By Barrett Holman Leak
Barrett Holman Leak
SAN DIEGO — Jewish students at UCLA are physically blocked from attending classes by Palestinian activists. Jewish students at SDSU must be escorted to and from classes in the face of antisemitic chants and threats. Palestinian protesters on American campuses burn the American flag and hoist the Palestinian flag over U.S. college and university buildings.
Palestinian activists who have been banned in Germany for antisemitism speak boldly at a university rally in New York City in favor of Palestinian “resistance,” which in their view includes open promotion for the terrorist group Hamas.
Jewish college students flee campuses in fear for their lives as the anger and fear is spread exponentially by TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. One of the leaders of a campus protest group calls repeatedly for the death of Jews – “All Zionists must die!” The TV and social media are filled with videos of the Palestinians and their supporters violently smashing glass and breaking down door in order to violently trespass into a university building, barricade themselves inside and then demand “humanitarian aid” – food and beverages and ease of way for gig delivery services to bring it to them.
Then it is announced that Tanoreen Restaurant & Catering, a Palestinian restaurant in Bay Ridge New York, is preparing food to send to the activists who invaded and created settlements on the campus and then escalated by violently breaking into buildings.
The surge of antisemitic violence and intimidation targeting American Jews in recent times inflicts deep wounds that resonate far beyond individual experiences and the current daily occurrences.
The Past is Present
Each act of violence, every threat, and every vandalized building, mass demonstration and blockade serve as a painful reminders of the historical traumas – repeatedly being exiled and displaced from the homeland of Israel (i.e. Babylonian, Roman, Ottoman) for thousands of years, the deadly pogroms of rape and murder by Russia and Europe and the most well known, the Holocaust — endured by Jewish communities throughout the ages. From the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the horrors of the Holocaust, the specter of persecution looms large in the collective memory of the Jewish people. The resurgence of antisemitism in the present day reopens old wounds, stirring up ancestral traumas.
The streets and urban campuses of New York City and the aisles of San Diego convenience stores and cultural lawn program spaces are now the new intimidating battlegrounds where Jewish individuals are forced on a daily basis to confront the undeniable reality of hatred and bigotry.
Intergenerational Trauma
This constant threat to one’s safety simply for being Jewish evokes a profound sense of existential terror; It also pushes a human being into a persistent “ fight or flight mode” where one’s body, mind and spirit are never at peace.
Furthermore, the targeted nature of these current attacks, solely based on one’s Jewish ethnic and/or religious identity, reinforces a sense of otherness and vulnerability within the Jewish community. Moreover, the widespread nature of these incidents, coupled with the virulent rhetoric propagated by antisemitic protesters, creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear and insecurity. Jewish people are left to grapple with the unsettling realization that nowhere is truly safe, that even the most familiar of spaces can become sites of violence and intimidation. This fresh pain and pervasive sense of vulnerability seeps into the collective consciousness of the Jewish community, compounding the intergenerational trauma already borne from centuries of persecution and discrimination.
Bringing Relief
On a weekly basis, I walk for an hour with a group to remind the public of the Israelis and others taken hostage on October 7, 2023 during the terror attack by Hamas. When there is a vigil, I am there. When there is a program related to our Jewish community and dealing with the hatred we are facing, I am there.
But here and there I take a break. I realized last November how the anger, fear, frustration, pain, sorrow, grief and sometimes misplaced emotions and infighting, could be overwhelming. Clarity came in December through realizing that while I was unable to go on a solidarity trip to Israel, I could use 1) my background in crisis counseling and in sexual trauma care and 2) my professional skills as an author and a former journalist to help. So I decided to intentionally pull back every so often and take care of myself; I also created an online course (Heal The Hate: Antisemitism and Jewish Self-Care) and shared it with several people.
Self-care is one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself – and allow others to do for themselves, as we in the American Jewish community stand in solidarity and face unexpected violence on our own front yard from people supporting or connected to the attack on Israel.
In a war, one of the standard practices is to rotate troops out every so often so they can take a break from the warfare before it breaks them. They can return to the fight refreshed and able to better do whatever needs to be done. It is the same with self-care for those of us in the United States of America, in the San Diego Jewish community.
Self-care comes in many forms – spiritual, physical, mental and emotional. Self-care means having compassion for yourself to the extent that you take a break from having to stand strong and acknowledge how it is affecting you. For example, you can welcome Shabbat on a Friday, opening 25-48 hours of focused solely on allowing yourself to sleep, eat a good meal, go to Torah study, sit on the beach, read a good book, take long walk, have a conversation with a friend or spend time with your family, just laughing. Just as intergenerational trauma and any sustained trauma can affect you to your core – even to the point of changing your DNA (as scientists have learned), self-care can help to heal the wound.
Take care of yourself. Self-care is the best form of resistance we in the Jewish community can practice.
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Barrett Holman Leak is an author, educator and community organizer. She works as a children’s book author and substitute teacher . She is a former director of an intercultural non-profit organization and a recent graduate of the Pauline Foster Women’s Leadership Institute in Jewish Federation of San Diego.
