Taking Sides- Is it Possible? Grappling with My Different Identities and Experiences and How Current Events Stir Everything Up...Again...

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

(Click below for the audio file.)

(Note: this piece only attempts to describe my personal experiences and does not offer a solution or express an opinion about the Israeli-Hamas conflict.)

I had just dropped my son off at his Sunday morning basketball practice. I started to think about the week ahead, including a plan to catch up with my friend. We hadn’t talked in a few months and I knew there would be too much to talk about it one call, even though our conversations can often extend for hours! 

The topic of the Israeli-Hamas conflict popped into my head. And I imagined that I’d want to talk first about that. It felt like I needed some processing about the issue with a trusted safe friend. And I knew that I would need to get through the clouded feelings I’ve been having about this issue, before I could be more fully present for the other things I couldn’t wait to talk to her about. And then I imagined what it was that I really wanted to share with her. And the thought/feeling: “this has been really challenging for me”, came to mind. And the tears started to well. 

Last week I had been wanting to talk to like-minded friends to try and sort it out, but those conversations never availed themselves. But in that moment when I imagined talking to my dear friend, I realized the sorting I needed wasn’t in my head, but my heart.

I didn’t want to talk to someone to analyze the events, I needed to talk to someone to allow the feelings. 

And when that truth exposed itself through that seemingly random thought coming to a stop-light on my drive home from dropping my son off, I got some clarity on what’s really been bothering me: feeling that I must chose a side. This feeling of “choosing a side” has been a bit of a life-long challenge for me especially when it comes to religion/faith. I write more about that in my “Jesus and the Matzah” piece.

The questions of identity: “where do I belong?” “How do I acknowledge ALL of me?” “How can I be BOTH/AND, instead of “either/or”?

These questions have been part of my experience being born into a family of mixed decent. Additionally, I have had personal experiences as I got older that have since added another component into my purview from which I seek my inner truths, especially when outside information is so confusing and multilayered. 

For example, in another piece “Billows of Smoke and Blue Sky: My Own 9/11 Story,” I mention how I had lived in an island, Pemba-Zanzibar, off of Tanzania for a total of  1 1/2 years. What I did not explain in that story was that Pemba’s population was about 95% Muslim. Living there, I really got to experience and know some beautiful things about the religion. 

There’s the call to prayer 5 times a day when everyone stops doing whatever activity they are engaged in, and intentionally comes together as a community in gratitude. Many Muslims carry prayer beads reminding them of the 99 “beautiful names of Allah/God.” Even everyday, every.time.I.saw.someone walking around in Pemba, I was greeted with: “As-salaam alaikum” (peace be with you) and I responded: “Wa-alaikum as-salaam” (and peace unto you). 

It was the first time that I felt a truly positive feeling towards religion because everyone seemed to be in community with each other. 

When there were friends or family members that hadn’t eaten, they were always welcomed to have some coconut rice with beans or pilau or some fish caught that day. Or just some mkate (bread) and chai na maziwa (tea and milk). Even as a total outsider, I was welcomed with what felt like genuine open arms- not like a foreigner but a visiting friend. This might have been a reflection of the people themselves, but with Islam so much a part of their every day life, it would be hard to separate out the two. 

Indeed, once I had returned to NY, I went to a large Mosque in Manhattan, and the diversity of people that came together to pray in that one large room was truly awe inspiring. I had never been to a religious service where there was literally a rainbow of people- in shades of skin color, in ages, and in languages spoken. It truly reminded of what I had read in Malcolm X’s recounting of his eye-opening visit to Mecca. There was a unity I hadn’t experienced before. 

When I left that Mosque it felt like everything was right in the world.

And then 9/11 happened about two weeks after that Mosque visit, and after about three weeks from when I returned home from Pemba, the most peaceful religious community I had experienced. And then suddenly everyone was attacking Islam because the hijackers had said they were Muslim. Muslims and Islam became the enemy to target and feel threatened by.

Such a contrast to what I had experienced. And because of my own experience, I knew that even though they claimed to be Muslim, these criminals had gone rogue in their expression of the true form of Islam. I knew much of what was said was wrong because I had experienced a different truth.

And maybe that’s the thing—we each have our own truths. We have our own VERY personal experiences that shape our heart and our mind to what we hold to be dearest in our lives. 

In my personal experiences with religion and faiths I haven’t had the luxury of picking one side. Because if I had decided to pick one side, I would be denying a whole other part of myself and many loved ones. In my current religious practice, as a Christian- but really more so I consider myself a follower of Jesus (because of how often “Christianity” has become so misused), I include other spiritual practices to feel fully embodied with God, the One, the Source. 

As such, Judaism is a part of me, my family, my ancestral heritage. I love how the religious holidays mirror the seasons and the cycles of the moon. I love the structure in which it gives guidance for how best to experience life events including how to handle death and the mourning process. Expressing myself in Yiddish has always been freeing—the words (like its German mother tongue) convey meaning and a feeling at once. I proudly display a 1974 edition of the book, “The Joy of Yiddish” on my bookshelf.

Islam became the opportunity, as I mentioned before, to experience that communal sense of Unity and Oneness that I feel is the basis of our collective humanity. And in recent years, it is Buddhism that has taught me the “how” in how to “be still and know that I am God”. Learning how to “be still” and surrender is truly a practice, and one that has allowed me to hear and trust God more. 

My sense of what I know to be true about all religions at their foundation rolled off my tongue the other week. My husband and I were talking with a Christian pastor after church. We were in a fairly balanced conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After a discussion about how the media often focuses on taking sides instead of stories where both communities have come together, the pastor said: “Well, as a Christian I believe in choosing love.” And I said, “well actually at the heart of Judaism is love, at the heart of Islam is love, and Buddhism too.” 

So now as I reflect more on the current situation, and my heart breaks hearing about the carnage and how many Palestinian’s have been killed, I also think of my dear cousin whom we both lived together at our grandmother’s for a time, is in Israel right now. His immediate family is okay, but his wife’s first cousin, who lives on the southern border, has gone to 14 funerals with many wives and children missing in attendance because they were taken hostage. 

As I grapple with how to honor the deeply conflicting parts of this conflict, my mind reflects back to times when I have thought about my Jewish identity during other confusing- multilayered experiences I’ve had over the years.

When I was 17, I went to Germany with my YMCA camp for 3 weeks with American, German and Russian campers. When I traveled there, I chose to use one of my middle names, instead of my official last name, Goldberg, because I didn’t want to be treated differently. I wasn’t necessarily nervous about my safety but I didn’t want to stick out.

I remember however still feeling a bit “other” when certain conversations came up or when we visited a memorial site at Dachau, a concentration camp during WWII. When we went to the site of a Jewish cemetery, for example, noone understood why there were rocks or pebbles on the gravestones. Without giving away my identity, I explained the meaning and insisted that they leave the stones where they were instead of tossing them at each other. 

In 2016 when we then moved to Germany for my husband’s job, twenty-five years later, I somehow felt free to use my full name. I felt free to use my full name almost as a honor, this time, but I was always very aware of my Jewish heritage. Thinking and feeling into all the stories I had heard or read about or watched in a movie, it felt so surreal to feel safe and actually feel at home for the 4 years we lived there. In fact, inspired by similarly shaped bread in the local German bakeries, the first time I made Challah, a traditional Jewish bread, was when we lived in Germany. (I tell that story here: “Recipe-ing Through Time and Dough.”)

When I first told two of my closest German friends about my Jewish heritage, they both came to tears in sadness and remorse for what had happened to my relatives and to the Jewish people during the war.

Being able to live feeling so connected to the people and the land (during my long walks and hikes in the woods) often felt like a healing that I hadn’t planned for or knew was possible; that inner peace I felt, I know was real.

Sometimes, though, I can feel an inner conflict when I have this sense of peace while others are telling me I should be angry or mad about a particular issue. And then I feel guilty as if my lack of rage is somehow reflecting how much I care about something. That contradiction can make me question my beliefs and sense of identity, especially when current events become too overwhelming to digest.

So I do what I’ve learned to do to get back to my grounded true self. I talk it out with safe friends and family, I get real with myself about what’s the most troubling aspect of the situation, and I journal about what I’m feeling and thinking. In the end there aren’t solutions, but there is some clarity about my deepest values- and then a real sense of Peace comes over me.

As I have gone through these identity struggles, often grappling with this notion that I need to be one or the other, or agree with one side or other, I am also very aware as a parent the importance of having these transparent and honest conversations with my two teenagers.

As much as I have had to struggle with my mixed identity, I know there will be times when my son and daughter will also struggle, for even different reasons, as my husband/their dad is African-American. I talk to them about how although I don’t have the answer, here are some feelings you might have. You might feel confused at times, and feel like you need to take a side. I talk to them about being okay with celebrating both sides of themselves in whichever way feels authentic at the time. 

At the end of the conversation, I try and bring them back to that place where they don’t EVER have to decide. And that is the place of Love, being a child of God- within the Universe where they are just human beings trying to do the best they can with what they have. In that grounded, open place there is still only a place of One.