Especially If You’re Not Jewish, Wish a Jewish Person a Happy Hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate, which includes me!!

As part of my 31 days of connection I’m doing on my Instagram page, below is a personal note. I'm sharing this note in the spirit of trust and faith. Trust in each of us to uphold the dignity of one another as a baseline expectation of this community. Faith in our willingness to choose connection.  

Dear Every Jewish Person Across the Globe,

My heart is with you, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry to the ones who have silently debated each morning since 10/7: Should I wear my Star of David necklace over my sweater, or underneath today? How safe does today feel? How bold am I feeling today?

I'm sorry to the parents who had to take the safety temperature of the city they lived in after 10/7, assessing the risk of sending their Jewish kids to school that following Monday.

I'm sorry if you feel compelled to spend the holiday in activism, instead of just getting to talk about the food.

I'm sorry that the paranoia your grandparents laboriously tried to instill in you as a survival mechanism has activated itself, and that the activation is not without cause.

I'm especially sorry if you feel the need to celebrate this year’s Hanukkah with discretion. Even the smallest, slightest discretion. A seed of discretion. Any amount of discretion.

I’m sorry, and my heart is with you.

For those who are reading this alongside the thought, "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PALESTINIANS??" That is an excellent question.

Clearly, the world has struggled to ask that question for decades. Now is only the beginning of the struggle to answer it.

There is an answer.

We need international reconciliation models without a mandate of forgiveness, experienced leaders like Dr. Donna Hicks to implement them, and a cease fire accompanied by an unprecedented level of humanitarian aid to create the basic safety required to begin such an effort. 

The answer also involves each of us upholding the dignity of one another in our everyday lives.

I say this next part with hesitation because I feel like I'm appropriating something from my mom, and yet it feels equally unsettling in this appeal for more empathy towards one another to omit that my mom is Palestinian.

In the Six-Day War, my mom’s neighborhood was bombed and she was sent alone as a child to live in a convent in England. As an adult, sometimes she felt it was safe to go home to visit, and she'd take us (me and my three siblings) with her.

Once she brought only me because I was a baby, and as every mama knows, it's easier to travel with a baby than toddlers. It was the only trip I ever took alone with her, just us. Not that I remember it - not visually, at least. 

One of the times that my mom felt it was unsafe to bring us there was for my grandmother's funeral. We stayed behind. We were living right outside DC then.

I sat on the bed and watched her pack a suitcase full of clunky gas masks, thinking not a thing of it.

We had gas masks in our house growing up for the same reason you surely had fire extinguishers; both are basic safety measures in my mother's mind. 

There are a million tiny things like that I grew up around, only to recognize later as echoes of war trauma. That kind of fear that my mom still carries, the kind you learn to live with, the fear that all marginalized people know intimately, tragically well - that is a fear that Palestinian and Jewish people share. 

Comparative suffering is not necessary because empathy is an unlimited resource.

We can feel a deep empathy for Palestinians, Muslims, Jews - anyone who is scared and suffering.

The empathy we express towards one group does not come at the cost of expressing empathy towards another.

Am I Jewish bc I converted to Judaism? Technically, but being Jewish is not as simple as joining a club.

Am I half Arabic? Technically, but I don't feel like an Arab. I identify with being white because I look white. More notably, the world has always treated me like I'm white.

Am I American? Technically, I got my citizenship six years ago and I speak in an American accent, but I don't think in an American accent. 

At best, I've always had one foot in and one foot out of every identity I could stake claim to. Mostly I get by doing the hokey pokey version of moving through my roles.

I'm technically a lot of things. Aren't we all?

I'm definitely a human being. Aren't we all? 

Whether we stand with two feet firmly planted in our identity, nationality, religion, race, sexuality, whatever - or two feet out, or some wild combination of three toes, half an ankle, who knows what - we're all human beings.

Treating each other like human beings means saying, "I'm sorry, and my heart is with you." Saying that to Palestinians, to Jews, to Muslims, to anyone whom we see suffering or scared.

Especially if you're not Jewish, please consider wishing someone Jewish a Happy Hanukkah this week. If that basic gesture of connection feels too radical for you, please consider why. 

With love and faith,

Katherine X