My not so trendy Zionist identity

Sometimes, when I awake, it still feels like yesterday.

Even as weeks and months have slipped away,

Sometimes it feels like I am still stuck in that day.

As day after day the sun rises and sets, but everything stays the same.

When the only change I feel is the walls I’ve built growing higher and higher to lock my broken heart away from the world.

I used to bear my heart like armor, wield it like a blade, until it shattered under the weight of so much hate unfurled.

Because the world showed me evil like I had never seen before.

Not just lurking across the globe on some far off shore,

No, the evil it came right up to me knocking on my door.

And I spent so long standing in its way, trying to push it back to where it hid before.

But I’m not sure how much longer I can do it for.

I used to grab my flag and stand in the middle of campus when the protestors came to shout and cause an uproar,

I used to stand side by side with friends who swore

They would never stop fighting until the end of this war.

But I look around now, and the crowds are no more.

And I think back on the year, and wonder “what was it all for?”

Will our cries just echo in silence forevermore?

Or hammer our brains like the Raven’s nevermore?

For it seems, nothing has changed. 

The blood it still flows in streams,

Our brothers and sisters locked so far away we cant hear their screams,

And every night that passes I awake to more broken dreams.

How can we ever fight this tsunami?

When each time it pulls back it’s only gathering speed,

And there’s hardly a moment to breathe

Between the crashing of the sea.

If all you have are some buckets and a friend or two or three,

There will never be a way to drain the flooding beachside.

And still we try to fight this rising tide,  

But no matter how high we build our walls 

The hatred smashes through the windows, filling our halls.

It seems to me,

There is no end we can guarantee.

There will always be people in the world with whom we disagree.

Someone will always be caught in the crossfire and the debris.

From Amsterdam to Berkeley, 

There will always be a city from which we will flee.

So how do I keep fighting when everybody around me has lost their way?

When it looks to be Sodom and Gomorrah but in the modern day?

And this time there will be no divine display 

Of wrath and might to push the darkness away.

It’s up to us to keep working to pave a new way.

We must stand our ground and live to fight another day .

Because already we see these strangers sneaking away, 

Back into the shadows where they hid before. 

And it is now that I know at least one thing for sure.

We stood all year long because we have something to stand for.

We fought all year long because we have something to fight for.

And what do they have to show for?

Broken promises and empty chants.

Calls to action 

That just served as their distraction.

A cause they thought mighty but only for a fraction of a moment. 

Until the shiny, new, trendy, cool, hip tragedy they all stood for got old, and boring, and tiring.

My flag was never a fad, it was my cape, both my armor and blade, 

My weapon against hate.

My identity was never about the scarf that I wore, 

It was true to who I am in my soul, in my core.

This fight isn’t about a country or a government or an army or a people; this fight is for me, 

It is in my neshama, the innermost part of my being.

Now is not the time for fleeing.

But maybe if this tsunami isn’t receding,

We need to be seeing 

A different approach.

If the water continues to encroach 

And push us into the dark,

I think it’s time that we build an ark.

Take our weapons and our swords and let them find a new mark,

Shape this world and our lives into something stark and new:

An ark for me and you.

Find our allies and use our strength as the glue,

To secure the shelter for us to ride the wave through.

We will never make it if its every jew for himself in a solo canoe.

But together.,

Together we can build something no one can undo.

Together we can build an ark for our people until we pull through.

We have big role models to live up to,

And its long overdue.

But we do have the strength, 

And we do have the might, 

And we do have the courage to continue to fight.

Because we will not go silent into the night.

We will not be make to flicker out like a light.

The world may not be black and white,

But for this life, we do have the right 

To our home for which we continue to fight.