registering dissent

The death toll in Gaza nears 400 as I sit here, with hundreds more critically injured and something like 1,000 wounded. This is the most devastating violence that the Palestinians have seen in 40 years.

Even as I write those words, I hear my father's voice. He is there, as he always is, with his anger rising and his conclusion incontrovertible. Of course Israel has the right to bomb, strafe, kill! The Arab nations would rather see all Jews pushed out of the Middle East and Israel wiped out of existence! This tiny nation is surrounded by hostile forces! Of course it is within the bounds of normalcy for Israel to defend itself! That's what he's saying.

He's also saying, near-shouting by now, why does the international community always point its finger at Israel, when so much violence and destruction has been directed at Israel by the Arabs, since the moment of its founding? Someday the world will wake up, he says, and see how wronged the Israelis have been, and how righteously they acted.

And he shakes his head in seething disbelief at the Jewish anti-occupationists and anti-Zionists in Israel and America. Self-hating Jews -- how can they turn against their own State, their own family? How can they align themselves with neo-Nazis, racists, people who equate Israel with Jews and want to eradicate both from this earth?

My father's voice scorns the depictions of olive groves being uprooted to make way for settlements; he decries the liberal media's portrayal of the Palestinian situation as poetic, poignant, when, in his mind, Palestinians as a people must be contained to ensure the survival of the Jews. Palestinian bloodlust justifies bloodletting of Palestinians by Israelis.

This is his voice. It is strong in my mind. I have long wrestled with it.

I remember being in high school and feeling that it was very important to have a position on this issue, just like it was important to have a position about abortion, the rainforest, and the existence of God. So I took my father's position. I was Bat Mitzvah in Israel, after all, and I had family there. And how could the Jews, the intellectual Jews, the successful Jews, the contributing Jews do anything wrong!

In college I studied abroad in Israel, moving along a corridor from Beer Sheva to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Sinai, marvelling at the young soldiers who polished their rifles sitting next to me on the bus. My world there was mostly filled with white people, but I did meet and talk with some Israeli Arabs in a seaside town called Akko. At a music festival there, on the roof of an ancient fort, I heard Palestinian music and stood in a crowd of young men and women who called out 'aiwa' as the Greeks might call 'opah.' Mostly, though, I stayed within the contours of the myth of Israel as I had always understood it.

Some of my close friends are deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement. One friend is a human rights attorney in Israel who works for justice on behalf of displaced Palestinians, another is a Reconstructionist Rabbi who has developed an anti-occupation education curriculum for religious schools, another writes missives for Moveon.org.

Over the years, and because of these friends, I have read, thought about, questioned deeply, struggled with Israel's aggressive actions, its systemic dehumanization of a populace, its violation of the basic human rights to food, water, medical care, livelihood for thousands of people living in what amounts to many-hundred-square-mile ghettos that are appended to Israel proper. I have turned over and over in my mind the shattering contradictions, the impossibility of reconciling the dream of Israel with the nightmare of Palestine, the truth that Arab nations support the destruction of Israel and the truth that Israel supports the destruction of Palestine.

As deeply as this situation has pained me as I have learned more and more about it, as many movies as I have watched and articles I have read and analyses I have considered, I have never been able to betray my father by taking a non-Zionist stance. Instead, I have done the discursive equivalent of throwing up my hands: it's not a black and white situation, I can't take sides, it's just a tragic situation and me speaking out about it one way or the other won't do anything.

Whenever we discuss it, my father and I, I choose my words with the utmost care. My main concern in those moments is keeping a smile on his face, that slight satisfied upturn of the corners of his mouth when I align with his views. At home last week, my mother asked me what I think about the situation in Israel. I couldn't answer her. I was unable to speak, unable to formulate a reply that would satisfy the censors who stand watch at the gate of my own mind.

And now, faced with the unassailable truth of the situation in Gaza, I find myself still rendered silent. There is a part of me that is pleased, even, in the face of this massacre, that I am keeping the small smile on the face of my father and so many others whom I love, whose own love for Israel blinds them entirely. I find myself inside a room and leaning against a locked door, a door that I have slammed on the wailing masses outside, relieved to be safe inside the room. The show must go on. The Jews must go on, at all costs. Otherwise, what would be left of us? Were these walls to crumble, this door to come off its hinges and fall to the floor, what -- who -- would save us from annihilation? NO ONE! my father shouts. No one would save us, so we have to save ourselves. Be silent, then, and turn your face away from the horror that ensues.

But I cannot. I cannot turn my face away. I have to look, to recognize. Selfishly, for the sake of my own humanity, my own realness, I have to enter the naked truth of this sweeping destruction. I have to acknowledge what torments the Jews are inflicting on the Palestinians, and what torments the Arab establishment inflicts in return. I have to bear witness to the ways that these cousins wound themselves, over and over again, mortally.

And I have to register my own dissent to this violence; I have to speak, to say that this is not in my name, this is not the door that I want the people of my faith to pass through on our search for sanctuary in a deadly world. I cannot stand by and swallow this great misery as if it were simply a bitter medicine to precipitate healing. No. There is no healing, no peace that can come from this. I refuse to accept that this is for the good.

I say no to the massacre of Gaza.

My words here travel out into the nothingness, reaching a handful of people, bringing no salve to the bleeding wounds of the people of Gaza. Were this to reach my father, it would simply anger him. No change can be wrought from the saying of these words. I say them, nonetheless, because I must.

"I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of anger because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound" ~ Hafiz

revisiting

I've been at home with my parents for the last week, in L.A. It has been, essentially, a film festival -- I think we've watched 5 or 6 (or maybe 7) videos, plus a few on cable late at night by myself (including "But I'm a Cheerleader," and boy oh boy did Clea Duvall's andro to Natasha Lyonne's femme give me a scandalous little shiver there in my parent's den). I've been sleeping hours upon hours every night, reading the paper all morning. My mom bought me a pink shirt today after we went for Japanese food. I made some fantastic latkes the other night -- Susie Bright has a recipe blog, did you know that? It's called "Suzie the Homebreaker" and I highly recommend her latke recipe.

Another thing I've been doing is sorting through all my old journals and letters. They're all still here, in the drawers of my childhood desk. I seem to have saved absolutely everything -- every note ever passed my way in pre-calculus, every errant scribbling of mine from my teens and early twenties. Paging through it all, I'm struck mainly by the state of deathly insecurity in which I have spent so many years of my life. My college scrawlings oscillate between a fear so pervasive I was almost paralyzed, and hope for a stronger self to emerge.

It is amazing to read, and so sad, too -- I grieve all of that lost time. What was I so afraid of? Why was I so full of condemnation for myself, for my every move? What's excellent, I guess, is being able to see it all in retrospect, and to see how far I've travelled since those years. But the feelings then were mostly along the scalp-tingling fear spectrum -- fearing the worst in terms of my personality, my loveability, my capacity to succeed in the world. I remember, both from reading my diary entries and from all the associated images that have come rushing back, how I would end up so many days and nights cowering away from the specter of my own terribleness. No high could erase that creeping dread.

I wish I could go back and talk to my trapped, tormented 21-year-old self. I wish I could tell her to loosen her grip a little bit; that she really is smart and talented enough to be at that big school with all those math-smart people; that it's okay to feel attracted to other girls. I wish I could somehow transmit to her that she is a precious light, a vital player in the community of life, beloved on this earth. She didn't know any of that then, but life was calling to her, however faintly it echoed in the darkness, and I wish I could have held her shoulders and whispered in her ear to listen, listen.

As I said, though, it has me marvelling at the journey. We are space travellers but we are also always reaching deeper in, brushing back the dust and debris from the essential qualities that glow through time. It is beautiful, to have a record of all my yearnings, because through it there runs a line, a thread, a vein of gold. I saw it back then, as bleak as I felt, and I wrote about it. And now I am running alongside it, faster and faster, flying along on the dream that this thin strand will take me to my place, take me home.

leap

You know that old adage about "when you take a leap of faith, either the ground will rise to meet your feet or you'll sprout wings?" Well, I think it's the wings that sprouted, because I feel like I'm flying.

This past week I had another intense fear-contraction. I decided to change my mind again and talk to my boss about staying on. I got all cold and clammy last weekend, thinking 'what the fuck am I doing, quitting my cushy job during Great Depression 2.0!' So I had a panicky few days of urgently trying to claw my way back up the birth canal. I want to stay in here where it's safe!

Fortunately for me, that wasn't how it turned out.

I just had a really wonderful conversation with my boss in which he enthusiastically agreed to keep me on board, in a paid part-time contract attorney position, to work solely on the apple moth case, whenever it's necessary. (He also told me he thinks of me as a daughter and wants me to follow my calling. Yes, he did!) And my amazing women's environmental network just two days ago got a really big grant, much of which can be used to fund my work.

So, um, okay! HERE GOES NOTHIN'!!!

over the edge

I'm leaving my job two weeks from Friday.

The fear claws at my solar plexus. What have I done?

I remember about a week after I had started this job, as an associate at a small public interest private law firm in downtown Oakland, that I had already started counting down the days until I was finished. At the moment, I was reading prior briefing in a California Environmental Quality Act suit, having to do with UC Berkeley's expansion plans; I was preparing to write the reply brief to the court of appeal. By all accounts, it was an important issue -- the classic town-and-gown dispute, the fate of downtown Berkeley's land use plans -- but to me it was the drudgery of the law. I thought, "I'll give it a year here."

In mid-winter and spring, my work was so dull it was physically painful. I spent about two months writing a terrible brief for a client who objected to the expansion of his neighbor, a fast food restaurant, because he was going to lose a few parking spaces. I remember being at my women's circle and asking to be held, needing the touch, the soothing. I crawled into the center of the circle, heaving a great sigh. I sobbed and sobbed. Meanwhile I was working feverishly to develop the Southwest project that just took place successfully in September. My health suffered; my hair started falling out in clumps. Through spring and summer I started cancelling my social plans, going into survival mode. I skipped all the festivals.

And then the apple moth came along. I'd heard about this issue in December or January, and brought it to the attention of my boss; it turned out that one of our clients was also interested in suing, so I was given free reign to do the research and write the complaint. It turns out that EPA actually made a pretty grievous error in purporting to exempt from normal registration processes the pesticide used for the aerial spray; I caught the error, and wrote a great complaint. After months and months, we finally filed it last Tuesday. To me, it felt like "mission accomplished!"

In June, I wrote an e-mail to a community list of which I'm a member, sharing my dilemma with them about whether or not to quit. I wrote: "there's a natural break in September, when I'll be doing some work in the Southwest for about three weeks, so it would be a full year here. When I feel into this possibility, I feel excited, scared, relieved, anxious, and doubtful. I'm not sure whether it's the right time for me to do this, I'm not sure whether I'd be making a huge mistake (i.e. my job isn't great, but it's not *that* bad, I'm getting paid, I can hang in there, I shouldn't abandon the moths, etc.) I'm secretly hoping that someone or something will tell me what I 'should' do; the deeper truth is that in my life I haven't cultivated a great deal of trust in myself to guide my life, since I've been doing (or attempting to do) what I 'should' do for such a long time."

Eventually, the quickening of the life-energy inside me moved me to decide to quit. I agonized and agonized down to the very last minute, but I finally gave notice in August, saying that I'd be working until the end of December. Pretty much immediately I went into a major fear contraction. What have I done? How could I leave my job, which isn't that bad, in the middle of a recession? What am I going to do instead?

That's the question my parents have always asked me. What would you be doing instead? I wasn't exactly forced to go to law school, but one could say that I found my father's strenuous recommendation that I go to be unopposable. And it was miserable, in a lot of ways, but I wouldn't trade it now for anything for the healing and strength and community and experience that it brought. In the midst of so much tearful suffering they said "what would you be doing instead?" And I could never answer that question with any kind of comforting specificity. There has never been anything more than a sense of the truth inside of me.

What would I be doing instead? It comes down to this: I'd be letting the life inside of me live. I'd let the truth about my life force, which is that it is not about conflict and adversariality, but instead about healing and collaboration and creativity, to emerge and be my guide. I've never done that before. I've been squelching and squashing and boxing it for a really long time; putting it aside in favor of what is the "right" thing to do. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but it is some combination of writing, advocacy, community weaving. All, ultimately, in service of the healing of the earth, our Mother Earth.

So I agonized and agonized some more. At my therapist's office I did a sand tray, and basically built an intuitive altar to the two choices I was facing. In one corner, a figurine of the goddess, in the other corner, a figurine of a postman. In the goddess' quadrant there was a red glass heart at the center of a circle of amber and green stones; there was a sand dollar, an angel, a spiraling shell. In the postman's quadrant there was a little girl riding a speedboat surrounded by paper money and fake pennies. Next to her stood a figurine of a woman doctor, an upstanding and powerful citizen. Between the two quadrants was a tree -- the driving force behind both energies -- and a roaring lion's head.

She took a polaroid of the array for me, and I called it "Confluence." I gazed into it like a crystal ball for several days, knowing that the movement of my heart and soul was towards the feminine quadrant, but feeling so much fear about stepping away from the masculine quadrant. Am I just a spoiled, lazy brat? Am I ridiculously naive for making this sort of decision? Who am I kidding?

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but finally, several weeks ago, the fog lifted and I found peace with the decision to walk towards the feminine and to leave my job. To leave the security, the prestige, and even the excitement of working on the apple moth case. To leave this thing that's not half-bad, that's really okay, that pays a good sum of money, that gets me by. To take a leap off the edge into the absolute unknown, hoping desperately that my wings will sprout or that the ground will rise to meet my steps.

I remember that I have done this before, and it has always led to something greater: when I was supposed to be in my third year of law school I took the fall semester off. It gave me time to rest and heal, and it allowed me to have a third summer. I got an internship at NRDC that summer, which was the best law job I've probably ever had. And last summer I was offered a prestigious job clerking for the Supreme Court of Colorado, a year-long position which would have started this fall. I agonized over that one, too, but finally realized that my heart was not at all in it. And then this current job came along, which has been nothing if not a learning experience.

And I pay attention to the fact that in the few months since I've made the decision to quit, my health has been rapidly improving. I've lost about 15 pounds; my whole relationship to food has changed. A weight has, literally, lifted.

And still the fear plagues me. What have I done? Time will tell. My fervent prayer is that I will be shown what is needed of me, how I am to give my life over to the Earth's healing. My fervent prayer is that even if this quitting, this leaping is a terrible and foolhardy mistake, that I will learn from it. That life will not mete out punishment instead of blessings because I have leapt so blindly. That if this is a mistake, it will give me the wisdom that I'll need in order to leap again and soar. And my fervent prayer is that it is not a mistake, that this is not a figment of my priveleged imagination; that there really is something to this powerful, pulsing, unformed call that is so indescribable, so subtle, and so wholly irresistable.

I am in a great and painful birth canal, and when I emerge nothing will be the same. This is what I have done; I have said 'yes' to being born.

May it be so,
may it be so,
may it be so.