For the past several weeks since October 7, I have woken up and gone to bed with the same clouded thoughts.
Is this really real? No, it can’t be. I am a Jewish mother in the 21st Century suffering an existential crisis – one that I share with the entire Jewish population.
Our Jewish world as we know it has been changed irrevocably. There was a horrific massacre against the Jewish people in Israel – murder, rape, beheadings of babies, over 1400 people slaughtered and some 229 men, women, children, elderly, and teens – kidnapped and taken to Gaza, where we can only pray for their fate.
New stories trickle in every day: today I heard about the 8-year-old girl at one of the kibbutzim who was murdered – the monsters chopped off one of her arm, and she bled to death, slowly, and alone. She was found still alive, breathing her last breaths. Another eyewitness report – a baby found burned in an oven.
And what’s worse… instead of outrage over the most heinous atrocities I have ever heard of, people are getting away with celebrating and condoning these deaths… because they are Jews.
A scary show of hundreds of thousands of people throughout major cities – Boston, Chicago, New York, Milan, London, Paris, and more – gathering to shout anti-Israel and antisemitic chants and assaulting or attempting to assault any Jewish person in their path.
The highest echelons of elite universities (read: Educated People) allowing misguided students to rally in support of a terrorist group that’s mission statement is to slaughter Jews.
Pro-terror slogans broadcast on the walls of other elite universities, with no accountability.
Jewish students fearing for their safety, locked up in a library as a mob of angry protestors try to break in and inflict harm on these students.
And now – an airport in Dagestan, Russia overrun by a pro-Palestinian mob attempting to attack Israelis and Jews arriving on a flight from Israel.
The same angry mob – checking his passport to see if he is Israeli (read: Jewish). And then what if he was?
This is not a bad dream, its reality.
For the first time ever, I am concerned about my family’s personal safety just for being Jewish. I finally understand the concept of “Generational Trauma” and how it’s made its mark on every single Jewish soul in the world.
In any given situation, with any person I encounter – I ask myself if they are “for” or “against” my people and the horrific struggle we are facing.
I wonder – what’s better – Jewish private school or public school where my friend’s children are getting harassed and provoked?
The other day, my young son says he thinks its good for us to keep our shades drawn in case someone outside wants to look into our home and come and hurt us.
I wake up in the middle of the night – shaking – thinking this must not be real, but it is.
This is what it’s like to be a Jewish mom right now.
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