On October 7th, in a Facebook post about something completely other, I parenthetically noted “the second anniversary of the terrible massacre and hostage-taking that kicked off the Israeli assault on Gaza that has caused nothing but horrible pain for millions of people and turned world opinion against Israel and not been terribly helpful for Jews – or Muslims.”
For the past two years, I’ve been careful about expressing my thoughts and feelings about that day in 2023. It was too terrible to talk about, and then it got worse. And, as far as I’m concerned, it’s stayed that way. It’s lonely to be a Jew who cares about Israel and believes that Palestinians have a right to self-determination. The relief at seeing the living hostages finally come home is incredible. At the same time, I can’t stop thinking about the ones who didn’t come back alive, about everyone who died that day, and about the death and suffering among Israeli soldiers and the innocent people of Gaza. It feels very far away from the Jewish values on which I was raised and the rabbinic voices, ancient and modern, that live rent-free in my head. I do not hold Hamas to that standard, so my soul searching has been less about what it should or shouldn’t be doing and more about what I can possibly do to make anything less awful in all of this. As Rabbi Tarfon said (and I’m paraphrasing here), you don’t have to finish the job, but you don’t get to run away from it either.
Among things that have kept me going over the past two years – two years of hearing stories of people who’ve been marginalized or worse for thinking Israel has a right to exist, of sitting in the annual meeting of my local food co-op listening to an employee complain that they weren’t allowed to wear their Free Palestine buttons at the register, and watching both the left and the right use antisemitism to further their own interests – is my Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom group. A national organization, the Sisterhood saw some of its chapters collapse under the weight of Oct. 7. Ours did not, and we – a collection of Jewish and Muslim women, have held each other up and helped each other through to where we are now.
Relatively early on after the Hamas attack and the beginning of the Israeli incursion into Gaza, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who had heard about the group (to this day I have no idea how) asked to do an interview. Our conditions were simple: A Muslim sister and a Jewish sister in the same room with the reporter, doing the interview in real time so that we could all hear and react and respond to the same things in the moment. After the story ran, we received invitations to speak to a group of educators and, a month later, to a group of college students. In both environments, the atmosphere was respectful and we were made to feel welcome.
These things give me hope, which remains in terribly short supply over this situation. Until Oct. 7, I really thought there was a chance there would be peace in the region in my lifetime. Much of the mourning I’ve done over the past two years is over the loss of that possibility. It will be decades before we are back to the point where we were before that terrible day. But along with Rabbi Tarfon’s reminder that desisting from the work is not an option, I am heartened by the wisdom of another sage, Fred Rogers, “to look for the helpers.” In my Sisterhood sisters, I have found them.
The Chronicle publishes a variety of opinion articles, including this one, which are not necessarily representative of the views of this newspaper or its publisher.
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Free at last
With the release of 20 living hostages from Gaza last month, accompanied by efforts at a ceasefire, several local people are offering their thoughts at this moment in history. See articles throughout this edition.
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Amy Waldman is a local public librarian and the author of “We Had Fun and Nobody Died,” a book on the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. A long-time contributor to the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, she is currently working on her second book.
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