The First Half A Kiss

If you want to support Israel/ the hostage families/ those affected by the attack, here are some good organizations to donate to:

Magen David Adom: Magen David Adom is the Israeli Red Cross. They provide treatment to any individual who needs help. Magen David Adom helps many countries during disasters: the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal and the tsunami victims are a few examples of international humanitarian assistance provided by the Organization. In addition, the Organization provides humanitarian aid in the State of Israel for the elderly and the needy.

Operation Embrace: Operation Embrace offers assistance to injured survivors of terror in Israel. With the guidance from social workers throughout Israel, Operation Embrace helps all people who have been violated by random acts of terror and does not discriminate by race or religion. They provide provide direct assistance as well as group support through a variety of PTSD and trauma support programs. OE funds medical, therapeutic, and rehabilitative needs to help people move forward.

Hostages and Missing Families Forum: Civil, volunteer-based organization focused on the safe return of all Israeli citizens held hostage in Gaza. They provide financial, medical, legal, and psychological aid to the affected families. They also connect families to media outlets and initiate events so that they can get their voices and perspectives heard.

United Hatzala: Largest independent, non-profit, fully volunteer emergency medical service organization that provides the fastest emergency medical service throughout Israel, and completely free of charge. Their goal is to provide immediate lifesaving medical intervention during the critical window between the onset of an emergency and the arrival of traditional ambulance assistance. They have a network of over 7,000 volunteers across the country.

Nevermind that there are articles, videos, etc. where these celebs directly say “I consider myself to be Jewish.” Nevermind that they’ve had Jewish weddings or funerals, nevermind that they have publicly claimed Jewish identities. You don’t want them to be Jewish, so they’re not. 

But then when Jews are upset because somebody who describes their relationship to Jewishness as “having a half-Jewish parent” rather than being Jewish themselves, and writes with a narrative voice that suggests they are completely disconnected from any Jewish identity at all, makes offensive, antisemitic jokes, suddenly y’all are Wikipedia detectives coming at me with “Oh no, you can’t be mad at Trevor Noah for his comments; he has a jewish grandparent, so he’s Jewish too!” 

I noticed something during last year’s Pride that I could not stop thinking about afterward: silence.

Not total silence. Pride events still filled city streets in San Francisco, where I live. Rainbow flags still hung from windows. But many queer Jews I knew had become quieter in subtle, almost imperceptible ways. Some had stopped posting online. Some had withdrawn from political conversations altogether. Others no longer mentioned being Jewish in spaces where that identity had once felt unremarkable.

A few quietly disappeared from communities they had helped build. Invitations were declined. Group chats went unanswered. One friend told me they hesitated before wearing a Star of David necklace to Pride for the first time in years.

At first, I told myself I was imagining it. Then I began hearing the same thing in private conversations: people calculating whether it was safe to say certain things out loud. Wondering whether expressing ongoing grief over the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 would cost them friendships, belonging or community. Deciding it was easier to remain silent than risk becoming a problem to manage.

I recognized that instinct, because I felt it too.

As a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in San Francisco who has facilitated support groups for queer Jews since Oct. 7, I’ve perceived a clear phenomenon: While for years, many queer Jews experienced queer spaces as a refuge, after Oct. 7, that sense of refuge became less certain.

The spaces where we built chosen family, recovered from shame, fell in love, and constructed identities used to be shaped by the belief that vulnerability should not have to be hidden in order to belong.

Now, in some of those spaces, it feels like certain forms of Jewish grief have become socially suspect.

In some spaces, expressing horror at the massacre of Israeli civilians has felt permissible only when immediately qualified or contextualized.

In conversations over the past year, I have repeatedly encountered the same pattern: queer Jews becoming more cautious and less certain about what they could safely say in response to pressure to express grief only in publicly acceptable ways.

Silence can be a form of self-protection. People grow quiet when they sense that emotional honesty may carry steep social costs inside communities they still want to belong to.

Some queer Jews no longer attend events they once loved. Others still attend, but carefully. They edit themselves in real time, measuring how much grief they can express before it becomes unintelligible to others.

None of this is unilaterally true about queer communities, which are not monoliths. And many LGBTQ people feel profound anguish over Palestinian suffering, as do many Jews.

But queer Jews are exhausted. The strain of constant self-translation; the effort of proving that mourning one people does not entail hatred of another; and the vigilance required to navigate belonging that feels increasingly conditional have taken their toll.

The loss of a place where you were supposed to exist without negotiation feels existential. And as each Pride passes, certain griefs intensify as they remain unspoken.

This Pride, I’m thinking less about who will show up than about who will remain quiet once they arrive.

The original concept that humans complete the act of creation by making bread from wheat is from the Talmud! And the specific "wheat but not bread, grapes but not wine" phrasing is from Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel but it is missing "clay but not bricks".

And among trans Jews the sentiment was already popular before I ever started seeing this specific phrasing so I knew, knew, knew a Jew and likely a trans Jew was involved.

As it happens, Ortberg's friend Julian is Jewish and they have strongly negative feelings about the way the quote has been removed from the context of their life as someone trans and Jewish. They used to have a thread up on xwitter about it but have since made their account private and only have a very terse FAQ online from which you can glean the treatment they likely received when being more open about their Jewishness, relationship to transness, and the interaction of both.

"Where'd you get the donuts?"

"Preschool Hanukkah play."

"Why were you at a preschool Hanukkah play?"

"SWAT got called to deal with a bomb threat. Everything's fine. The school gave us donuts."

New stickers! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

B’tselem Elohim (spelled here with a quf to avoid writing a name of God) means “in the image of God.” It comes from Genesis 1:27

וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹקִים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹקִים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם׃

“And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God—creating them male and female.” (Revised JPS translation, 2023)

I'm not sure I will ever really be able to trust a therapist again after seeing what goes on in the mental health field regarding Jews. so it's either never bring it up at all or never fully feel safe in therapy (in which case what is the point of going to therapy at all)

I’m not going to stop feeling strongly about it in the same way I still feel strongly seeing centuries of my people’s history buried under Catholic churches. I understand the dome is there now, and I don’t think it should be destroyed because I understand the significance it holds now.

But I’m not going to stop being angry about it. Especially since my people are not even allowed to go there. I can’t imagine the rage we Mexicans would justifiably have if Spaniards suddenly decided we aren’t allowed to visit our own ancient cities and temples becuase the land is “their’s now” since they built their churches there. The patience and understanding of the Jewish people is so fucking undermined. We have time and time again been expected to and have bent over backwards for others becuase we fundamentally believe in uplifting everyone, even at the cost of ourselves. Even in our own fucking country. Even in the country everyone accuses of being “Jewish supremacist” do we still face blatant discrimination, and allow ourselves to face it for the sake of our muslim neighbors and muslim Israeli citizens.