This is not the world I lived in seven weeks ago.

Thoughts seven weeks after October 7.

Photo by Benny Rotlevy on Unsplash

NB: As some of you may know from Instagram (@horseofadifferent_colour), I have been struggling a lot with what to write. Not because I have nothing to say, but because my thoughts and feelings are moving so quickly that I have not been able to put anything coherent on paper. So today, I wanted to share some of what it is has looked like in my head for the last seven weeks. And I wanted to share how I have been impacted by the activity of former peers. I am incredibly grateful for the support networks that I have. I am honoured to be part of the support networks for others. I am sharing how my perception of my life has changed so that if you are feeling the way I am, you will know that you are not alone. I am sharing how my perception of my life has changed, to shed a light on what it feels like, for me, to be Jewish right now.

As we got in the taxi, he nodded his head to the keffiyeh tied around the driver’s headrest. I tucked my Magen David into the collar of my shirt. We stopped talking. It had been a nice night, featuring the ferry ride and a drink at a seedy bar, but now it was over. We had returned to the reality of the last seven weeks. Back in my house, I went downstairs three times - twice more than normal - to check that both doors were locked before going to bed. 

Every day since October 7, I have wondered if I will return home to find my mezuzah ripped off my door, or my home otherwise vandalized. I worry about what will happen if someone who hates me for who I am or thinks it’s part of protesting Israel, sees my dog sitting in the window and tries to scare him. Some days, I have worried so much that I have worked from my couch instead of my office, so that I can be there to defend him and my home. 

Along my normal running route, I pass posters plastered to telephone polls mocking the hostage posters that call for the return of the 240 hostages taken to Gaza. I try not to allow myself to become distracted by the graffiti on the sidewalk proclaiming: “From the River to the Sea”; the declaration of a desire to expel my people from our Indigenous homeland. For once in my life, I feel that I am safer as a woman, because I bear no outward indications of being an observant Jew. 

At synagogue on Friday I stare at the small card fixed to the back of the seat in front of me giving instructions for what to do in case of emergency. The instructions are to dial 911, tell them I am at the synagogue, and that there is, in this order: “an active shooter, fire, or medical emergency”, before giving the operator my name. We are reminded not to let strangers into the building anymore. We jump at every noise.

This is not how it has always been. In September, we had remarked how wonderful it was that we felt so safe in our city that we did not need a police presence during the High Holidays. That feels like a lifetime ago.

I am telling you this, because you are not there to see it.

When I look at your Instagram stories now, it is no longer because I wonder what you have been up to since last we spoke. 

When I look at your Instagram stories now, it is out of a sense of obligation to see if you have become complicit in the active promotion and justification of violence and hatred towards my community. I am bearing witness.

When I look at your Instagram stories now, I am embarrassed to have known you; spoken to you; studied with you; laughed with you. 

Perhaps, I am overreacting, but there was a bomb threat at a Jewish kindergarten and high school in Toronto. 

Perhaps, I shouldn’t worry so much, but twice shots were fired at a Jewish school in Montreal.

Perhaps, I’m paranoid, but Paul Kessler was killed because he is a Zionist Jew, like 95% of the Jewish community.

Over the last seven weeks, this has stopped being solely about Israel. If I am honest, I think that moment came on October 8, when we were chanting “Bring Them Home” while you were chanting “no justice, no peace” and praising the people who slaughtered and raped our people as ‘resistance fighters enacting a grand vision of decolonization.’ 

Over the last seven weeks, I have faced the hard reality that the illusion North American Jews have been living under for decades - the notion that we are safe and accepted here - is just that: an illusion. I have stared down what it means to be a stranger in a strange land. I am Canadian. I have lived in Canada my entire life. For seven weeks you have been telling me that I am unwelcome; unwanted.

One day, hopefully not too long from now, this war will end. Israel will move forward. And then there will be the rest of us. The ones who live as an invisible minority in so many countries; the ones who you have made feel unsafe in our homes and our cities. 

And if you come to me then, when however many of the hostages who are still alive have been returned to their homes; when the Palestinian people are under new leadership; when this is no longer trending on Twitter. If you come to me then I will say to you: 

I am embarrassed to have known you. 

I will say to myself: I am embarrassed that you failed to see the scope of what is happening right now. I am disappointed in your failure to understand evil when it looked you in the face. I am ashamed at how quickly you minimized, glossed over, “contextualized”, and erased the massacre of innocent people because they lived in Israel. I am angered by your failure to lift your eyes for even a moment to see that your actions are making the world less safe for Jewish people. I am infuriated by your failure to stand with us against the Antisemitism that has risen nearly 1000% in some major cities, even when it has nothing to do with Israel and is a direct result of the normalization of painting Jews with the brush of conspiracies levelled against us. 

Because there are parts of what is going on right now - parts of how you have been complicit in changing the world I walk through, that have nothing to do with Israel. Deep down, I think you know that.

But I will not say that to you. Because there is nothing to be gained from it. And so, I will say:

I am embarrassed to have known you.