Fear
October 19, 2023. I’m sketching an amulet my mom brought me from her last visit to Israel about a year prior in my journal. My head is heavy with thoughts.
The page describes a feeling that I had a hard time pointing down for a couple of days because it was too big to grasp: Fear. The heavy kind that smothers you slowly with its irrationality. The amulet’s sketch is of a shield of David, which I have hanging on my doorknob.
I’m not a religious person and never was. There was a time in my life when the thought of wearing anything religion-oriented would make me scoff. Over the years in the US, as I taught Hebrew to children in a synagogue, I learned that religion has shades. Not all religious folks are necessarily hard-headed Orthodox who can be distinguished by what they wear. Jews come in all shapes and colors, and I’ve learned that I can be Jewish to a certain degree without showing for it if I don’t want to. With time, I just learned to accept it as part of my past, and through that, a part of who I am today.
And so, on the 19th, for the first time in my life, I was scared of simply being who I am. Scared of being Jewish in the US, of all places. The absurdity of the situation was so pronounced that it alone was what made me realize that what I feel is not normal, at least not me. I took some time looking into space after I wrote in the journal, needing my thoughts to settle. I was happy I could frame what I was feeling though.
The fear sharpened my identity as a Jewish person and connected me to my past in a way I haven’t in years, possibly ever. To be clear, I didn’t want to be connected: not with being Jewish and not with my Israeli past. These are two things I don’t care too much for in my day-to-day life. After all, there’s a reason I still live here, in the US, and lead a religion-free life. This was a rude and powerful pull, as if I was dragged by my hair, kicking and screaming against my will. I didn’t have a choice. The helplessness of this whole situation hit hard and turned into anger.
What I want to expand on is that anger. But to do so, I have to recognize the fear it came from, a place I will probably revisit as I look deeper and explain what has happened since.
This is part 1 of whatever this is going to be. From here, I went on several tangents. I’m not sure what to write next yet; I just know that I need to do so, which is fine (this I tell myself more than to you). The point is to let it out, at least some of it. We’ll see how it goes.