Teshuvah

6 Minute Read

It’s been a while since I have written anything for the sake of writing - for catharsis.
Not because I had nothing to say, necessarily, but because I no longer knew who I was saying it to.
When I last wrote something of substance, not to imply this is substantial, I had emerged from graduate school fresh from my thesis, from a summer with my Hebrew language cohort, and from a winter spent in Israel and Palestine. I had been spoiled by intellectual discourse, social engagement, and overwhelmed with political ideology and action.
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Then I came home. And slowly, I stopped.
No more evening lectures. No more campus visits.
The news faded into background noise. Books gathered dust.
When I did read, I traded Finkelstein for fantasy.

Only now do I recognize it for what it was: burnout.
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Imagine that.
I took a 5-year tour inside the world of Israel and Palestine.
I absorbed as much as I could from the Jewish diaspora, sought to understand the conflict from academia and from the land itself, immersed myself in the religions, languages, and cultures…

And then I burned out.

I stopped going to Temple in Austin.
I stopped reading Arabic and Hebrew news and I let my skill set diminish.
I didn’t respond to social justice emails or meetups.

And I stopped writing.

I stepped back from everything because I could.
I was not truly of that world, so I no longer needed to stay and be emotionally drained by its tumult.
Their fight wasn’t my fight.
Their struggles didn’t directly affect me.
I was raised as a WASP from the southern U.S. I had only been visiting their reality and could escape and hide in mine anytime I wanted to.

So I did.
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Then, October 7th happened.

It pinged on my radar, but I still wasn’t able to return.
It was still all too much, and I didn’t feel it was my place to vocalize my position.
I was not Jewish.
I was not Israeli.
I was not Muslim.
I was not Palestinian.
I was not Arab.
I was not a refugee.
I was no one involved.
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So what changed? Why am I writing now? What does return even mean?

I was raised religious.
I grew up in church, I read the Bible regularly, attended vacation bible school, got baptised, read Matthew at Christmas; the whole nine yards.
Realizing I was a lesbian when I was a young teenager divorced me from my Christian faith.
I joined the Army at 20 and deployed to Iraq in 2004.
I was awestruck being in Babylon and seeing cities and towns I had grown up reading about in the Bible.
I no longer had a belief in Christian faith, but I still had a yearning for something I didn’t quite understand.
When I left the military, I enrolled in college and studied history, philosophy, and religion with a focus on Islam and Judaism.
I began to study Arabic and became a member of my school’s Secular Student Alliance chapter.
This was also when I was introduced to the Free Palestine movement and Jewish Voice for Peace.

I joined them.

In graduate school, my perspective of the region broadened.
I continued to study Arabic and added Hebrew, I read Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein, I even had a brief email exchange with Noam Chomsky.
I pursued any material related to the Nakba, Zionism, and Jewish colonialism and terrorism.
To this day, I strongly recommend everyone read “O Jerusalem!” by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins.
When I graduated, I went to Israel and Palestine for several months.

I saw what I had studied. I lived it.

And it broke me open so thoroughly, I had to walk away from it all.
Writing became impossible. Thought became heavy.
It was an absolute paradigm shift that required (apparently) years of processing.
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Now, I have processed much of it.

Not yet all, but enough to pick up the pieces and begin to rebuild on the foundation I established.
I am converting to Judaism presently.
I attend a Reform Temple regularly, participate in weekly Torah study, and observe holidays and Shabbat to the extent I can as a working professional.
I follow the news closely, American and Israeli, and have begun to reimmerse myself in Jewish culture and history more deeply than ever before.

Where once my wrist bore a “Free Palestine” bracelet, now it bears “Am Yisrael Chai.”
I have decided that I do not want to hide anymore.
I want to be a very active part of the world I once hid from.

Why?

נַחְפְּשָׂ֤ה דְרָכֵ֙ינוּ֙ וְֽנַחְקֹ֔רָה וְנָשׁ֖וּבָה עַד־יְהֹוָֽה
“Let us examine our ways, scrutinize them, and return to God.” – Lamentations 3:40

Maybe I found God again?
Maybe I never lost Him.
I am not sure. I am still rebuilding.
But I know that I am not meant to hide away and ignore what is happening in Israel and Palestine.

I can’t anymore.

I left the land,
but it is not an exaggeration to state that the land never left me,
and there is absolutely nothing I can do to deny that reality.
Believe me, I tried.
So, I will conclude this piece with a peaceful feeling because I am writing again.
Perhaps I will have more to say about my conversion process and my politics, but not today.

Teshuvah. I have returned, and that is enough for now.