept the deaths of your fellows, the unborn child, innocent beyond. It is part of your battle-plan.
If any of us, yes, you, peacenik, lover of fairness, singer of songs, waver of anti-Israeli flags, you or your country would respond in exactly the same way as Israel were there to have occurred a similar insult (is that too benign a word?)
I think of that poor guy who was arrested recently in Buckingham Palace. He was on his way to kill the Queen. He’s been banged-up, his psychosis on the side-lines.
15 equivalents of 9/11 and Israel is expected to play nice. To let the rockets fall and get on with it.
If there was one missile fired into the UK from another country, with intent to kill, that would likely precipitate a military response. The death of one man, the Archduke led to World War One. Imagine tens of thousands of missiles.
‘You get used to them after a while,’ my brother said yesterday, referring to the missile alerts.
Inured to bombs falling. Imagine. And Israel is meant to hold back.
An equivalent number of murders in the UK, as happened in the South of Israel would be around 15,000 people.
Me and every person I know, and every person they know wiped out in a frenzied slaughter and my country should turn the other cheek.
As if.
No.
Sorry, this is Jewish exceptionalism.
It is OK for any other country to defend itself, not Israel.
It is OK to maintain strict borders, not Israel.
It is OK for the Australians to unanimously vote against the rights of their indigenous peoples, and no one calls the Ozzie’s racists. They don’t get the Apartheid slur.
No, no, the Jews are especially bad.
They control the media, the financial markets, the weather after all.
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Last night I posted somewhere the reality that the easiest way to save the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza strip would have been first, not to murder Israelis – too late for that, and second best to return the people who have been kidnapped (World media has forgotten this calamity) (I dreamed of them last night. The men were stripped of their clothing and beaten.)
If that little ginger-haired boy and his family and the 200 others were freed, and ideally the dead bodies that the terrorists stole (Yes, Hamas are masters as trading in the dead), it would be impossible for Israel to invade, the pressure from the US would lead to a cessation.
Sure, it would prolong the stalemate, more missiles would arrive in Gaza (bypassing the food, medicine and school books that somehow can’t get in) and the threat would continue.
The world is pillorying Israel for the dead Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has asked the people to move South.
Somewhere around 500,000 Israelis have been displaced because of threats in the North and the South. This is what decent societies do. In Gaza, Hamas have blocked the roads to stop the move.
And yet, the protests are against Israel.
They are the murderers.
Not the people who killed young men and women at the dance festival.
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Come, on.
If a group of heavily armed men ran through Glastonbury, killing and maiming, would you move-on? Get over it and return to your everyday?
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I need to move-on, yet I can’t.
I am caught, spinning.
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Any thoughts? Any ideas?
Should I continue my silent scream?
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I fear I am becoming repetitive.
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I should switch to nicer things.
I have had some thoughts about personality and patient safety.
I can’t.
The image I carry is of being trapped in a sinking muddy pit. I try to climb out but keep slipping. As I grasp the sides, clods come away in my hands. Stuck. Trapped in the mud, laying at the bottom, in a pool of dirt.
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Recent blogs have ended upbeat.
A little like the many of the blockbuster Holocaust books, they have a happy ending.
This can’t have a happy ending.
Whichever direction events unfold will lead to more tragedy.
There will be more lies spread about the murderous Israelis, there will be more threat directed at my people – my people being the Jews, the Israelis, the civilized of the world.
They will come for you next.
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Darra Horn in her treatise on dead Jews describes some elements of 20th Century Jewish Literature. A theme being, either no end to the narrative – the stories just stopping, for example at the gates of the Concentration Camp (nothing more need be said), or ending with possibilities left that you know are going to be unpleasant (Tevye’s family, what became of them?)
We love reading Kafka because he is trapped. He is overwhelmed by the questions that are not questions, by the trivialities that are routine. None of us would want to be Kafka.
For some, there is no alternative.
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