An open letter to my Jewish authors

Dear Sisters,

I’m writing this open letter because I’m scared by this inflection point we’ve arrived at, one that implies or outright states that anyone who speaks against the war in Gaza is not a Jewish ally. Or that anyone who speaks out against the Israeli far-right government is antisemitic. What a bind we put ourselves in if these things are true.

This past week, Chuck Schumer gave a heartfelt speech on the Senate floor only to have his sentiments weaponized by our Right, Trump suggesting that any Jew who votes Democrat hates their religion. I haven’t been this upset by Trump’s rhetoric since his Muslim ban.

Last week on Facebook I broke my own silence. Schumer and I used similar language about the “silent majority.” Because outside of the echo chambers of social media, countless of us want safety and security for Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote that it’s never either/or. It’s always both/and. Several of you emailed me this week to say that you were worried you’d lost my allyship, that you were upset that I’d chosen a side. Both/and is not a side; we need to make so much more room in our discourse for both/and.

My Jewish allyship is unshakeable. My great-grandparents, Russian Jews, came to the States is the early 1900s by way of Ellis Island. The young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Wishnovitz, changed their name to Warner. They settled in New York and had three boys. The middle one, Milton, was my grandfather. When the boys were all under ten, their parents were killed in a trolley accident and the siblings were sent to a Jewish orphanage. I don’t know much about what happened inside the walls of that orphanage except that it was bad enough that my grandfather disavowed his religion and his Jewish heritage. His two brothers did not. My dad’s cousins and my second cousins grew up in the Jewish tradition. My dad, a product of his atheist father, found Christ in high school or early college. I grew up a preacher’s kid, Presbyterian specifically, but all my life I’ve felt the faint pulse of the Jewish collective. I cannot claim you, but I am of you.

In college, perhaps because of my own severed history, I minored in German history. I wrote about Nazi propaganda for my senior thesis. Dehumanization buoyed by propaganda carved a clear pathway to the mass violence that left holes in your families, that shaped who you would become, that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Thanks to the Internet and now deepfakes, those masters of misinformation had nothing on Putin and Netanyahu.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7, I felt your fear in my own bones. The first people in my thoughts were all of you, my beloved authors. I don’t have firm numbers, but I speculate that about half our entire list of 1000 authors is Jewish. Publishing is overwhelmingly Jewish. People of letters with whom I’ve been immersed my entire career. I sent an email of support to all of you, expressing my solidarity, my sadness, acknowledging your fear. A few of you wrote back to tell me I should have expressed solidarity and sadness and fear for both sides, but it was early days, and I didn’t understand what was coming. In the weeks that followed, I was focused on the horror unfolding here at home, the rise in antisemitism, the rhetoric of our extreme Left. Friends shared experiences their kids were having in high school and college, being maligned for being Jewish. Finger-pointing. Othering. Blame. This is intolerable and unacceptable.

By November, however, I was distraught by how the hostages were being used as justification for the indiscriminate war being waged, the countless children being killed, but still . . . I didn’t give voice to this for fear of alienating my Jewish friends and colleagues, for fear of alienating you. I watched on social media as some of my Jewish connections balked at the silence, but I said nothing because I didn’t know how to give voice to both/and.  

In the aftermath of the kidnappings on October 7, I obsessively followed the news of the hostages, refreshing my phone during Thanksgiving week to track their release, especially the babies. I could not stop thinking about those babies. More recently, in Gaza, a mother who struggled to get pregnant for years finally had twins. Her babies were killed by the reverberations of bombings on their little systems, the equivalent of shaken baby syndrome. I cannot stop thinking about this mother. Motherhood is the great equalizer. We all love our children as much as the next mother. In Gaza, 12,400 children are dead.

Sisters, whether we are mothers or not, we are holders of nuance. To see the shades of gray is to hold the both/and, and to allow others to occupy that space as well.

My both/and is that I support my Jewish community and condemn a war that has gone too far.

My both/and is that I want the state of Israel to survive Netanyahu and abhor a far-right leader who has every personal incentive to continue this war for his personal gain.

My both/and is that I understand that many Gazans voted for Hamas, a choice imposed on them by oppression, and this doesn’t mean they deserve what they’re getting.

My both/and is that the sexual violence that happened on October 7 was abhorrent and it doesn’t justify the ongoing war crimes unfolding every day in Gaza six months later.

My both/and is that Hamas’s continued holding of Israeli hostages is unacceptable and we need a permanent ceasefire.  

My both/and is that I am an ally to the Jewish people and I can say out loud that what’s happening in Gaza meets the definition of genocide.

This letter may upset you. If so, I’m sorry for that. But when my Jewish community tells me that I’m against them if I want a ceasefire, if I say the word “genocide,” I see red flags of propaganda that flame more vitriol on the far left and open up space for the far right to weaponize Jewish trauma. I also see an unreasonable ask, which is to value one group’s humanity and rights over another’s.

My dear friend Mark Nepo, a Jewish poet, teacher, and author, often speaks about the Chinese sage Seng-Ts’an who, no matter what his students asked, replied, “Not two, one.” It’s a koan, an orientation to the world: not either/or, but both. These words have been a lantern for me in recent weeks. Not two, one. We have a long ways to go, and maybe we’ll never get there, but the work of repair starts with honest conversation.

Sisters, I love you. I love the Jewish people without condition. I am of you and with you, but I am not with Netanyahu or the state of Israel unconditionally, just as I have not in the past been with Trump or America unconditionally.

May we get through this together.

Yours,
Brooke