War - Part 1
Sarah Tuttlesinger lives in Jerusalem.
She is experiencing what we talk about first hand, and her words touch me deeply. She knows what I don’t know. She sees what I don’t see. And she is a Jewish woman, while I am just a silly goy, throwing my two bits in the jar of hope…
She lives in a country at war. A country at war since 1948, and at war before it was a country.
I will leave her words here, as the illustration of part one of what I have to say. For I could never say these words. But she can. And she has. The following words are hers, posted on her IG page. Please, read them all. Thank you.
Some of you won't like what I write here,
and I'm ok with that.
I am a mother in Israel.
I am not a mother in Gaza.
I know the kind of mother I am here - a fierce one who demands the best for her children, who pushes her kids to look beyond their own horizons, to explore and discover and change the world. A mother who also lies awake at night, anxious, haunted, struggling to find the light.
I know what kind of woman I am here, too:
A woman who suffers no fools, who goes where she wants and says what she wants and does what she wants and has a pretty damn good time doing it.
It is easy for me to say "I would never put my child on the front line," and yet, in many ways I am: like every other Israeli mother and father; I am raising my kids for combat boots and army uniforms and the weight of the gun in their hands as soon as Israel determines that they are old enough.
18. Such an arbitrary age. Who says 18 is a grownup?
I still slept with my favorite teddy bear when I was 18. My kids will always be my babies. As far as I'm concerned, they will never be “old enough" to take up arms, and yet, here I am and here they are.
It is easy for me to say that I would never support Hamas, and yet I have never struggled where they provided the only assistance and support in a jagged little world.
I don't know what kind of woman I would be if I lived behind a blockade, if I had electricity for only a few hours a day - even in winter when the wind whistles through the cinderblocks from the sea. I don't know what I would do if my leaders dragged so-called collaborators through the streets from old dusty cars, their entrails leaking out onto the hot asphalt in the summer; steam rising from their guts.
I don't know what I would do if my house was bombed out and my daughter crippled by an Israeli reprisal for a Hamas rocket that landed in a town only a few kilometres away across the border, a rockel that killed an Israeli child my own daughter's age - my daughter who is now missing a leg and an arm and half her face, and yet she lives - but only a half life.
I don't know if I could grieve for that other child across enemy lines, I don't know if I would talk about white doves and planting flowers in tires, or if I would burn them by the fence that separates my bitterness from a flourishing country just across the hill, right over there.
I do know that I am the kind of mother who will throw my body on top of my children - I did it the entire summer of 2014 when Hamas launched rocket after rocket after rocket at Israel…
And we lined up our shoes by the door night after night after night in case we had to run to the public bomb shelter through the dusty fields which we did over and over and over again. And I know that i’d do it now if I had to - which I might, scoop them up and carry them - now and always, even though my teenagers are taller than me now, I will throw my body on top of theirs to protect them, always.
I do know the wild stink of fear; and I do know that I don't run - I fight.
I do know that the Jewish women who came before me did whatever it took to kick out the British, I imagine I would have been right along side with them, fighting as hard as anyone else.
And I know that now in the face of this hideous war - with the images of the families Hamas slaughtered, raped and tortured - the children burned to death tied to their mothers…
The women bleeding between their legs, the grandmother butchered on a Facebook live stream... and the reactions around the world where it really does seem that too many people are angry that more of us didn't just DIE that day; I am angry: I am so angry: And I want to fight because it feels like an existential fight now - one for our very survival.
And I also know that the mothers of Gaza are chutching their dead babies to their chests - rigid, dry corpses that were whole and alive on October 6 - with hope and potential like the babies across the border in southern Israel who were murdered by Hamas on that cool blue Saturday morning.
I know that there are mothers in Gaza lying dead in rubble, or dead from disease, or dead from starvation while they’re frightened, hungry toddlers try to nurse from their empty breasts as rigor mortis and rot set in. I know We are all so human - so tragically human - and governed by the same laws of nature.
AND I also look at my kids - my beautiful kids, and I know it is human nature to want better for your children, and to lash out when you feel there is no other option, and while I watch the news out of Gaza from Jerusalem with my books and art and glass bottles and photo albums, AND while I pray for our soldiers - the sons and daughters of my Israeli sisters and brothers who are going in to fight Hamas - I also can't ignore the suffering I see just an hour's drive in distance but a whole world away; and I grieve for the mothers and their families and for all innocent people here and in Gaza who - like me - just pray for our children, that through this darkness we can keep them safe, and sound and whole..
Replies to this post:
Reply by @theacsman:
Just a bit of trivia
The word "goy" is Yiddish slang for the Hebrew word גֵר (pronounced Gair), first found in the Old Testament.
It described those who were unknown, strangers or foreigners to the Hebrew people & who appeared before them
In the region's tradition strangers were treated with kindnedd
It was not a derogatory term. In fact it was also used to describe the Patriarchs when living among the Caananites and Jews when enslaved in Egypt
It simply meant "not one of the tribe".
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Reply by @janetzwerdlingjeddah:
After reading War part 1, 2, and 3, I feel I need to tell you that even though you refer to yourself as a goy, I think you are really a part of goy kadosh, a holy people. It’s been said that after WWII so many Jewish souls were lost in one event that there weren’t enough Jewish bodies to “house” the returning souls, and therefore some found themselves in and among the goyim (the other nations). Your soul is of us and we are the luckier for that. I just thought you needed to know.
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