Fences

When fences have been all we’ve ever known
and grids of wires crisscrossing the earth
a terrible deep thirst within is grown
despite the generations forced to own
and be owned, violated as the dirt
When fences have been all we’ve ever known
and highways, and walls where we charge our phones
while outside crows and squirrels vie for turf
 a terrible deep thirst within is grown

Myself, I long to fly where crow has flown
to travel like an arrow on its search
When fences have been all I’ve ever known
and not the herds of buffalo, whose bones
are mingled in the soil of our birth
A terrible deep thirst within is grown
to live a life, not just pay back a loan
to know these blessed lungs for what they’re worth

When fences have been all we’ve ever known
a terrible deep thirst within is grown

Shabbat Shuva (Shabbat of Return)

and just as every life is but a link in Nature’s being and every poem just another layer of its meaning and every wave of grief and joy a flicker in its burning just so is every year, and week, and day, a new returning

to each other, working to be honest with our faces to ourselves, surrendering our need for trading places to the land, the work of being symbiotic creatures to the Spirit shaping us into our own best teachers 

may we recognize what’s ours to mend this coming year and let the waters soften us with every blessed tear tonight we raise our glass to this, while candles brightly burn –  to our own holy struggles as we turn and yet return

This is the Year (5786)

 
This is the Year

after Martín Espada

This is the year the poets drop our metaphors

Until the cops and armies drop their guns

Or even break their ranks and turn their fire

On their own generals, the very ones

Who order all this carnage and this chaos
To stop the order of the World to Come

Who fear us and the future we’re revealing 

Where violence isn’t where our strength comes from

This is the years those forced to flee their homelands
Are welcomed everywhere with bread and song
In thousands of new anthems to our freedom
Sung out in all our sacred mother tongues

This is the year the ghosts of the six million

Return to sabotage Israeli drones 

To circle all our Palestinian cousins

and walk with them, and sing their spirits home

This is the year the grandmothers still clutching
Their own keys to to their own great grandmothers’ homes
Return to mount those keys above the hearthstones
And brew pots of spiced coffee on the stove

This is the year the laws are all rewritten

In languages the colonizers banned

To reinstate the sacrosanct relation

That we belong, as people, to the land

This is the year the churches built on mass graves

With lumber from the clear cut ancient woods

Unfold themselves to let the voice of God in

And turn back into forests now for good

This is the year the faces on Mount Rushmore

Are overgrown with sweetgrass and with sage
That burst forth through those pirates’ ears and noses
Restoring those Hills to their wild age

This is the year the Eagle is remembered

For who he is: not violent arrogance

But warrior and teacher flying fearless

Over every prison, border wall, and fence

This is the year the voices of the prophets

In every city where their people starve

and preach the good news: “We are all related”

are multiplied by millions as we march

This is the year the billionaires go bankrupt

As we the people nationalize the banks
And sentence them to life working on arctic

Restoration, with their cronies in their ranks

This is the year the workers in the factories
Producing bombs, tanks, missiles, jets and drones

Take over the assembly lines, and use them 

To rebuild war-torn cities, roads, and homes

This is the year the madness of the world

Erupting in our streets and on our screens

is rallied by a rhythm that emerges

creating poetry out of the screams:

We are like water running to the ocean

We are the children of our own free dawn

We are its anthem, pulsing like a hand drum

We are full human beings, not just pawns

We are the life of everything unshackling

We are the ancient prophecies fulfilled

We’ve come this far to now redeem our birthright:

The healing of our home, the people’s will

Our Power isn’t over one another

Our Law is not a weapon or a curse

Our Truth is not the property of rulers

Our scriptures say the last will be the first

And so, may every mouth now parched and starving

Fill with the angels of clean water, bread,

And peace, and may their wings become our shelter 

And over all the earth may wholeness spread

Diasporism (Anti-Zionism) Practice

saying modeh ani — I am grateful — upon waking blessing the body breathing 

sitting at an altar
to the world to come

counting olive wood prayer beads
chanting hineni — Here I am — 
listening to the birds

reaching for the ukulele 
reaching for the tiple jíbaro 
reaching for the guitar

blessing lands and waters with their true names — 
Zhegagoynak, Michigami, 
Mikinak Minising, 

praying to my own rhythm
in my own voice
offering morning blessings 
with a Wailers song

studying Torah
studying the Torah of labor songs
of Yiddish novels, Spanish poetry,
Reggae history, Frantz Fanon,
of Goddess worship and Tarot
of seasons and plants

of every land that has helped to grow me
every language that has tuned my ear
every teaching that has enriched
the soil of my being

tending the garden
walking the dogs
talking with neighbors

listening to the cicadas
listening to the geese
listening to the river

showing up to the action,
the rehearsal, the group chat,
the meeting, the concert, the play,
the services, the birthday party,

listening to the poem, the speech,
the song, the album, the voice note,
the podcast, the friend,

listening to the crickets,
to the wind in the trees —

noticing faces, feelings,
cadences, clouds

writing the poem

saying the shema 
— all is One —
before sleeping

contemplating the waters 
that connect all life
when reciting the blessing 
for washing hands

blessing the living waters
that ever flow toward liberation
in all its wondrous forms

thanksgiving 2024

and so we gather here again as always together in our deepest joys and fears to laugh at humankind's most tragic follies and hold such tenderness we're moved to tears

remembering the ones who have since left us
and welcoming those here for the first time
to honor every loss that has bereft us
and find in every pleasure the sublime

amidst the growing shadows of the empire
amidst the rising waters and the storms
enclosed by dangers spreading now like hellfire
and ancient evils ever in new forms

we'll gather here in every generation
to take lead from the youngest in our ranks
until we meet with all of our relations
to eat, and dance, and live, still giving thanks

Not In Our Name

our ancestors are wearing t shirts too, now,
the black and red ones with Not In Our Name
they're shutting down the offices of heaven
the cosmic businesses that fuel the slaying

they're rising with us, mirroring our movements

because we finally have heard their cries

across the veil where they march in millions

alongside all the peoples who've survived

their shares of genocides and more by tenfold

and lived through holocausts that never stopped

and all of them are screaming break the cycle

oppression doesn't end when it is swapped

the martyrs of millennia of struggle

of every land and people under fire

the dead of Gaza, Vietnam, Chiapas,

the Philippines, South Africa, the choir of

sixty million Africans who perished

in the hells of their captivity and thrall

the hundred million Native people slaughtered

in the willful violence of the settlers' sprawl

have all been organizing up in heaven

with other martyred souls of streamlined deaths

of gas chambers, of witch trials, of bombings,

forgotten peoples robbed of names and breaths

the billion mothers forced to watch their children

starve to death or die of labored thirst

the billion desaparecidos stolen

from their loved ones, planted in the earth

are rising now in this historic springtime

in which we are the gardeners of dreams

the midwifes of this greatest revolution

any living being on earth has ever seen

    the overcoming of the threat of hunger
    the fruits of human efforts shared by all
    the end of slavery in all expressions
    the answer to all of our prophets’ call

they're speaking to us, louder now than ever

it isn't hard to make out all the words

you only have to turn down all the TVs

and radio theater of the absurd

and listen – they are weeping, they are shouting,

with the grief and rage of these two thousand years:

    It is up to you to choose Life for our children

    The seeds of martyrs must be watered with your tears

    Only then can life begin to truly flourish

    Only when you take as freely as you give

    Only then will you remember us with honor

    Only then can we begin to really live

This is the Year (5785)

I've received a lot of requests to share the poem in written form, out loud, with various groups or audiences, etc. Thank you for your concerns in checking in with me, but please hear me: the answer to all such requests is YES of course! (So please, no need to check in with me about sharing this or any of my public work). I would love for this piece to be shared far and wide. Let it be a tool for change and shifting culture. That is why I do the work I do.

That being said, this time of year is paradoxically 1) the time when I feel most supported by community (particularly after I share a new version of this poem each year) and 2) the most financially difficult time of year for me in my annual cycle of work as a teaching artist, so, I have to include here a request of my own. If you consistently find my work valuable, meaningful, shareable, and needed within the ecosystem of cultural work right now, please consider becoming a Patron by subscribing at any amount here: https://www.patreon.com/adamgottliebandonelove or making a one-time donation to my crowdfunding campaign here: https://gofund.me/51b20e9c

Thank you so much for you support. <3 <3 <3

***

ABOUT THIS POEM:

I first wrote “This is the Year” in the fall of 2011 in the wake of the Occupy Wall St movement, during my final year at Hampshire College, as I was being radicalized by the student-led Occupy Hampshire effort to address the crisis of capitalism and neoliberalism at our own institution. The poem is based on “Imagine the Angels of Bread” by Martín Espada, the revolutionary writer who I had recently gotten to take a couple poetry classes with at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He and his contemporary Aracelis Girmay both instilled in me the importance of what they called “poetry of the political imagination,” and it became a personal practice of mine to rewrite the poem every year to reflect the changing times. In 2017 I first recited it during the prophetic section of the liturgy at our Rosh Hashanah services at Tzedek Chicago, and it subsequently became tradition for me to rewrite and share the poem at this point in our services every year since then. This is an honor I do not take lightly.

This year, I knew I couldn't do it alone. I put a call out for Tzedek congregants to send me their own poetic and prophetic visions, and dozens answered the call. Thank you. I have done my best to weave our many imaginations into a new communal version of the poem that I hope represents us as a community.

This is the Year

This is the year the temple falls again and we rejoice
This is the year we return at last to our homeland of diaspora
This is the year Palestine is free

This is the year t'shuva means Land Back
and making aliyah means devoting a lifetime
to rebuilding Gaza with and for her people
replanting groves of olives, almonds, strawberries
and reassembling infrastructure with raw steel, copper, rubber
from dismantled fighter jets, missiles, and tanks

This is the year the grandmothers still clutching keys
to family homes in Safed, Haifa, and Al-Khalisa
return to frame and mount their keys above their fireplaces
and brew pots of spiced coffee on the stove

This is the year

This is the year justice hits like hurricanes
as we the people impose peace on all the profiteers of war

This is the year Lockheed makes saxophones
General Dynamics starts a line of cookware
and Mar-a-Lago is transformed into a solar farm

This is the year we melt and hammer guns into shovels
bullets into ankle bells, and rockets into bicycles

This is the year we arm teachers with choice and living wages
and equip students with bulletproof layers of history and truth

This is the year banned books become best sellers
and poems like this are classified into non-fiction

This is the year we look back on 5, 10, 50, 100 years from now
to mark the anniversary we made the racists, bigots, ruthless
capitalists and fascists irrelevant

This is the year students wake from encampments
to news of their historic victories
and cultivate food gardens on those sacred grounds
with fruit trees to mark the year we all rose up
to nourish future mouths and minds and visions

This is the year

This is the year that bikes take over streets
and cars are forced to drive on narrow lanes
that suddenly disappear

This is the year we institute
composting toilet systems worldwide
and at last truly deal with our shit

This is the year we redistribute luxury housing
to folks living under the viaducts
and temporary shelters and tent cities on the edges of town
to displaced bankers and real estate developers

This is the year our skylines turn a lush and verdant green
and those who last year woke in prison cells, bug-ridden
beds, and worn-down tents awaken at dawn
to sublime views of sunrise glittering on the lake

This is the year every country, city, and state
declare a budget surplus from taxing the “elites”
and everywhere the people work and play
in neighborhoods with thriving parks, schools, hospitals, homes

This is the year we walk into grocery stores without a wallet
and walk out with heaping armfuls of fresh produce

This is the year that living “paycheck to paycheck”
means planning which new musical instrument
or international flight you'll get next month

This is the year

This is the year we honor the treaties
national parks are restored to indigenous sacred sites
sweetgrass sprawls from George Washington's ears
sage bursts through Teddy Roosevelt's nose
and the Pahá Sápa grow wild and holy again

This is the year stories of hope and return
shared by refugees across generations
come to life in every cherished homeland

This is the year those forced to flee their homes
are welcomed everywhere with bread and song
the million anthems of our common plight
in every mother tongue

This is the year

This is the year the mob awakens, poor people unite
and choruses of women, queer and trans folks, the scorned, disabled, with tortured
mouths, with molars cracked and pained from centuries of biting back
their righteous words open their lips and sing like birds
emboldened, joyful, free

This is the year we humans hear the cries of choking rivers
of ailing streams and wetlands, every gasping body of water
every parched patch of forestland
every buzzing, burrowing, soaring creature

This is the year we embrace what's left of earth's precious bounty and beauty
and unite to rescue our blessed home for future generations

This is the year we break the forced fasts
of all who hunger for that bounty

This is the year our prayers and chants and songs
pierce the palisades of psychic static
and penetrate the walls of armored bunkers
and even reach the halls of world powers
enough to calm the feverish toxic minds
of rulers who for once will hear the cries
of all the wounded children, displaced
people, grieving mothers, and lost souls
and finally come to look directly
in the face of one starved, thirsty child
whose promise of a peaceful future they have stolen

This is the year

This is the year the world reveres the rights of every human
and the rights of nature, of all life, as much as human rights

This is the year forever ending the age of normalization
of violence and destruction, of genocide and war

This is the year we find the faith and summon the courage to act
upon our values, hopes, and visions rather than remaining paralyzed
by our hates, fears, insecurities, prejudices and doubts

This is the year
       we choose life for ourselves and for all children
       inscribing seven generations in the Book of Life

This is the year
       this one, not next, Jerusalem reflects her name –
       a city shining with peace in a world filled with sacred places
       flowing with open permeable borders
       facilitating life, autonomy, empowerment
      without police or border walls or prisons

This is the year
       Zion is wherever people live
       without dominating each other or the land

This is the year
       we can be fully Jewish
       and, what's more, human for the first time

This is the year
       we make known what has been made invisible, hidden from view
       the year we acknowledge that which has has been tucked away
       because it disturbs, or seems unfit, foreign, unJewish

       This is the year for the prophetic
       – unadorned and naked –
       to be in full view, embodied

This is the year
O hear, Israel

This is the year
the Breath of Life is Our God

This is the year
All Life
All Liberation
is All One

       (Ameyn)

words to share out loud

these are the days the narrows close and freedom burns the eyes
we wake up every morning to the scenes of genocide
unfolding on these phones we use to keep up and survive, 
made with cobalt from the Congo picked by children in the mines,
gadgets we can buy with hard-earned wages keeping us alive 
while bankrolling the death squads wiping out whole family lines, 
these same screens we source our data from for truth amidst the lies
swear to God, these are the days no prophet could have prophesied

these are the days the double-speak becomes official language
while the immigrants of yesterday fall in among the fascists

and our schools, homes, and hospitals are left again to languish

here at home, while off in Gaza they get bombed with U.S. taxes

and they sweep the tent encampments out for cameras and conventions

while they sell the public housing off for luxury developments

and words they use like “common sense”, “think for yourself”, and “freedom”
mean don’t ever question premises you’ve already agreed on

and in this mess, somehow we must turn terror into hope,

and that, i guess, is my job if i call myself a poet

but they've got a place for wordsmiths like me in their market world

unless I move the mob so well the order gets disturbed

and here we are, just free enough to gather in this place

and say these kinds of things out loud together, face to face,

but if we go too far too fast with talk of revolution

we may find out too soon what is their new final solution

so what does freedom look like when our very thoughts are guarded?

and what does liberation take with shackles on our hearts?

the rivers of our grieving must come bursting through the dams

the tears of generations who've been severed from their lands

the terrible epiphany that we have not been human

and have not been allowed to be, and now what will we do?

our children's children pray for us to shake the chains away

the earth may still forgive us if we weep and turn today

the consciousness of millions still revolves around their lives

the struggle for security and shelter, to provide

a home that is a haven for their children for all time

and if we focus everything on that, we may not die

when chaos comes, our clarity will be our only light

good food and water our most useful weapons in the fight

to see the frightened stranger, to look them in the eye, 

and call each other kin, and start rebuilding, dignified. 

Teaching Truth: How I Got Fired From Teaching Teens at a Jewish Sunday School

Teaching Truth How I Got Fired From Teaching Teens at a Jewish Sunday School

This week I was abruptly fired from my job teaching teens in a Jewish Sunday School (at a congregation with a proud history of participation in the Civil Rights movement) for showing a video on censorship related to Palestine by a Palestinian comedian. I offered the lesson in the context of a curriculum on Jewish ethics as part of an exploration of the topic of “truth.” The exercise for the students was to listen to a point of view that might be challenging to hear and to practice sitting with that person's truth as well as their own. My teen students immediately recognized the value of the exercise and received the video well, responding with laughter and thoughtful reflections. Unfortunately, some of their parents (who happened to be my supervisors) did not. Within 24 hours I was unequivocally informed that I had lost my job.

As I am processing strong feelings of grief, anger, and hurt, I want to share what happened, and do so as honestly as I can. I am moved to speak my truth and take action out of love for all of the people involved in this situation, and especially on behalf of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who are being killed as I write this. I wish no harm upon anyone. I want to embody peace toward all people in this moment, and I am writing with the goal of practicing peace.

For me, the story begins in the summer of 2017, when my new supervisor at Lev Learning, the religious school at Makom Solel-Lakeside in Highland Park, IL, first gave me a copy of Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar by Alan Morinis, a book that would radically shape my life from that point on. The book introduced me to Mussar, a philosophical tradition of Jewish ethics that formed the basis of a historic movement in 19th century Lithuania, until the rich schools of thought and practice it engendered were almost entirely wiped out in the Holocaust. Now, a new, modern revival of the movement is underway, in which people from a wide range of Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds are practicing Mussar. In Everyday Holiness, Morinis offers a practical methodology for creating a self-directed spiritual discipline using Jewish tools and concepts for living an ethical life and improving oneself in an ongoing, systematic way. Recognizing that the book was not just meant to be read, but to be applied, I immediately put it into use and have maintained an ever-deepening Mussar practice since.

With encouragement and support from my supervisor, I increasingly integrated Mussar frameworks into my approach to faith-based education with middle and high school students at both of my religious teaching jobs (first at Makom Solel-Lakeside and then at the interfaith Family School in Chicago, where I teach 8th graders). I have found that Mussar integrates easily into a critical pedagogy framework of teaching for liberation, which is how I approach my educational work. Indeed, the purpose of Mussar has always been traditionally understood to be not just individual transformation, but, through the process of bettering ourselves, to make a better world. Through regular self-reflection, we can identify ways in which our own struggles to live ethical lives reflect larger collective struggles to build an ethical society, and we can learn to bring greater conscious awareness and attention to where our own self-development meets the work of tikkun olam (repairing the world). The concepts and methods of Mussar are also meant to be applied intentionally for specific individuals and groups in specific times and places, not mechanically presented as abstract truths or timeless exercises. In these ways, I have found that Mussar itself inherently contains an authentic Jewish critical pedagogical tradition, something I consider to be among the greatest treasures of our inheritance as Jewish people.

As two years of teaching at the school went by, my new boss became my friend. Schedule changes at the school prevented me from continuing to work there for a few years, but then, last summer, my friend/former boss and I happened to run into each other at a show in which our mutual friend (who also teaches at the school) was performing. We connected in the lobby, both of us eager to talk, mostly about Mussar, and with great enthusiasm. We sat next to each other during the show and connected further afterwards. She told me that she might soon be looking for a teacher for a new iteration of the school's teen program, which would meet on Sundays. I told her I would be interested in coming back. It felt like a bashert reconnection to both of us – right on time.

At the beginning of this school year, we worked together to create a Mussar-inspired set of monthly values to implement across the whole school. For my position as instructor of the newly-revived teen program (with students ranging from 8th to 10th grade), I created an in-depth Mussar curriculum breaking the calendar into weekly prompts in a workbook to be distributed to the students, and this curriculum formed the basis not only for Mussar-inspired exercises and reflections, but for regular explorations of ethics in our daily lives, Jewish holidays, social justice issues, and more.

The congregation has a proud history of participation in the Civil Rights movement, and in social justice struggles broadly, and part of why my boss had hired me was because she thought my work fit in well with that part of the school's identity and mission. It was also because this is a difficult job in the sense that the older students are generally not very interested in religion and can be hard to engage and retain in the program. I appreciated her trust and felt committed to bringing my full attention, philosophical integrity, and skillset to the job.

Following October 7th, I knew that carrying on my work at Lev Learning would be an extremely difficult and sensitive endeavor, as several families in our congregation and school community, including my supervisor’s, mourned the loss of friends or relatives killed in Israel on that day, while some waited in horror for updates about people in their communities who had been among the hundreds taken hostage. For many Jews, still shaken from the unresolved historical trauma of the Holocaust, which gets re-triggered with every incident of rising right-wing antisemitism, this moment in history has activated deep, existential terror and real fears of the threat of elimination as a people. 

I carried on my work in coordination with school-wide guidelines and trauma-informed practices to help the students navigate the shock and horror of the unfolding events in a safe community space. I was encouraged and genuinely moved by my supervisor’s initial school-wide email, in which she used our value of the month, “awareness,” to frame these powerful words to our community on October 13th:

Our tradition teaches the value of eilu v'eilu, "both these and these," reminding us that we can hold multiple truths at one time. We can disagree with the Israeli government and love the Israeli people. We can despise terrorism and also grieve for the destruction in Gaza. We can feel anger so deeply that we barely recognize ourselves, and we can also return to love, remembering that the Divine spark within each one of us continues to burn brightly. It is only in holding space for one another, in meeting each other in our pain, that we can begin to heal the fragmented heart. May we stay aware, may we remember the beautiful innocent lives lost this week, and may we continue to work for an abundant, enduring peace, far away as it may seem.

And, while nothing could have prepared me for those first few days or weeks (or anything since then), I knew from working with teens for over 12 years how to hold space for students to share their views and opinions without introducing my own, even as I was troubled by the lack of understanding or empathy for Palestinians I perceived in the school environment as a whole. I carried on my lessons, guided by my best judgment of how our Mussar curriculum could be applied to themes and tensions in the students' everyday lives, as individuals and as members of our Jewish community.

Later in October, amid widespread fears of rising antisemitism, and as our middah (or value) of the month was still “awareness,” I taught a lesson on the history of antisemitism using Aurora Levins Morales' useful framework for understanding the specific, persistent function of anti-Jewish propaganda in maintaining ruling class power. I wanted to help equip the students with a historical understanding of what antisemitism is so that they could better navigate the escalating political climate and the reports of rising antisemitism around the country and world, while drawing their own conclusions about claims of antisemitism leveraged against critics of the Israeli government. The students, who, as far as I could tell, are not often given opportunities to dive deeply into concepts around economic class, were able to not only grasp the challenging ideas I was presenting, but also to bring in their own knowledge, connections, and responses as they engaged with the lesson.

After class, I ran into my boss in the hall. Even though she did not require me to report on my lessons before or after my class sessions, I wanted to let her know what I had talked about with the students (in part because her son was in my class, and I knew it had been a heavy load of thought-provoking and challenging content, so I wanted to give her a sense of what we had covered). It was also my way of checking in with her in person for the first time since 10/7.

We both knew that we held very different personal positions on the issue of Israel and Palestine, as well as vastly different professional positions within the wider social context. I am one of two cantorial soloists on staff at Tzedek Chicago, an openly anti-zionist Jewish congregation founded on core values of justice, equity, and solidarity. She directs a religious school at a congregation that, like so many Jewish institutions in the U.S., celebrates support for Israel as a central part of Jewish life.

During that conversation, my boss took the opportunity to draw a couple clear boundaries with me for my teaching and discussing topics related to Israel and Palestine at Lev Learning: 1) I was not to indicate or suggest to the students that Israel's attacks on Gaza constituted genocide, and 2) I was not to compare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general to European colonization in the Americas or elsewhere in the world. I acknowledged and agreed to these boundaries. Though I personally believed these policies to be misguided and harmful, I hoped I could still do more good than harm within my role in this community as an educator. I also understood that, while I had only agreed to two explicit boundaries, those boundaries implied and hinted at a wide range of others, and that I would have to find ways of pushing against these implicit boundaries in order to stay within my integrity.

Over the next excruciating three months, I accepted that, at least within this institution, the scope of my work to teach young people how to think critically about the unfolding situation in Gaza and the rapidly changing world around them was very limited. But that didn't stop me from digging into our Mussar curriculum with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, all the while constantly compartmentalizing my emotions and swallowing my dismay over the normative culture of silence that characterized the environment these young people had to learn in, a toxic culture in which Israeli militarism is widely celebrated and any serious discussion of the human rights of Palestinians is implicitly off limits. Every week I removed my kufiyeh and pins from my body and backpack in my car before entering the school. As our class time started with a lunch break at which pizza was served, I never mentioned to anyone that I was fasting on Sundays as part of the Jewish Fast for Gaza. I quietly co-facilitated my class' participation in school-wide activities like writing letters of support to Israeli armed forces. I kept my mouth shut during a guest presentation from a former IDF soldier. Meanwhile, I kept checking in with my students week after week about their personal goals and progress as we worked to cultivate values assigned to each passing month: awareness (October), gratitude (November), courage (December), and awe (January). Over time, I noticed a marked growth in their maturity and capacity for sustained serious and honest conversation on a wide range of topics, personal and political. We sometimes oscillated between silliness and seriousness, but over time they showed me through their actions that they wanted to help create a culture where we could discuss real world topics honestly, even when it was challenging. They appreciated the trust I placed in them, and over time I earned more and more of their trust in return.

Then, on January 28th (two days after the provisional ICJ ruling finding plausible evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza), after a discussion and exercise in yirah (awe/fear of God), I offered my students some choices for how to use the last 20 minutes of our class time. Because we were about to begin a month of exploring emet or “truth,” I offered to share with them a Palestinian voice as an exercise in facing someone else's truth when it might be challenging to their own, and helping them to develop their capacity for holding complex truth. They readily accepted the challenge. I offered to show them a visual artist currently creating work in Gaza amidst the destruction or to listen to a Palestinian comedian talk about censorship around Palestine and Israel. Unsurprisingly, they chose the comedian, noting that the message might go down easier (a rationale that I found both wise and fittingly Jewish).

I shared with them this 9-minute YouTube video by Sammy Obeid, titled “Comedian on Palestinian Censorship.” I had reviewed several of Sammy Obeid's videos in preparation for this exercise and had specifically chosen this one for many reasons. Overall, I determined it to be the only video by the comedian that was fully appropriate for the context (despite the fact that the curse words are not bleeped out in this one, whereas in other videos they are). Most people I know who have seen this video have found it to be quite nuanced and empathetic, especially in its explicit defense of the basic moral decency of the majority of Jews who identify with Zionism. And, while many other Sammy Obeid videos would have clearly violated the boundaries I had agreed to, I concluded that this one was within the bounds I had promised to keep (though of course I knew I might be risking my job anyway).

In the video, Obeid explains why is he actively calling for a ceasefire (“because I suffer from this condition called empathy”) as well as the return of all hostages (both “the Israeli hostages” and “the thousands of Palestinian hostages”), and then pivots to discussing the controversy and censorship of the phrase “from the river to the sea.” He spends most of the video making a case for why this phrase should be understood and discussed with nuance and empathy, acknowledging that it has been used by both Palestinians calling for the dissolution of Israel as well as by Israelis calling for the dissolution of Palestine (here he references the original 1977 Likud manifesto that formed the ideological platform of the right-wing party). He argues that just as most Jews who identify with Zionism don’t want to actively harm Palestinians, but just want sovereignty and freedom, so most Palestinians who use the phrase “from the river to the sea” don’t want to actively harm Israelis, but also just want sovereignty and freedom. 

While I knew that the video would be full of triggering words and ideas, I also knew that it was nothing the students couldn't handle. In fact, I was sure they would appreciate it and find it funny, which they did. They laughed throughout, and then shared insightful reflections. They appreciated the comedian's intelligence and nuanced takes on the topics he discussed. They commented on the clarity they gained through listening to his explanations of these complex issues. They remarked on how difficult it can be to discern truths in a world where so much of our media is so often one-sided, biased, and designed not to inform but to manipulate us. The truth is, the students didn't need much context from me to appreciate this video. They understood why I was showing it to them. They could feel that I was authentically engaging them in an honest discussion of the concept of “truth” in their lives. They seemed grateful for the experience.

Later that day, I received a call from my boss. She was angry. She had heard about the video first from her colleague, another supervisor of mine whose child was also in my class. He had watched the video and expressed concern to her about it. At this point she had actually only watched the first 10 seconds of the video and was already deeply upset, feeling that I had betrayed her trust (because, in the first 10 seconds, Obeid refers to the name “Palestine” as “the colonial name”). She asked me for an explanation as to how I could possibly have felt that this content was appropriate in the context of the curriculum I was teaching. Without overtly saying so, she made it clear to me that my job was on the line. She asked me for my opinion on whether she should even watch the rest of the video, or whether doing so would likely confirm her thinking that I was not a good fit for the school.

I gave her an honest, earnest, and thorough defense of my choice to introduce the video within the context of the curriculum. I explained how I had offered the students an authentic Mussar experience, giving them an exercise in contemplating the nature of truth by exposing them to a perspective that I knew they would not be likely to encounter otherwise, and how they had accepted the challenge and appreciated the experience. We talked for half an hour as I walked her through my logic in concluding that the video and lesson a) fell within the boundaries I had agreed to, b) demonstrated my approach to teaching critical thinking, and c) engaged the students in an urgent conversation about the value of truth in our Jewish community and broader society that they deserve to be brought into.

She countered that there was no need to bring up Israel and Palestine in talking about truth, or to risk pushing the boundaries to which I had agreed. She told me that she had taught Mussar for over a decade without ever bringing up the subject of Israel and Palestine. I told her that I couldn't ignore the obvious themes in the students' lives in my approach to Mussar, and specifically that I couldn't authentically talk about truth with the students in this moment while ignoring “the big lies” that are at the root of anti-Palestinian racism, which is so common in the world that these young people live in.

If I'm being honest, I wasn't my most eloquent on the phone with my boss. I did my best to offer what words I could, but I could hardly summon the energy for it. I could tell that this was most likely not going to work out. But even though I could sense that the chances of keeping my job were low, and even though I could have been more prepared for that conversation, I actually felt that the call went relatively well. We ended on a hopeful note for finding workable compromises to allow us to move forward together on a professional level, reaffirming our basic trust and mutual respect for each other as educators. I didn’t apologize for showing the video or giving the lesson I gave. And, even though I knew it might be the “nail in the coffin” for my job, I encouraged her to watch the rest of the video.

The next day, she called me back to let me know that I was no longer working at the school, effective immediately. She told me she had sought feedback from the synagogue's executive director, who had also watched the video. I asked if she had sought any feedback from the students in my teen program in making this decision. She said that she had, but hadn't received any meaningful input from them. She also said that sometimes adults have to make decisions for children in order to protect them, and that she didn't feel safe with me teaching the program anymore.

I was heartbroken. Not just for losing my only teaching job at a Jewish school, and not just for losing the connection to my students, but also for losing a friend. Of all the ironies in the situation, perhaps the most painful one for me personally is that it was my honest pursuit of Mussar itself, the spiritual path that she had introduced me to, which had now brought us to this point of a breakdown of trust in our relationship.

The most obvious irony is that I was censored for sharing a Palestinian voice talking about the censorship of Palestinian voices. I am certain this lesson will not be lost on the teens who were there. And of course, the real injustice here is not against me, but against them. They are the ones who are being hindered from having honest conversations about their own world. Who in this situation is really being protected, and from what? And how many students, teachers, parents, and other community members are not speaking about the compassion they feel for the slaughtered Palestinian lives for fear of retaliation? 

The most horrible irony is that this culture of silence is what allows the ongoing genocide in Gaza to continue every day in the name of preventing genocide. Until we as a Jewish community face this difficult truth, we will continue to reenact our historical trauma without integrating the real lessons our ancestors are begging us to learn.

Of course, this culture of silence goes well beyond the Jewish community, and my story is only a small example of the ongoing epidemic of censorship, thought policing, retaliation, and attacks on critical education in our times on a wide range of topics from Palestine specifically and colonialism in general to race, gender, climate, history, and more. 

Ultimately, history teaches us that you can never permanently prevent people from teaching or learning the truth, and Jewish tradition agrees. We are a people who teach our youngest children to ask questions around the passover table every year as we go through the ritual of retelling the ancient story of our liberation. This is our sacred responsibility: to teach our children to ask questions. This is how we pass on our stories in a way that allows the next generation to make those stories their own. And in this way, tradition stays alive. 

My prayer for my Jewish community is that we may let our hearts be broken wide open in this moment, enough to hear the voices of our ancestors as well as our children and future generations calling us to pay attention to what is happening in Gaza right now in the name of our safety. May we recognize that the idea that our own safety must come at the expense of others' safety is a dangerous lie, and stop telling it to ourselves and our children. And may we let ourselves see the truth that meaningful safety has always come from aligning ourselves with the pursuit of justice for all, from which flows lasting peace. May we honor our ancestors and heal our generational traumas by crossing the artificial borders that have been placed around us and joining in the calls from around the world for an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an end to the genocide of Palestinians.

As Jews, our very name “Hebrews” reminds us that we are boundary-crossers. Our biblical ancestor Jacob wrestled in his life and in his dreams, and the blessing he received was a new name, Yisrael, God-Wrestler. Like him, we are continually called to struggle with divine and human realities, facing changes as they emerge and shaping the outcomes with intention. Like our prophet Moses turning to look into the burning bush, we are called to hear the voice of the divine calling us to our part in a great story of redemption, as difficult as it may be to hear or to accept. Our tradition instructs us to remind ourselves to listen and to pay attention to that voice every morning when we rise and every night before we go to sleep as we say the Shema: “Hear, O Israel…”, “Listen, O God-Wrestlers…” Our central story of liberation, our millennia of experience surviving in the diaspora through solidarity with others, and our most holy name for God (which cannot be pronounced but suggests a poetic meaning like “becoming”) all remind us that our very existence continually moves us to seek liberation from narrow places, like water flowing, as it freely does, from the river to the sea.