Until there are no enemies left…
A note that this newsletter discusses personal grief and loss, and the current situation and historical context of Palestine and Israel. I know many of us are struggling with grief, pain, and information overwhelm, and sometimes need to take breaks from witnessing and engaging. I hope that you are able to do so when needed, and then come back in. During a time like this, when our world is faced with an acute crisis - one which will surely ripple forward in time - I hope we can find ways to resource ourselves enough to not look away entirely.
I can’t ever remember the day my dad died, meaning - I can’t remember the actual date. This forgetting feels like a blank swath across my mind and heart, and always brings up fear and frustration. So I start where I can. I know in my bones that it was October, mid-October - this knowing never leaves. Then, I try to circle in closer, testing the edges of that fuzzy, blank gap. Eventually - I remember that it was the 16th, or the 17th. From there I can get no closer, and I resort to frantically searching emails, Ancestry profiles, and paperwork. Even then - even then, I often get the days mixed up. One minute, I’m sure, absolutely positive it was the 16th. And then I look again - and it’s the 17th.
He was my dad, and my mind and heart have decided they just can’t hold the enormity of his dying and death. The date is just something that will always be slippery, just out of reach.
I think of this, and of the pain and grief I feel about all of my beloveds that have died. I think of the pain and grief I’ve witnessed and held for others after a death. I think of how huge and life-shaking they can be, and I wonder - how do you mourn your entire home, your entire people? How on earth, how possibly, do you hold it? I think of the pain and suffering of an entire people, for almost 80 years, and I try to understand how we can look away, how some can support the violence and devastation wrought against an entire people. I try to understand the support, tacit or active, of a regime that harms, incarcerates, destroys lives - over and over again.
I didn’t grow up in a household that practiced Jewish religious traditions, but my dad and grandfather were proud Jews, and fierce supporters of Israel. I loved and love them both dearly, and as a young person, there was no question in my mind that a “homeland for Jews” was necessary and right. It has taken years of listening, learning, critical thinking and reflection to understand that the pain and horror Jewish people have experienced, the historic and present-day realities of anti-semitism, does not grant us the right to steal others’ homes, land, and lives. Instead, I and so many other Jewish people believe that our traditions teach us to care for others, to work for Tikkun Olam (the Repair of the World). This is absolutely counter to the harm the state of Israel enacts on the Palestinian people.
Hamas’ killing and kidnapping of Israeli people was (and continues to be) wrong, devastating, and horrifying. It is more violence and terror in the long, long line of terror Jewish people have experienced for centuries. And, what Israel is doing in Gaza and to all Palestinian people is wrong, and is state-created terror. What the creation and state of Israel has wrought in Palestine for 75 years - the killings, destruction, occupation, and theft of lands, homes, lives, and futures - is apartheid, collective punishment - appalling. The violence and terror of Hamas grows from this ground: it is rooted in almost 80 years of oppression, trauma, forced removal from ancestral lands and livelihoods, and open-air incarceration.
You might ask, what does this have to do with Rose and Cedar, my small offering? The Forest Therapy and the consulting I offer, everything I do, is based in my Kavanah (my intention) to support and nurture the World to Come (in Hebrew - Olam Haba). As an anti-zionist Jew, I believe the world to come is one in which all people, all beings are free, and cared for: absolutely including the people of Palestine. The world I and so many others are working for is one in which all beings may live their full, beautiful, beloved lives. Where each life is seen and held as precious.
On many fronts and through several strategies, Israel is working for the genocide of the Palestinian people. It is infuriating and heartbreaking to say that people can not live without food, water, access to medical care, and safe shelter. It is heartbreaking and infuriating because the state of Israel knows this - this is, in fact, the goal.
There are many, many smart and devoted people that are and have been speaking (screaming into what often feels like a void) to try to help people outside of Palestine understand what is and has been happening there for generations. When people have been denied their basic human rights for decades upon decades, when they have watched their children, homes, medical care, beloved olive trees, and community destroyed, over and over again, with the approval, support, and encouragement of so many other nations - is it any wonder that people will do what they can to break free? When nonviolent strategies such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions are made illegal?
I offer Forest Therapy because I truly believe, see, and feel that we are all connected. My life and thriving are connected to yours, and to someone’s across the globe, and to the tree in my own backyard, and to the sea I’ll never step foot in. We are one great web of being, tugging on each other, interdependent. I believe that we must nurture and care for each other - and we must be willing to say something is wrong, something is tearing at and destroying that web, when we see it happening.
This is that time.
This is the time we must all stand up and demand an end to genocide.
If these thoughts are new or upsetting to you, I beg you to learn more. I beg you to listen to the Palestinian authors, thinkers, and activists who put their precious and limited life energy into trying to make people understand. If you are a Jewish person, I especially beg you to please not let them turn your pain and grief into a reason for creating even more pain and grief in this world. Our people have experienced immeasurable pain, generation after generation. We are not alone in this pain, loss, and grief. Many, many peoples across the world and throughout time have experienced genocide and catastropic loss. We cannot use our pain to justify never-ending harm to others.
Here is a list of Palestinian and Jewish organizations to follow and learn from. All offer opportunities to get involved and learn on their websites.
We must demand a ceasefire, we must demand humanitarian aid, we must say - never again - not in our names, not in any of our names.
from Red Sea: April 2002, by Aurora Levins Morales
… This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.
