This is So Hard

I'm still trying to deal with the reality of a pogrom in my lifetime, in my homeland. I'm gathering family history in an attempt to secure Israeli citizenship, and I see movement across Europe as a result of pogroms - in Germany, in Russia, in the Pale of Settlement. I read that both of my grandfathers escaped being drafted by the Czar - 12-year-old Jewish boys were forcefully removed from their families and kept for 25 years, the goal being to separate them from their religion. At 18, they were put into the army.

Although "pogrom" as a term for these events dates back to the early 19th Century in Odessa, I believe that the wiping out of Jewish villages along their path by the Crusaders certainly epitomized the same causeless violence.

Now we are back in our native land, after having been expelled and kept away for two thousand years. Not broadly accepted by the world and absolutely not by our neighbors, but living in relative security within our borders. Only to experience a vicious attack that has kept me away from televised news reports for almost three months. We march and rally and call and write and wear blue ribbons and send supplies and money. Some of us even go to Israel and take the place of young people called away from farms and stores to the front. We adopt names of hostages and of IDF soldiers and try to follow their fortunes.

Like everybody else, I just want to be left alone to live a peaceful life, for my children and grandchildren to have opportunity and not to have any reason to be afraid. I have never been able to wrap my brain around why this is so impossible. I don't hate Person A because he or she is a different color or political persuasion or religion or any other attribute from mine. Person A too was created in the image of God, and who is to say that only my ways are right and everything else is evil, subhuman, to be eradicated? I can't comprehend this - never have and never will.

Looking for hope with the unfolding of a new secular year. Wishing all of you to be surrounded by peace and joy and endless love.