‘As a Jew’

As a Jew I opened my tent to the stranger.
As a Jew I was barren, blessed, and threw my head back and laughed.

As a Jew I walked out of Egypt barefoot.
As a Jew I saw both Temples burn.
As a Jew I was driven from Spain, from Poland, from Baghdad.

As a Jew I wept by all the rivers.
As a Jew I was mocked in markets, chased through forests, spat on in streets.
As a Jew I heard the sermons that cursed me and the mobs that followed after.
As a Jew I buried our dead by the millions and still lit Sabbath lights and vowed “next year in Jerusalem” — not as a dream, but as a promise.

As a Jew I came home — to fields of stone and salt, to a land both broken and blooming.

As a Jew I saw our children murdered on buses, in pizzerias, at festival grounds.
As a Jew I grieved on October 7 when the music stopped and the fire fell.

As a Jew I still grieve, and I still sing.

As a Jew I will not trade pride for your pity.
As a Jew I will not lay down our story as your welcome mat.
As a Jew I am not your scapegoat, not your alibi, not your symbol.

As a Jew I will not be your token Jewish friend.
As a Jew I will not beg for your applause.
As a Jew I will not willingly sharpen your knife against my people.

As a Jew I argue in every generation.
As a Jew I ask questions with no easy answers.
As a Jew I turn text into fire and silence into song.
As a Jew I carry memory forward not as chains, but as wings.

As a Jew I carry paradox like a sacred offering.
As a Jew I keep planting even in scorched earth.
As a Jew I make life holy with wine, with bread, with light, with all the people in our tent.

As a Jew I am covenant.
As a Jew I am defiance.
As a Jew I am brilliance, survival, creation, and joy.
As a Jew I am the wild and willful dream created when my ancestor wrestled God.
As a Jew I endure.
As a Jew I rise.
As a Jew I return.