Miraculous Existence
The world is in shambles, the UN is useless, thousands of innocents are being slaughtered in Syria, others are being run down in Berlin, but no matter what’s going on in the world, every year on כ”ה כסלו you’ll find us lighting our menorahs and celebrating the miracles that have brought us to this point. Whether in Germany in 1942 or in Jerusalem 2016, we are living miracles every single day. If history is any indication, we’ll be lighting our menorahs again in exactly one year from today.
It doesn’t really matter what the UN declares. It doesn’t really matter whether or not a President Trump will be good for Jews. It doesn’t really matter if our enemies become our allies and our allies become our enemies or we’re left with no allies at all. Of course we must stand up for ourselves and protect ourselves but all that really matters is that our existence as a nation is the greatest miracle of all.
Let these Chanukah flames stand in defiance of the darkness that surrounds us. May we all have a lighter and brighter year.
This is a short poem I wrote and read aloud in class, but oh how appropriate it is for just this moment.
חג שמח
A combination of fate and miracles delivered me here today
I should not be here telling my story
I should not exist at all
Conceived by persecution and baseless hatred
Bore by a womb of hopes that have faded
My grandparents standing in the freezing cold naked
Waiting to be gassed
Burned
Turned to dust
By a man with a kampf and a final solution
Just one man in an incessant list of men
And so those who lived said never again
But they should not have been murdered
A combination of fate and miracles delivered them there that day
They should not have existed at all
Banished from Morocco
Massacred in Ukraine
Expelled from Russia
Mass forced conversions in Yemen
Ordered to leave Vienna
Decrees in Frances to leave or die
As if that was a choice
No one should have to make that choice
Forbidden to print our scriptures
Forbidden to practice our religion
Forbidden to believe
Forbidden to be
Conceived by persecution and baseless hatred
Bore by a womb of hopes that have faded
Marranos practicing their beliefs in the basement
For fear of being caught
And converted
Or killed
The Spanish Inquisition burned our texts
Chipped away at our humanity
Cut off the beards of our men
New Jewish laws had to be written
Because a return to Judaism after conversion would have otherwise been forbidden
But we wanted them back
But they should not have been converted and they should not have been killed
A combination of fate and miracles delivered them there that day
They should not have existed at all
Blood libels in Poland
Murder in Prague
Brussels Massacre
Strasburg Massacre
600 Jews burned at the stake in Switzerland
The worst pogroms in history
Forced to wear a yellow badge
Not in 1942, in 1321!
600 years apart
Anti-Semitism remains steadfast
Conceived by persecution and baseless hatred
Bore by a womb of hopes that have faded
Ancestors kicked out of Judea
The land of which they were native
Stripped the land of its name
To suppress its Jewish connection
Nearly 600,000 dead
An entire damn collection
of souls and spirits
of bodies and lives
of Jews who wanted to live
of Jews who should not have died
But they should not have been expelled and they should not have been killed
A combination of fate and miracles delivered them there that day
They should not have existed at all
Murder by mob in Egypt
Accused of ritual slaughter in Munich
Massacres in Rome
Forced conversions in Marrakesh
600 Jews decapitated in Medina
They tried to persecute us – so we celebrate Chanukah
They tried to kill us – so we celebrate Purim
They enslaved us but God saved us – so we celebrate Passover
Conceived by persecution and baseless hatred
Bore by a womb of hopes that have faded
But no matter how many times we have been degraded
Somehow, we have still made it
Surviving two thousand years of exile and persecution
Is nothing short of a miracle
But all of those who were expelled or converted or killed
Should not have existed at all
So I exist for them
Who could have dreamed that anti-Semitism
Would simply transform into anti-Zionism
Who could have foreseen that Jews who had been vilified for their homelessness
Would now be vilified for their homeland
When the world is on the side of a people
Who democratically elect a man who wrote his thesis in Holocaust denial
As president of Fatah
A terrorist organization
Does no one have any moral obligations?
Anti-Semitism is alive and well
It has just taken the face of BDS
And of the United Nations
Through every boycott, every sanction, and every condemnation
But in the face of all of this
I continue living and practicing
Because existence like mine cannot be an accident
