Taking time out to connect the dots of the past and the future

I used to be a journalist. Conflict, elections, and social upheaval was my beat for most of the 40 years I worked. This war, however, with its horrors and escalation of hate, has proven too much for me.

I feel attacked–as an Israeli, as an American, as a Jew. I feel as if all my places of refuge have been deleted, vanished. And the fear I feel for myself, my kids, my grandkids-to-be, the two countries I hold dear – and for the entirety of humanity – seeps into my thoughts, my dreams, my sleepless nights.

And it has led me to examine who I am, and how people have seen me: as a Jew, as an Israeli, as an American.

You don’t look Jewish, they would say in my childhood, when I insisted I came from Israel (because my mother told me it was the land of the Jews). I was told the same  throughout the years I lived in the United States. People were always shocked, always surprised. How could I be Jewish with my blonde hair and blue eyes?

When I got older, I would reply with great seriousness: My Dad is German-Polish. His genes are strong.

Still, my looks didn’t stop some anonymous student in my 1000+-strong high school class from scrawling in pencil on my math period desk: “Gwen is a dirty Jew.”

I went red when I saw it. My body heated up. I didn’t know how to reply, what to do. And it never occurred to me to go to the teacher.

What went through my head was: If I erase the racist insult, then that person will just write it again. I could respond, but I didn’t know how. I sat there again and again, for days, maybe even weeks, that mark of a silent undercurrent of racism lingering on my desk.

Until someone else took matters in their own hands.

“Gwen is a sweet person, and you have no right to do this.”

To this day I do not know who that fellow student was. But they were brave, and they were amazing, and they did the right thing.

Today, when I listen to the news from the US, and how university students suffer, I cry. And I wish there were more people that age who would stand up and fight against this insanity. I wish that there was a student like the one who stood up for me multiplied by tens of thousands who would stand against those crazy crowds.

I live in Israel. I have lived here more than 40 years. For years after I arrived, I was told over and over that I don’t look Jewish, so how could I be Israeli? Even now there are people who simply cannot figure out how to pronounce my name.

But after the massive immigration from the countries of the former USSR, people stopped telling me I that I don’t look Jewish. Instead, I was accosted on the street by Russian immigrants asking directions.

Many years later, at a work event, the Israeli team (we were all American-Israelis) was asked how we most define ourselves, which country most describes who we are. Everyone said Israeli. Except for me. There are American values which Israel has yet to adopt, values taught in American schools–at least when I lived there–values I raised my children with, and that many Israelis do not have. I still hold on to that. My father, mother (may she rest in peace) and two of my sisters still live in the United States.

In Israel, they scoff at my values. Even those closest to me sometimes ridicule me for being too American.

Yet I stay in Israel, having married an Israeli husband, raised Israeli children, and sent them to the army. I believe in Israel, in the Jewish people’s need for a state. I read another American-Israeli’s blog in which he related how he told his children Israel is the only place safe for Jews. I never thought that. I just knew that Jews had to be here, to ensure there was a place for others to flee if the world came after them just because they were Jewish.

I think I always suspected it would happen again. And now, as a people, we are facing a potential disaster far wider, broader, and possibly more deadly Holocaust than what we have ever faced before. A friend recently wondered aloud if we would be the ones to live through or die in the next destruction of the House of Israel. Another pondered if we would be fighting in tunnels like the Maccabees of old.

When Hamas terrorist murderers infiltrated Israel on Oct 7, they killed, maimed, raped and kidnapped all those whose fate it was to come across their path. It didn’t matter if they were left-wing activists, pacifists, or someone who had worried whether Gazans had jobs and enough to feed their children. They were Jewish, most of them. The others were killed just because of their vicinity to the Jews.

I connected all the dots of my thoughts at a Yad Vashem inauguration concert for their new state-of-the art archive, that will keep Holocaust artifacts safe from destruction for eternity, sealed and preserved like a time capsule. And I couldn’t help but think: perhaps these documents and objects may continue to exist, while the rest of Israel is wiped out by an Iranian nuclear bomb. And the world, just as it did before, will stand by, silent. We Zionists, we Jews, we have it coming, don’t we?

The concert was attended by families displaced from their homes in the north and south on Oct. 7. There were families of those held hostage for more than 270 days in horrific conditions in Gaza by Hamas terrorists. There were Holocaust survivors. And there was a violinist who, as a reservist in the Israeli army, was severely wounded fighting in Gaza. Yet he recovered enough to stand on stage to play the theme song from ‘Schindler’s List’ on the violin once owned by young boy who was killed in the Holocaust while trying to warn the partisans that the Germans were coming.

The past, the present and the possibility of a future melded together for me as I listened to the orchestra, the choir, and the lilting music of the violin.

Yad Vashem sees its mission to serve as a beacon of hope. A remembrance center, but also a center seeking to ensure the Holocaust will never happen again. To anyone, Jews, and non-Jews alike. I wonder how those who made this their life’s mission feel today?

Yad Vashem’s chairman speech reminded the audience that it is not just Israel that is under attack, but that our brethren abroad face a growing tidal wave of hatred. He called for solidarity across oceans, borders, mountain ranges. “Only as one can we overcome the challenges ahead,” he said.

From his mouth….