From an Ordinary Jew

Welcome to My Substack

Before October 7, no one would have mistaken me for an activist. I am a New York commercial real estate lawyer. A wife. A mother. A respectable member of American society. Neither noteworthy nor entirely forgettable.

And then it happened. The images began to trickle in.

First the disjointed images, from news agencies, before and after pictures on social media. Before: beautiful, vibrant, dancing young teenagers; faces filled with joy, unaware that moments later their lives would be ended or forever changed. Unaware, as I was, that an unimaginable blackness was around the bushes about to change us all.

Then those next images- faces of alarm as they realized this was not “just” another missile attack, such a common occurrence in that part of the country. The images as realization hit their faces that this was far worse.

Then the images of the terrorists, their guns pointed. Video, photos, audio, WhatsApp messages: the running. The screaming. The pleading met by laughter. And then the broken bodies. Each image, more shocking. Shani Louk’s broken, half naked body being spit upon, jeered at by crowds of Palestinians. Kibbutzim burned; the smell of the burning bodies seeming to emit from my social media feed.

Over many days I learned what we all learned: in the early morning of October 7, 2023, terrorists invaded Israel's internationally recognized borders. 1,200 dead. But to them, murder was not enough: they tortured, they mutilated, they decapitated and they burned alive- women, children and babies. They brutally gang raped women and little girls literally to death. And then kept passing the corpses… one to another. They dragged 250 human beings over the border into the darkness of Gaza. Then they continued their visual horror show with chilling videos of gaunt and terrified hostages reciting whatever their captors forced them to say, often soon murdered anyway.

My brain could not process the incomprehensible. Sobbing and breathless, I was useless. But before I could even catch my breath, the very next day on October 8, a well coordinated pro-Hamas response unfolded. I was unprepared. The antisemitic malice, the chorus of hatred directed straight at Israel and the Jews- at my people, at my community, at my family, at me. And of course they didn’t come only from Muslim extremists. They came from university students and faculty from the most elite places of higher education. They came from the Western mainstream media and of course, they came from the United Nations, who never misses an opportunity to degrade and isolate the Jewish state.

Grief, fear and anger consumed me for weeks. My only outlet was a keyboard. I took to social media to express outrage, to call attention to the danger Jews were facing. I thought I could reach those who appeared to me to be oblivious to what was happening. And I was not alone. Others, who previously thought their Jewish ethnicity was irrelevant, suddenly understood that it is only their Jewishness that defined them to those who hate. But our pro-Israel voices were immediately overwhelmed by the antisemitic terror supporters.

The terror supporters seemed to have planned well ahead. Mobs took to the streets around New York City, my city, menacing Jews by marching on the streets in front of their homes, with their families. Jewish businesses and synagogues vandalized. Jews attacked on the streets. Jewish students physically prevented from entering university halls.

Another invasion, and another, designed to instill fear. It worked.

One day the mobs reached the very streets of my daughter’s home; where my grandchildren play, where they are supposed to be safe, here in America. Masked by keffiyehs, they marched on my daughter and son-in-law's block, banging drums, shouting “Free! Free Palestine!” My daughter and her family pulled into their own driveway blocked by mobs, “Free! Free Palestine!” Each parent ran from the car into the house holding one of their children, my grandchildren.

To me, the threat is extremely personal.

And familiar. It all sounds just a bit too familiar for comfort. Less than 80 years ago, age old Jewish hatred turned attempted genocide resurfaced first in the halls of academia. Now from my home city there are rampant boycotts of Jewish academics, scientists and writers. The well known novelist Sally Rooney has even publicly declared she will not allow her work to be translated into Hebrew as if that would relieve Palestinians from their suffering.

I am doing my best to navigate. It has been a never-ending new reality of Jewish life post-October 7. But as my fear has grown, so has this visceral need to stand up for myself, this need I did not know I had. I need to stand and be counted for the Jewish people. Suddenly, I am willing to risk a lot for this need, these beliefs, whether they were always there dormant or if they are new. I am here. Standing up. Pen in hand. In it for the long haul.

I am not a soldier. I am not a politician. I am not a celebrity. I am just a proud Zionist mourning for my people and terrified for the future. The only tool I have to participate in the fight for the Jewish people is my voice and I am not going down without a fight. No, my voice may be very ordinary and very small, but I’m going to keep using it and use it more.

For over a year, I have written regularly to our President and my useless Congressional representatives to support Israel and take action to free the hostages. I have posted, commented and re-shared other people’s social media to counter the slanderous lies about Israel that circulate and are largely accepted by western media. Now I want to try it here. To do a bit more. To be a bit more. To be able to tell my grandchildren many years from now that I showed up.

So welcome to my Substack. It’s an outlet for me and for my strong post October 7 feelings. But I hope it’s also a place to find community with others who share these feelings. I hope you’ll do me the honor of adding my small voice against the snowballing Jew hatred that has found a home on social media and found a home here on the Substack platform. Lies about Israel are shamelessly repeated over and over again. That’s how people absorb this grotesque fiction as truth I don’t care if those voices disagree with me, but I will push back with facts. Hatred will not be welcomed in my posts or community. This is a place for the rest of us ordinary, everyday Jews who woke up to a seemingly changed world after October 7 and still can’t believe it after more than a year. This is a place to be safe, to be welcome, to come together. Jews and the courageous non-Jews who have chosen moral integrity over popularity because they refuse to lie to themselves. Why? Because in the coming together we are no longer ordinary. In the coming together we become Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. And together we are extraordinary.

So please join me here on Substack. I’m truly looking forward to joining the conversation, to being a part of us and all that is extraordinary together. It is an honor.