We do what we can - The Jewish Standard

This is a strange and terrible time — in this country, in Israel, in the world. Old definitions and understandings seem to be crumbling around us; we know that change is difficult, and that it is normal to resist it, even when it is good, but this does not seem at all like good change.

We write about the precarity of our situation constantly. That’s our job, to report the world as we see it, through a Jewish lens. And right now, that world view is dark.

But not all of it!

This week, we report on Zibby Owens’ book, “On Being Jewish Now” a compilation of short essays in response to the evil of October 7. (Zibby is going to speak about it in Tenafly on December 4, and it’s widely available, in soft cover, as an ebook, and as an audiobook; Zibby also would be glad to talk about it, with or without a panel, in the rest of our coverage area.) The essays range greatly in content, tone, and quality; they come from writers who differ enormously from each other in background, age, temperament, home base, word choice, and approach to the subject. But they do all have one thing in common — whether they come to it by birth or conversion, through religion or culture or family or osmosis, they’re all Jewish.

And the single most prevalent emotion — it’s not in all the essays, but certainly in most of them — is pride. Pride in being Jewish. Joy in being Jewish. As we have seen throughout the Jewish community since October 7, people are feeling connected to each other in ways they hadn’t before. They’re drawing together not for protection — there might be some of that — but also because there’s that spark that we feel. It’s always been there — that’s why our Noshes column is so popular, because it’s always fun to find out that celebrities are Jewish, just like us — but that feeling of strength in numbers, and of sharing something deep, far beyond an accident of birth — with someone who sort of is a stranger but also sort of isn’t, goes very deep.

Many of us have stories about feeling connections since October 7. I have one too. On the morning after we learned about the tortured lives and brutal deaths of six hostages held in Gaza, deaths made even more cruel, if that is possible, by the thought of their possible release being dangled not only in front of us but them as well — Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Eden Yerushalmi — I was walking my dog. I was wearing the dogtag that I have worn for almost a year now, not because I think that it has any magical powers, but because I want to make sure that I do not forget the hostages, that I think of them in the morning, when I put it on, at night, when I take it off, and during the day, whenever I look in the mirror.

As I walked by the island in the middle of Broadway just north of Columbia, outside the Jewish Theological Seminary, I saw a man taping up hostage posters. I crossed Broadway to thank him; he told me that the signs constantly are torn down, and then, the next morning, he tapes up new ones. “We do what we can,” he said. I cried. I couldn’t help it. And then this man, this stranger, hugged me, and I hugged him back, and I was comforted, just a bit, and I think that he was, too. Because we both felt that connection, that pintele Yid, the spark of Jewishness.

We do what we can.

—JP

Opinion

comments