You're Carrying So Much Right Now (originally posted November 12, 2023)

 Right now the wheels on my suitcase are broken and the zipper is falling aside at the seam…

A Picture Is Worth A Million Words (Originally published December 1, 2023)

 A picture taken somewhere between the River and the Sea circa 1988ish

Hineni (originally written January 20, 2024)

 It’s weird when I am at a loss for words. But I am.

I got a tattoo today.

I have so much I want to say about it. But it’s too much to put into words. Maybe we can grab a drink and I can tell you about it one day.

For now, here it is.

Here I am.

Hineni.

And a sapling of the tree of life.

On my left forearm where my forefathers were forced to be tattooed before they were stripped of their clothes, hair, identities and dignity.

I am reclaiming my space in this world to be a proud Jew.

You can cut us down. 

But we will keep growing back.

Our roots are wide and deep.

Because we are here.

And here I am.

Never Again (Originally written March 1, 2024)

Never Again.

Never again will I live with peace in the entirety of my heart

Never again will I walk around in a world devoid of people I know who believe that rape is a justified form of resistance

Never again will I be able to meet someone new without being just a little bit nervous that I will be asked where my name comes from

Never again will I be able to look at my children and think “thank G–d we live in the 21st century – where Jews aren’t killed en mass for simply existing”

Never again will I be able to wake up in a world without wondering if people I know believe I have the right to exist

Never again will I be able to repair relationships with people who I deeply cared about because I saw how easily they threw me out with the bathwater

Never again will I feel whole

Never again will I ever believe you when you tell me “Never Again”

202 (originally written April 25th, 2024)

I only know what day of the week it is when I look at my pill organizer. But I can tell you exactly how many days it’s been (202) since I learned who my true friends are.

The Body Keeps The Score (Originally Written June 24, 2024)

I’ve been feeling nervous all day. Heart racing, head swimming, stomach in knots. 

The typical stuff when I’m feeling very nervous. But I couldn’t understand what my body was picking up on that my conscious mind had not.

And then it hit me.

I’m flying alone today for the first time since October 7th.

I wear my Magen David (Star of David) necklace proudly, always. Today will be no different. But today Alex will stay behind with the boys in the safety of our sweet little home.

But I’m flying into LGA and New York feels like the least safe city to be a Jew these days (or at least a close second behind LA).

I guess my brain is trying to get my body ready to run. Or fight? Either way, to stay alive and unharmed.

This feeling, my body’s understanding how to prepare me to survive, is deep in my DNA. It is doing a good job. I am thankful for its wisdom.

From the Spanish Inquisition, to the Pogroms in Lithuania, to the ghettos in Germany. Somewhere, someone in my lineage ran or fought, or I suppose hid.

But I won’t hide. So I’ll do what I tell my boys to do every day. I’ll be scared but I’ll do it anyway.

A Cry For Help I Didn't Know I Made (Originally Written October 7, 2024)

MEDVIEDENKO: Why do you always wear black?

MASHA: I’m in mourning for my life. I’m unhappy.

-The Seagull, Anton Checkhov

One of my teachers at The Hartt School told us that acting is the only art form that you can only get better at with age. With acting, your instrument is not reliant upon the dexterity of your hands, precision of your eye sight, quality of your vocal range. It is your lived experience that seasons the actor; allows them to marinate and bring forth all of the complex notes of emotions that only a life fully lived can. It took me 42 years, but I now understand Masha’s famous opening line.

I, too, am in mourning for my life. The life that I had before October 7th, 2023. Before the underbelly of humanity exposed itself through people I thought were my friends. Through strangers who called for my death. Through teachers who made my children unwelcome in their school.

This depth of understanding is something that a person cannot fake. Cannot channel. You’ve either lived it or you haven’t.

I have put one foot in front of the other for a full year now. And I have nothing to show for it besides a beating, if not battered, heart. Sure, I’m alive. But I live in mourning.

My children deserve better, G-d knows that. But something is better than nothing. So I pack the lunches, and read the books and feign delight in the run-on sentences they use to describe their latest discovery in Minecraft. And they do fill me with joy and with life and for moments I am in color again. But inevitably, it fades and I am Masha once again, always wearing black.

The hardest part is that I know that this shall not pass. The bell cannot be un-rung. The toothpaste will decidedly never go back in the tube. And while I know that the only way out is through, I cannot comprehend what is on the other side of this nightmare.

I will never be able to live in a world where October 7th did not happen. And when I realize that, the trees of the deep dark wood that I am so desperately trying to get through fall down all around me. And I am trapped in an actual living Hell. And not the one I was condemned to as a child by my classmate for being Jewish.

My father told me on more than one occasion, typically in response to one antisemitic experience or another, that the world will never be short of people who want us dead. I thought it was hyperbole. What a life I lived to believe that it was. How blissfully unaware I was.

In Judaism we have many rituals and customs surrounding mourning the death of a parent, child, spouse. The intensity with which our customs call us to mourn allows us to immerse ourselves in grief. And in doing so, we can then get up and start to live again. But what is the ritual for mourning one’s own life? How do I get up and step foot into the reality that I was alive when they came to slaughter us? That my children were walking the earth when my friends were walking by beheaded neighbors, and huddling with 10 other kibbutznikim in a bomb shelter, taking turns pissing on towels in the corner, and driving through the desert, rockets falling, shielding their children’s eyes from the carnage along the roads, and and and…

So, while my dream was once to play Nina, it looks all roads lead to Masha. And I will forever be in mourning for my life.

Fire

 Fire.

It’s a theme in our lives. Woven through our history. Sometimes flourishing with beauty. 

Shabbat candles. Havdala candles. Chanukah candles. 

Miraculous fire that refused to die until our Temple was restored. 

Bon fires on Lag Ba’Omer. 

Yortzite candles to honor our dead.

Other times, there is fire reminding us of the devastation it brings. 

I was 6 or 7 when I learned about the other kind of fire of my people. 

Of course I’m talking about the Holocaust. Images of smoke stacks and ovens were just part of my life. I thought that was it. I had no idea how fire was used against us time and time again.

When I was a tween/teen I learned about the Spanish Inquisition. At least during the Holocaust we were spared the feeling of our flesh melting off of our bones. But during the Spanish Inquisition, we felt every agonizing second until, mercifully, we died at the stake.

But my education didn’t stop there.

I then learned about the Pogroms and the burning of our homes and all of our worldly possessions (I’m looking at you Fiddler On The Roof). I also learned that this was the direct history of my family tree on my father’s side (that’s when I learned of the Pogroms in Lithuania and Latvia).

And of course, a big nod to the South of the USA, for the not-to-be-forgotten sight of burning crosses on lawns. We got to share that one with the Black community. You get a burning cross. You get a burning cross. Everyone gets a burning cross! (Unless you’re white and Christian of course).

But I never felt the flames touch me. I looked at them at a safe distance. 

And then October 7th. Waking up to see my beloved Kibbutz Holit on fire as I scrolled my Facebook feed. Seeing my friend Shir’s cell phone footage of the carnage that was left behind, after she hid for 12 hours. And her retelling of breaking the bars from her neighbor’s Safe Room window, to drag her out and bring her back to life after the smoke from the fire that was set in her house rendered her unconscious.  

And now Boulder. And an 88 year old Holocaust survivor, along with 7 other Jews, was set on fire. And so, it is full circle.

But, you see, we are a mighty and resistant people. When they go low, we go to Etsy and buy every single Judaica-themed accessory we can put on our bodies, cars, clothes and water bottles.

So we still celebrate with fire. We light the candles. And we say the prayers. And we remember those who came before us. And we sit around the camp fire on Lag Ba’Omer, but this time we are the ones who gather the wood and set it aflame. And we are burning baked potatoes wrapped in tin foil instead of people. And we are thanking G-d. Because then there was light. And it was good.

15 years later

 I needed a space to put my writing that was not social media. So I came back home. If you've somehow found your way here, welcome.