Let's talk about the things we're not going to talk about
A small list of topics I have chosen not to write about and why.
Coming into this week, I really struggled to think of what I wanted to talk about. We are now in the days of awe, the period between Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur - the space between when who shall live and who shall die is written in the book and life, and when it is sealed. This has always been a confusing time for me - this week in limbo. I feel slightly at odds with myself and my life, as though I am watching it happen from outside myself and evaluating how I was in the last year and how I would like to be in the year ahead.
Given that we’re in this strange time, I thought I would tell you about some of the things that I won’t be writing about because to really discuss them in the depth I feel they should be discussed is too precarious. There are countless topics that I would have liked to tackle here over the past year that I chose not to, including ones that I began drafting pieces about, because I felt that the risks associated with how even the most tempered discussion of them would be received were ones I did not want to risk - see, I’m not always fearless, even in a space I created for myself. So today, I’d like to share some of the most recent topics I have chosen not to write about, but can’t get out of my head.
President Biden’s September 21 speech before the UN General Assembly
On September 21, President Biden gave a speech at the UN General Assembly on the war in Ukraine. As we have watched the devastation of the past six months (yes, it really has been that long), there have been countless moments that evoked a particular feeling in me as a Jewish person as I watched not only the destruction of homes and cities but also the global response to the military invasion. Some of these moments I do plan to write about in November, and so will not address here.
In his speech, Biden discussed Russia’s claim that Ukraine was something it created, and never had real statehood. The crux of his speech was that the war is about “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple”, and the right of Ukrainians to exist as a people. For anyone who has been engaged in Israel advocacy, this particular phrasing likely sounds incredibly familiar.
For years, on the subject of Israel, we have argued about the world’s only Jewish nation-state’s right to exist, and the right of Jews to exist collectively as a people therein. Definitive statements about Israel’s right to exist have rarely been met with the level of support that currently accompanies those statements concerning Ukraine. To be clear, these situations are not the same. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is entirely different from the recurring war between Israel and Hamas. Defense of Ukraine’s right to exist absolutely should be met with support as it continues to fight back against Russian forces. But it nevertheless struck me as strange to hear arguments that are so often dismissed by the opposition when defending Israel being used to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Everyone is Indigenous”
On Sunday afternoon, shortly before Erev Rosh Hashanna, I was out for my long run. It was one of those runs that felt like somewhat of a harrowing experience - as far as long runs go - it was pouring, my leg was hurting from a nagging injury, and I was looking for anything to distract me from the pain and the gnawing fear that my marathon goals might be slipping away. What I found, was graffiti stenciled on the Martin Goodman Trail in Etobicoke reading “Everyone is Indigenous”.
The message, repeated like a mantra on the pavement, transported me back to my first week of law school when I found myself sitting in a class on Indigenous law as one-by-one we were required to stand up and say where we were from - where we were Indigenous to, if possible in the language of that place. When it came to me, I stood up and said, in Yiddish, “ich bin Sadie, und mein mishpacha is fun der blas fun eyshuv”; “I am Sadie, and my family is from the Pale of Settlement”. Now of course, this isn’t really true. My family is not “Indigenous” to the Pale of Settlement, we, like all Jews are Indigenous to Eretz Israel - the land of Israel. But by that time - Friday of my first week - the Jewish students had already divined that this would be the wrong answer, and I had not yet realized how much more I cared about being my full self than not offending my classmates and professors. How could we proclaim our Indigeneity to a place that everyone else saw us as the settler-colonizers of? And if I can’t be Indigenous to my true Indigenous homeland, then where exactly am I Indigenous to? Because we are all Indigenous to somewhere.
I have grappled frequently with this tension in recent years. When I have heard the cries of Indigenous scholars and protestors that we are on stolen land, I want so much to empathize with them. The Indigenous story of my people, the one I have heard so many of these same individuals and their supporters reject, is a story of people who had to fight for their land and were eventually expelled from it; it is a story of a people yearning to return to the place they come from. L’shana h’ba’ah b’Yerushalim! Next year in Jerusalem, we say every year on Pesach.
Everyone is Indigenous to somewhere. But what am I supposed to do; how can I continue to support and empathize with you, when you reject my story of Indigeneity?
The New York Times’ coverage of the Hasidic schools in New York
Two weeks ago, when I wrote about three things universities can do right now to start addressing Antisemitism on campus, I had actually been planning a very different topic for the week. I had spent several hours preparing and drafting a discussion of the New York Times expose on the state of several Hasidic boys’ schools in New York. The reporting revealed that students at these schools failed standardized testing en masse, and that the schools failed to adequately prepare students for life outside of the orthodox community.
For those have spent time in and around the orthodox world, the fact that these schools exist and that they fail to provide an adequate secular education to students was less surprising. These schools are nothing new and their educational standards have been revealed on many occasions, though perhaps never as publicly as this one.
Why did I decide not to write about it? The answer to that question can be answered by the tone of the reporting. The article lacks context about the particular Jewish community where these schools are located - a group that is extremely stringent in its interpretation of Jewish law. The article additionally misattributed problems. It discusses the fact that lessons are taught in Yiddish, but frame it as an indication of the schools being subpar, neglecting the fact that in countries around the world, children are educated in a different language from the vernacular language spoken at home or even in their community, such as students attending French immersion programs in English parts of Canada.
Reading the article created something of a moral dilemma for me. There are real problems with these schools that need to be addressed. There should be a way to teach students Torah and provide them with a strong education in Jewish texts and law while still ensuring that they are able to read and do math at grade level. However, I had and still have real qualms about the way the orthodox community was depicted by the New York Times and the tone of the article, such that I felt uncomfortable directing readers to it.
The orthodox community is frequently depicted as a monolith, and almost only receives news coverage in connection with negative instances making it difficult to navigate the complexities of these issues, since we are almost never provided with a complete picture. As well, it is not my community, and I feel that as much as it is a conversation I am interested in, there are others who are better positioned to speak to what can best be done about addressing these schools.
Twitter trolls
Shortly after I posted the piece that went out instead of discussing the Hasidic schools. I posted the following on Twitter:
I am not a big Twitter user, so I never anticipate much or any response when I post things like this. What I was not anticipating - though I likely should have - was that the first comment would be from someone linking to an Antisemitic video depicting shooting and killing Jews in the Holocaust. While Twitter’s filter does require one to click through two levels to view the video, it did not prevent the video from being posted many times by this individual in response to Jewish advocates, when I looked through their history.
I want to start by saying that I am in no way bothered by the video. While the images it depicts are, of course, upsetting, it’s not targeted towards me as an individual in my real life. I am not being doxed or personally sought out as I have been in the past for other things I have written. Twitter is a cesspool of everyone’s most extreme 140 characters - this just comes with the territory. I reported both the account and the post to Twitter and neither have been removed.
I have also made a personal choice not to delete the comment, and that’s what I want to talk about. I spend a lot of time trying to draw attention to the urgency of addressing Antisemitism. I think that it says a lot when a person like myself who has well under 100 followers on Twitter can make a post like this and the immediate response is from an Antisemitic internet troll. I think it says a lot that Jewish advocates on social media are constantly having their accounts frozen or suspended for speaking out on Jewish issues while accounts like this, even after they have been reported, appear to face no repercussions.
I asked the internet to share what their campus could do to address Antisemitism and the first response was a depiction of violent Antisemitism. I have no desire to engage with a Twitter troll, and firmly believe that no one else should either. I wanted to share this incident because I feel it is representative of a lot of what we are seeing these days. The Jewish community, particularly the Jewish community on campus is trying to have an earnest and productive conversation about what can be done to make things better, but the trigger reaction has so often been to do nothing or to continue to facilitate the actions and activities that make things worse.
@Sadie_Rae #Sadie_Rae- as always,a brilliant and thought provoking article.
How many things do we not discuss because of social pressures, "woke' guidelines..i.e. you can't anything without offending someone (unless it's the Jews), Political Correctness on steroids?
Sadie-Rae; you go, girl!
Thank you for this. So hard to find a safe space to discuss these important issues.