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born october 28, 1998, 14:37
ח׳ בְּחֶשְׁוָן תשנ״ט
(8th of cheshvan, 5759)
in jerusalem, the holy land, the levant.
raised in tel aviv-yafo, yaffa.
25 years ago today.
25/10/2023
because people don’t see it ~ don’t understand me.
don’t understand why i’m fighting for “the others”.
why i’m not fighting for “my people”.
so my therapist asked me to reflect on
...............
what does it mean to have pride in your family
but not your nation?
what does it mean to not have
a homeland?
or to have had a home, but feel like it's not rightfully mine?
so , what does it mean to miss my home ,
so i guess that’s what it means for me to be exraeli.
how to sit with what happened to my people on october 7th, how to sit with the fact that all my friends and family, who encapsulated the first 12 years of my life, were all going through so much grief and fear, had lost so many people in a single day.
how to sit with the genocide in gaza that followed, nor the killings in the west bank. how to sit with the fact that i knew that this didn’t begin on october 7th, that for palestinians, it’s been like this for 75 years. i'd known of their pain my whole life.
what does it mean to me ,
to be israeli ?
so to answer that question in the only way i know how,
i'll ask more questions.
whoever you are reading this, i want you to know that none of this is easy for me. it's never been easy. it's weighed heavy on me my whole life, especially since i've come into myself as an adult with a, now developed, prefrontal cortex.
and it's always been personal for me. not just political.
elly stern ~ אלי שטרן
what does it mean to only feel at home in your family history
to feel at home in your values,
to feel your home is your childhood, your upbringing
... but feel it all slipping further away the older you grow ?
what does it mean for a child to be told they’re leaving their home for the sake of a cause?
what does it mean for a child to be told they’re leaving their home for 'better opportunity'?
what does it mean for immigration to lead a family into the hardest years they’d ever have to go through,
for the scars to still remain,
but to know and hope, that somewhere down the line, things will be better this way. it’ll be worth it one day.
what does it mean for a child to be aware of fascism from day 1?
to be a 3rd generation holocaust survivor, the granddaughter of auschwitz survivors on one side,
and to be the granddaughter of an outspoken, radical, anti-zionist marxist on the other?
what does it mean feeling so close to being eaten alive by fascism & genocide, literally 2 generations back,
to be a genocide & exile survivor,
...and then have my home use my pain, my family history, my generational trauma, to justify another peoples’ genocide & exile? to disrespect our pain, to re-traumatize us, by bombing children and killing innocents
what does it mean to be aware of the abuse that my home land inflicts on my neighbours from day 1?
what does it mean to told that the only way my people will be safe,
is if we're signed off to the military at age 18?
that safety is having bomb drills at school,
is if we live in a land where we grow up dodging suicide bombings? narrowly escaping death?
... and that all of this is literally the only way jews can be safe in this world? this is the only way?? there’s no other way??? the rest of the world hates us,
( fuck. that. absolutely. fucking. not. )
but feel betrayed by it?
and , what does it mean to feel grief for a people that aren't my own?
and to feel alienated from the people that are?
what does it mean to be totally and completely heartbroken by my home, to not be able to visit or even think of visiting, without it weighing deep on my heart,
... and see people who have never felt that way, have fun there constantly? for governments to fund that fun? for people who are unaware, genuinely just don't have the knowledge, to be pushed by systems to indulge in that fun, and be blinded from looking deeper?
what does it mean to know and fear (but begin to accept) that the way things are going, speaking up might - very realistically - prevent me from ever being allowed to step foot in my home ever again?
that there’s a very real possibility that if i ever go back to the place i was born, my public statements may be pulled up and be used to harass and question me?
what does it mean to be called a self hating jew? to have my humanity questioned? to have my love for my people, my culture, my home, questioned? to be accused of siding with murder, with terrorism?
to be told there’s something wrong with me?
what does it mean to hear this from people i’m in community with, people i’ve loved and been loved by?
... what does it mean to understand why someone thinks the way they do, why someone acts the way they do,
but wish it was different?
what does it mean to sit with the fear of loved ones being attacked, loved ones being killed
some may think i’m brainwashed. brainwashed by
i have such fond memories of my childhood, my first 12 years in the holy land.
the meadows, the flowers, the sun, the sea, the sky. i was so surrounded by community, by love, by safety
the pain & sadness i have in my heart for a home lost long ago, are things i use to empathise with my palestinian cousins. we share a home.
i was incredibly privileged to be guided, raised, and loved by
philo, ronit philosof ~ פילו, רונית פילוסוף
(may her memory be a blessing, זכרונה לברכה)
My grandfather (lower right), Helmut Epstein, in the Holy Land in the 1980’s, standing in support of Land Day, יום האדמה, يوم الأرض - A day commemorating Palestinian landowners who were killed while protecting their land. He’s a Jewish man who lived through two world wars, and came to Palestine in 1933 from Germany where he had encountered antisemitism, but still was able to recognize that the traumas he had suffered cannot be used to justify the oppression of others.
heavy.
therapy session, 12/10/2023. 4 days after october 7, 2023.
tears pouring
i didn't know
i didn't know
the jist was that i didn’t know how to be who i am,
i didn’t know how to sit with how my family felt so alone and so different and so dismissed in their community in israel,
and now even though we left ,
i didn’t know how to sit with how when people ask me where i’m from, i don’t know how to answer.
i still feel the same.
how in the 1930's and onwards, nobody understood my grandfather when he spoke up about this.
how in the 1960's and onwards, nobody understood my mother when she did.
how now, in 2023, nobody understands me.
i don’t know how to say it and do
my entire self -
my upbringing, my values, my culture, my community - justice.
how do you talk about where you're from
when you feel so unsure?
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... but somehow be living a life of great privilege from day 1?
... and to be aware of the unawareness?
from
every
seam.
nor what to do with my grief and horror.
i didn’t know how to sit with the fear that many won't understand
why and how i could cry for my jewish friends & family,
and palestinians simultaneously.
isolated
i didn’t know how to sit with how in my community, i feel so
alienated
alone
in our name?
is if we live in an isolated land with only people of the same background as us?
what does it mean to told that the only way my people will be safe,
what does it mean to told that the only way my people will be safe,
what does it mean to told
that safety is having bomb shelters in your household,
that safety is getting scared when military planes “practice” in the sky during holidays?
that safety is going on lockdown whenever a backpack is left around,
nobody wants us and everybody wants to exile us and kill us????
(as is already happening to those speaking up on the ground)
and to have some of those people, who have never had to feel my heartbreak, judge me for feeling it?
to be accused of wanting my people to be killed?
and ...
to ending the occupation.
to fighting for full equality for all people between the river and the sea.
my family,
they’re people like me, they’re people like you.
my truth
is ,
and i ask whoever is reading this - if this has made you understand and empathise with me, that you take that empathy and understanding and begin the path of empathising with and understanding palestinians.
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writing all of this, i’m still unsure everyone will understand
why i feel so dedicated to the liberation of the palestinian people.
the media,
"the other".
the truth is - despite my family raising me with similar values to those i hold today -
when i came into myself and started coming to terms with the deep pain i have felt since
i left my childhood behind at age 12, i knew i had to look deeper. i had to see for myself.
i had to read, i had to watch, i had to listen, i had to learn, i had to understand.
this was all a method of understanding my own pain, understanding my family, understanding my childhood.
it wasn't my intention to radicalize myself,
to become a more political person. to be outspoken.
and the more i learned about palestinians, the more i realised that i relate.
to the pain of leaving (however, not to being forced to leave),
to missing the land (however, not to having no way to return),
to loving the land (however, not to having no freedom to explore it).
i’ve learned so much from them, from listening to their narratives, from engaging with them at protests, from engaging with them online,
...and not just engaging with their pain, engaging with their joy. listening to their music, looking at their art, observing their fearless love for their land and their people. it’s truly beautiful. it brings me to tears.
...and it breaks me that my neighbours, sharers of the same land, for 75 years and to this day, cannot have that same feeling of safety and freedom as i did.
an amazing woman who loved children with her whole entire heart, who saw them as children first and foremost, and had an incredible amount of love, caring, and unconditional patience for each child, no matter how turbulent.
i want every child to have the ability to have a loving, happy, safe childhood, and that is exactly why i care so much about this.
our pain is not the same, i know that, but it’s close enough that i know i’m going to try my very best to help their liberation in any way i am able, so hopefully, one day, future generations won’t have to hurt from the longing anymore, only from the past.
and i'm going to try my best for the rest of my life, that i promise.
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in my name?