Blood doesn’t age, but mine is ancient and boiling

Blood doesn’t age. It is renewed, always fresh. It is one of the most renewable tissues in the body. The blood circulating in you today could be entirely new, even at seventy.

But mine is not.

My blood is more than 3,000 years old.

It carries thousands of years of massacres and attempted annihilation, and right now it is boiling.

It feels volcanic. I am enraged.

I am seething because a horrific massacre took place while the writing was already on the proverbial wall. No the writing was literally on several physical walls. Walls of synagogues, schools, and Jewish businesses daubed blood-red with the words “Globalise the Intifada.” What do the Government and Australia not understand in that these words mean Murder Jews?

What did the authorities not understand on 9th October 2023 at the Sydney Opera House when crowds chanted “Gas the Jews” or was it “Get the Jews” or “Where are the Jews”?

And what did they think they were witnessing when terrorist flags were waved freely and legally as 90,000 Australians marched “peacefully” across the Sydney Harbour Bridge? Did no one know that Hamas and Hezbollah flags mean kill the Jews?

My Gift of Age publication is dedicated to longevity, healthy ageing and meaningful living.

Forgive me, for today I will offer no science, no inspiration. Only horror and pain.

These words are not political commentary.

They rise from the ancient DNA in every drop of my five litres of blood.

The life-sustaining red liquid, the same five litres that bled out of fifteen innocents and counting, with many still critical as I write. Brave police officers died too, but the target was Jews. The most vulnerable amongst us; a child, holy rabbis lighting candles and an elderly holocaust survivor.

My Jewish blood carries the trauma of 3,000 years of bloodshed. It carries the dark memory of those who tried to destroy us and yet our flame still burns bright. From the Assyrians and Babylonians to Roman massacres, from the Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition, from blood libels and ghettos across Europe to pogroms  culminating in industrialised genocide and the extermination of six million of us. My own great-aunts and family members were shot in cold blood in the forests of Europe.

And still it continues: the slaughter and horror of 7 October followed by thousands of ongoing attacks on Jews across the globe.

My family came to the vast, peaceful, multicultural continent of Australia only seventeen years ago after enduring repeated, random violence in our country of birth. What a magnificent ancient land this is, rich in oceans, minerals, ochre earth, and beautiful cultures. It is deeply the country of its beautiful First Nations peoples, who too endured slaughter and spilled unimaginable blood on this continent.

For those unfamiliar with modern Jewish history; the Australian Jewish community is largely made up of Holocaust survivors and refugees who travelled to the furthest corner of the earth to escape Europe and the memory of their atrocities. From that trauma grew a vibrant, contributing community, because Jews carry in their DNA the compulsion to rebuild, again and again.

And now Jewish blood has been spilled onto the peaceful grassy patches and onto the hot sands that is our iconic Bondi Beach.

Because Jewish blood is ancient, it is still alive and it is eternal.

My Gift of Age  work is not just about longevity. It is about having lived long enough to remember, to witness, to name what is happening, and still choose humanity. It is about protecting life fiercely, because we know how easily it is taken.