Poem: “Complicated”
Israel I call out to you!
Hashem what is happening?
I ache for you Gaza.
I grieve and pine for all of Israel.
Did you know that I look just as Palestinian as I
do Israeli?
Jewishness is complicated.
My father is the grandson of Jewish immigrants on both
sides from the Russian and
European Shtetls.
They survived and ran from the horrors of the Soviets.
My grandparents grew up
speaking Yiddish. My
Jewish grandfather helped to raise me and died young. He
supported Zionism and
Israel his whole life. I
see my Grandpa’s angry ghost shouting, “I raised money
for this!” He’s
disappointed in the broken
dream. When I tell my Grandmom who died from Covid
about the wave of
antisemitism after Oct 7th her
ghost says, “People love to hate Jews. Be strong Shayna.”
She had always wanted to
go to Israel but they
were blue collar, so it was a dream. She and I both love
dancing and were close. My
Jewish father is
alive (thankfully) is with Jewish Voices for Peace. I think
Grandpa would now agree
with him. I am a Gen
X bisexual Jewish American woman of Boomer parents:
an east coast Jewish father
and Southern
Catholic mother. And let me tell you in the 1970s it was a
big deal. Jewishness is
complicated. To simplify
my life I honor my Jewishness, my womanness, and my
queerness. I go to a
progressive Schul. I have
dark hair, chestnut eyes, and olive skin. I look just as
Palestinian as I do Israeli. I get
a lot of my looks
from my mother who some called Shiksa but to me she
was Momma. My great Aunt
Muriel lived on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1970s. I didn’t know that she was a
lesbian. My father didn’t
know that she had
been to Israel. We piece our lives and ourselves together. Aunt
Muriel took me to eat
at the Crystal
room at the Wanamaker’s department store. She must have
lived in Center City
because it was safer to
be queer there. My father and I are only children. We are the
last two people left of
our blood. My
stepmom and step sis are also Jewish. We are a tiny family but
survivors. Jewishness
is complicated. Would there be the nation state of Israel without the antisemitism of Europe? Like some Israelis, I feel that the current prime minister is a fascist, and this is complicated. You don’t have to agree with me,
you just have to hear me. I can almost hear the gunshots, the
bombings, the screams.
No lights. No
food. No hospitals. Torture. I want a ceasefire. But how do you
do that when the
terrorist organizations
say publicly they want all Jews dead? How do I be Jewish
through this now? Jewishness is
speaking out when you see injustice. Jewishness is weeping and praying and sometimes fighting for our tortured missing
and our dead. My Jordanian Palestinian friend used to talk
about how the Jews and
Arabs are cousins
and should not be fighting; that we are the same blood. I agree
with him. But world
governments,
militaries, corporations, and terrorists think differently. I
oversimplify by saying why
can’t they just share
the land. Why does one side need all of it? I believe both sides
have a right. I just want everybody to
share. I just want everybody to have peace. I want the hostages
to be freed. For
families on both sides to
come home. Hashem, I pray for this Shalom for what my friend
Salim calls Salam. I
look just as Palestinian as I do Israeli. Jewishness is complicated.
Jewishness is Shalom.
Jewishness is who I am even
after October 7th in the year 2023. After Inquisitions,
after wars, after terror.
Jewishness is honoring who I
am. Jewishness to me, must be peace.
Poetry Editor Alicia Ostriker comments:
Complicated is right. I like this poem just because it is such a tangle of acts and feelings, histories and hopes. I like it because it contains multitudes, as Whitman would say, just as we all contain multitudes if truth be told. We are a tangle, and our world is a thorny tangle, and the pain and terror and hatreds all around are a poisoned tangle. And the word “peace” tries to extricate itself from the tangle. Is this possible?
