My Radical Deradicalization

As A Jew

I came across a term recently. I’ve since figured out that it’s a known expression, but I heard the noted historian and Columbia University professor, Simon Schama use it. I’ve since done some research. Here’s a quote from another illustration:

The AsAJews get their name because they are addicted to that very phrase. We’ve heard it for years. As a Jew, I don’t think AIPAC should dominate American foreign policy. As a Jew, I stand against the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Now, of course, it’s fair to criticize Israel. Arguing that Israel should do more to avoid civilian casualties while also acknowledging that Hamas started a war with a grotesque act of savagery and hides among Gaza’s civilians is a criticism that has to be counted as legitimate even if you disagree. But when Jews target Israel as a moral obscenity, a singular geopolitical evil, critique curdles into defamation. Eli Lake in The Contemporary

A Different Attempt at Conversation. Tiberias, Sea of Galilee 2014?

As if the fact that you or I are Jewish means anything to whatever you say next. They speak as if they represent Jewry, or Zionism or anti-Zionism, or even Palestine, often acquiescing to the latest anti-Jewish bugaboo. 

I am not speaking to you AsAJew who agrees with you. I am speaking as Kate Shaffar. You speak for you. Not as a Jew.

That they may have a point is drowned out by the drumbeat of ignorant scapegoating and my abject fear. It was the AsAJews who sent me over the rails and churned my normally perspective advocating self  into a flying rage. After all, so many hold AsAJews up as proof of Israel’s evil intent.

“There are Jews in the encampments,” I kept hearing, as if that gave them some added validity. Not to me, it didn’t.

I was raised by atheists who rarely stepped foot inside a temple, who weren’t interested in the religion or the community beyond Passover and Sunday bagels. Doesn’t everyone love Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David or Adam Sandler? My parents’ generation had Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Just keep them laughing, make some money and they’ll love you. But this situation is singularly unfunny.

With a soft spot for ancient melodies, I have always been Jew curious. I joined a temple, I read the biblical source material, did my best to learn the language, and fell in love with the ritual and its biblical lands. I inhabit whatever my version of “religious” has been, including life in a synagogue, raising my children with a firm grasp of their place in the world. So intertwined with it for me is a tremendous love for Israel and its people, many of which I was fortunate enough to marry into and love dearly.

As quickly as the world's empathy gave way, I tried to reevaluate, maybe fit what I know to be true into some narrative I saw online. Evil, heartless killers? Apartheid? Genocide? The numbers didn’t add up. I pride myself in being an interested, fearless and thorough thinker, but the view of Israel as a white, colonial oppressor set my brain on fire. You have never been there! It is the freest place in the Middle East, the only place you can be openly gay, different and with full and equal rights for women. I wanted to scream. 

For full disclosure, I believe those hostages need to come home, in the absolute right for a Jewish country to exist as an indigenous people of Israel with an obligation to defend itself against an enemy that has sworn to massacre them time and time again, but also, has a duty to be as merciful as possible. I won’t debate either side of the issue. I believe only the people directly involved in this conflict can put an end to this and move forward together in peace, and that those legitimate visionaries are far more likely to be found there, than on any campus in the US right now.

After all, if Trump leads us straight into war, you still wouldn’t allow Trudeau to tell us how to win it. Or Hamas for that matter. And the river to the sea business doesn’t seem like a reasonable alternative. Also, AsAJew, I wonder if anyone is in the market for 9,000,000 Israelis or Jews, many of which have been there over a century. Alive, I mean.

And you really don’t need to know any of that, I’m just setting the scene and giving you my state of mind. 

This is about my radicalization and the subsequent deradicalization, though my position hasn’t changed. 

But I get ahead of myself. Once the war broke out, I thought of little else beyond my day-to-day. In the dark of night, on a tiny screen, I watched my liberal friends turn on their Jewish ones, ignoring and/or trying to redefine our lived experiences. My anger grew alongside my fear. It was ice water to the face.

I was also surprised by the support I got from people I hadn’t expected. Even if they didn’t agree with me, they asked if my family was all right? They admitted to not having a full understanding of the situation so many claimed a sudden expertise on. Thank you for seeing that, AsAJew I contain multitudes but the rising hatred had me petrified and lonely and in need of a hug.

As the evidence of rape poured in and the world shrugged it off, I tried to ask myself questions as a person who takes pride in being a critical thinker. Leadership aside, the perpetrators filmed themselves! How isn’t that evidence? Resistance? I was hardening against what I felt was the slap of blind Jew hatred. 

Whenever it came up, I found myself explaining and trapped in an oppression contest which, like war, no one ever wins. What am I missing? I tried to ask myself. Be brave. But it really felt like the same zero sum situation to me, especially as my “algo” moved into a more comfortable version of my echo chamber. I grew angrier when the demonstrations kicked into full gear.

Fox News popped up on my feed. Ben Shapiro felt like a light in the darkness and when did Dr. Phil become so wise? That Piers Morgan is such a smart guy, I thought. I watched the congresspeople walked the University Presidents into it, but I admit to taking perverse pleasure in the squirming. Everything was thrown off its axis.

“I think this is how people get radicalized,” I joked to my close friends. I expected a laugh and instead got an eyebrow raise and a shrug of, if the shoe fits.

My well meaning, big hearted synagogue was trying, but the enmity and division were palpable, laced with a paranoia I brought to the table.  I was nervous. I’d joined for the big tent feel of it, but feared there was so much room, they were boxing me out. I forced myself to keep going when I found a group that felt similarly shocked by the turn. We assumed ourselves to be in the minority.

All around me towns were passing resolutions as if the Prime Minister of anywhere would stop killing people because the kindly townsfolk of western Massachusetts said so. The only thing it did was give a lot of blowhards some virtuous credibility and scare the poop out of many of the towns’ actual Jews. Mazel tov?

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got the opportunity to go to a facilitated discussion at the synagogue regarding the war. I grabbed my husband, donned my blue and white gang colors and went in, locked and loaded, petrified, but open to being enlightened—which is how I try to show up anywhere.

In a room full of 200 plus people, mostly Jews I assume, the visiting rabbi briefed us.  “We are going to discuss a difficult topic. We are only here to listen. You won’t change anyone’s mind nor will anything that gets said in this room move the needle.”

I blinked furiously, fists clenched, ready to Jewsplain the particulars to the grossly misguided youth and otherwise. 

Instead of another geopolitical lecture, she pushed aside chairs and had us form a circle, ready for a bonding exercise. 

“Please stop internalizing the hate that gets thrown at us,” she said. “We don’t actually rule the world. It is not up to you to convince anyone of anything.” 

Like a sudden cool breeze on a sweltering day, it became easier to breathe. In my whole life, I’d not heard global powerlessness put so profoundly.

“Take a step in,” she said, “If you’ve felt scared since October 7.” I’m not sure what I thought the AsAJews would do, or which ones they were even, but everyone in the room moved towards the center.

“Step in if you’ve lost friends over this.” A syncopated thud.

“Step in if you’ve been lonely and felt misunderstood.” Another uniform stride.

“Step in if you’ve felt any anti-semitism in the last year.” The stomp reverberated around the sanctuary walls in unison.

A loosening opened in my chest. In these months, I was worrying for family and friends in Israel, my son in college, and for the other one in Seattle. People I assumed would understand, didn’t. My uber secular family of origin with no connection to the land or the religion took a position I didn’t agree with, and insisted on telling me about it. 

“I don’t want it in my name,” they said. Fine, I thought, we’ll take you off the mailing list. It made me harden my heart and hesitant around people.

“Step in if you think Israel is a nation with the right to exist,” I heard. A lump formed in my throat. I was ready to pounce at their sheer ignorance and brainwashing. A few held back, but the vast majority came forward. 

Around the circle, the questions got harder, the lines became more obvious, but the rage had already softened in me as I saw how badly everyone was hurting. Then the rabbi asked us to challenge ourselves and have a conversation with someone who didn’t step in when we did.

I made eye contact with a woman I hadn’t spoken to in some time. I wasn’t sure how she would feel, but I gave her the prescribed two minutes without interrupting to tell me. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the media would have me believe. 

I won’t tell you what we spoke about or the fabric that held that conversation together as we invited two more people to join us. The circle grew, along with my distance from my own defensive, reflexive perceptions of what I was trying to parse through in my mind and online. The next time I see her it will be as it was before that dreadful October day, over an open hug and a bagel.

It was good to be back in community. It felt reminiscent of the old times, when people agreed to disagree when things got heated, and then pass the mashed potatoes. Or even when they agreed not to talk about religion or politics. Nostalgic days, indeed.

AsSomeJews, we recounted our lived experience and anguish reminding us of our mutual empathy. AsARoomFullOfJews we hugged and reconnected. This exercise didn’t change my mind, but it did return some sanity, bringing me back home to a prescription many millennia long.

My son, on a campus in the midwest reported about the protests to the note of concern in my voice. “I walked around them. No big deal. It’s not as bad as you think,” he said. “Mommy, you’re the only one who talks to me about it.”

I admit to being perplexed when he became a frat boy, but have become grateful even if I still can’t remember which one it is.

My son in Seattle won’t notice when the aliens come, although his comprehension of the news is breathtaking. And frankly, annoying.

“I got stuck in traffic the other day. I was delayed a few minutes, but maybe you’re taking this too far?” he said. For the record, when he doesn’t agree with me, it fills me with nothing but pride. Except in the moment.

I went back to the place I’ve always felt solace, to the ritual that connected me to my ancestors in the first place. Last week, I sang Israeli folk songs in a choir. I danced with a Holocaust survivor who’s outlived all odds and tells her story to high schools, where she assures me the kids pay very close, respectful attention. AsAHuman, her presence and our tearful hug afterward are honors I will never forget.

No argument I’ve heard now that I’ve opened my ears again has changed my mind, but it’s a relief to know it doesn’t have to. We don’t need to declare where each other stands to be overcome and enjoy a rousing, circle dance of a Hora. AsAJew I was thrilled to be reminded that this is what I love about my people the most, the part that is worth fighting for. Even when we don’t agree—as long as we’re here, we’ll find a way to come together and the strength to keep dancing.