This got me super emotional Jen. Did you hear the news about the Jews attacked over the weekend? There is much love in the world but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anti-Semitism as well. We can change things, be in the present and build a new future. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t connected to, impacted by and sometimes burdened by the atrocities in the past.
I’m so glad you wrote today because we have so much, as survivors, to learn from one another, to expand one another, to sensitize ourselves and one another and that creates less hate. I truly believe that. I can’t wait to hear more about what you are learning. Thanks for sharing. Your words touch me so deeply.
And what a heavy personal legacy you carry. I’m glad you are claiming your own identity and self. It’s sometimes easier, and even culturally and socially acceptable, to disown parts of ourselves. But what a high cost.
You are right to say we are the lucky ones! Thanks so much for writing!

But I don’t fit in. This discovery came to a head a few years ago, while still in my early 40s. I’m Jewish living on a planet that hates Jews. This, I uncovered one day when talking to a healer. “I don’t think people like Jews,” I said hesitantly, feeling shame at the thought that I was one. “They don’t,” he replied.

I’ve been studying Judaism for the past three weeks with a mentor and what I have discovered, uncovered, is that I am proud to be Jewish. I’m proud of my heritage, though it comes with colossal responsibility. My mother and grandparents were Holocaust survivors, though many other family members did not survive. This uncovering, this responsibility I now feel, is no different than that of any survivor, I believe. As survivors, we asked to take on this responsibility, to speak the truth, to survive in order to make change, help others, make the world a better place. The Torah, I have learned, encourages us on walk this path, to embrace the full human experience, the entrapment and enslavement, the range of emotions that bring us to our very soul.

I believe that we are the lucky ones here on this website, the ones who have taken the first steps to healing the truths of our past, the ones writing to process the many emotions that are still stuck from childhood abuse, the ones who are uncovering the beauty that is found in acknowledging that while our journeys may be difficult, they were carefully chosen just for us because we have even greater lessons to share.