Drash דרש

By T. Frank

On week three, I looked up two friends I know from Berkeley, Heidi and Asa, who’ve lived for six months in Berlin. They proposed a trip to Cologne to join the protests at Hambacher Forest, where coal companies were threatening to level the trees and mine for coal. We would take the six-hour train ride overnight, then head to Hambacher for a Sunday forest walk.

Green flags printed with the iconic Hambacher tree waved in the air over a dry dirt field. “Hambie Bleibt”--the Hambacher forest stays! Polizei allowed us to enter one area of the forest, but they blocked off the main path. We saw broken glass, ropes tied to beech trees. These woods were sparsely populated, so we re-entered Hambacher around the cops, and greeted the site anew. There was a central tree-sit atop a very tall tree and protesters everywhere hauled logs for a barricade. Heidi jumped right in, Asa went to rest, and I gathered a few branches before deciding,  I'll paint instead. Several pairs of feet stopped to watch, and someone asked in German, "Can I take a photo of your palette?" With my head down, focused on my watercolors, I heard a brass band playing, "The Saints Go Marching In". The rest of the day was a mix of sun, shade, apples and communal efforts.

My two companions and I reached Hambacher's edge to emerge into a scene we dreaded. We climbed a mound of sand before the vast swath of barren land, the 'digger' machines looming like an invasive species. Security forces trotted in on horseback; a neon-vested journalist snapped dozens of shots. Soon, we heard an amplified voice, emphasizing that no one was to leave the limits of Hambacher. Asa remarked, that's just a display of power. And we are each reminded by the 'harsh' intonations of German, what a set of negative-sounding instructions can become.

~~~~~

Each week, the residency screened a film. The first was Tarnation (2003), featuring the documentarian who highlighted his mother's struggles with mental illness. The second was called A Film Unfinished (2010), a riveting, intense documentary in multiple languages, which we watched with malfunctioning subtitles. The Israeli director took found footage from Nazi propaganda stored underground for fifty years. When the footage was restored, it's shown to Jewish Holocaust survivors, who are filmed watching the horrific storylines, primarily depicting the wealthy at extreme odds with the hordes dying in controlled poverty, then corralled and dumped into open graves.

When the lights went up, my studiomates shared their reactions. One of the ladies expressed sympathy towards me as the only Jew in the room. Without thinking, I shrugged it off, refraining from the spotlight. After, I ran outside over a bridge and looked down at the river below. I ran until I felt my heart beating, and then I walked back in order to shake off the shock. Here I was, in Germany, a Jewish descendant of Eastern Europeans who immigrated to America thirty years before the unforgivable Holocaust. I saw the people of Berlin as similar to Americans, immigrants and settlers alike. I did not wish to blame a country's people for it's government's atrocities. Instead, I wanted to process. That would take time.

~~~~~~

About halfway through the residency, my hostess Amelia set me up with her friend Ivan, an American graduate student. Amelia meant well, but sometimes I felt like I gave her the wrong impression. She assumed that I was a traveling psychologist with a dark and troubled Jewish past, and she lamented her religious Christian upbringing often. She was overly hospitable, leaving money for groceries and even gave me her room for the majority of my visit; but the times that she came home, we talked from our mattresses about romance. 

At dusk, Ivan and I started our tour at the iconic Brandenberg Gate, which divided West and East Germany through the Cold War. We then went inside three public memorials in the Tiergarten. First, a testament to the Roma Gypsies targeted during Hitler's regime. The space contained a shallow reflecting pool. Haunting string music played from secret speakers in the secluded square. Next, we viewed the Queer memorial, a pyramid with a small window through which we saw a looped video. Footage of gays and lesbians embraced, kissed, and held hands, spliced with shots of police tormenting lovers. 

Finally, we went through the Holocaust Memorial, where tall, symmetrical granite planks rose higher and higher the farther in you walked, until you're completely enveloped in darkness and solid walls. I grew afraid in the middle of the labyrinth. Ivan’s solid grasp was there. We discussed the importance of history in this very place, where a few blocks away was  a parking lot, the former bunker where Hitler spent his last moments with family and comrades before they all consumed poison. Ivan and I said goodbye, and boarded different trains as I reflect on the solemnity of the memorials.

~~~~~~

For the residency project, I wished to experiment with one of my favorite pastimes, origami or the art of Japanese paper folding. I asked Daniel, who displays his origami creations hung from tree branches by the Canal, for a quick tutorial. At the studio, I made a mockup of two round paper forms connected by a strip of felt rope. The forms hung next to each other, supported only by a strand of invisible plastic wire threaded through the base. With a stiff piece of construction paper, the result was about the size of a grapefruit. I tied four knots in the rope to represent the tumors found in Annika’s breast.

 Concurrently, I play around with paper cutouts of words. I've had a vision inspired by a window display: a thick hardcover book, folded and carved as to resemble a woman. When I brought my drafts to my mentor, he latched onto the origami prototype, but discouraged my cut-outs. The work felt exciting, but without my mentor's approval, I grew dejected. We had one week left to finish our projects before the exhibition.

On Monday morning, I took a walk to Tempelhof Field, sitting in one of the community gardens to stress-out to my journal. I still felt stuck, but I walked to a new path amongst a grove of yellow-leafed trees. It was here, suddenly, that I recognized I had something. When I arrived in the studio, I constructed two remaining pairs of inflated paper-orbs. The first, with the knots, will represent the cancer invading; the second, at a larger size, will represent the breast implants; and the third, shown with red silk paper, will represent the final stage when the foreign breasts become aligned with her body.

~~~~~

Three pairs of paper orbs hung from the ceiling. In this room, Jasmine has pulled all-nighters to construct her powerful body of work with poetry, mirror fragments, and dance captured on video. Gwen’s paintings were layered with transcriptions of  reflections on grief, and Linda sewed fabric in Victorian mourning colors over paving stones, emblematic of feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Sara’s installation covered the room with hospital visitor passes, recreating an experience she faced as a teenager when she lost her best friend.  Sarah has a collection of satirical, solemn ruminations. At ten to six, we were still installing the show, and Aleksandar locked out potential guests. I ran over to the cafè for a bundle of sandwiches to save us. When I return, I’m able to take in the show as if I was a guest to the process. Are we processing a collective grief, or are we still locked in our own worlds?

~~~~~~

The residents and I go our separate ways shortly after the exhibition. I tried to hawk my bicycle by Hermannplatz station, but at the Canal I met Tash, who sold polymer-clay jewelry depicting vulvas. She was delightful to be around, taking pride and joy in her work with a loud belly laugh. Presently, her friends Jen and Ezra arrived. Ezra shares his sack of unshelled walnuts from the Turkish farmer’s market. Try as I might, I only crack one or two by the next morning. Jen realizes she needs a bike, and we arrange to meet at the gallery that weekend for the trade-off. I'm relieved, inspired, and happy to meet these lovely people.

I took the S-bahn to see Annika one last time. Over tea and cappuccino, I shared photos from the exhibition, which she missed because her friends threw her an end-of-radiation party. This is wonderful news, and Annika was as radiant as ever. She left me a good deal of wisdom for the subject matter I chose to study: “Grief is a thing inside of you. It doesn’t leave, but you find a place for it until you heal”.

When I walked back to Neukölln, I ran into the origami master by the Canal. He gave me a warm hug and mentioned he's flying to Mexico for the winter--migrating like the colorful parrots he folds. Presently, Ezra arrives for an origami lesson. While the master was called away, I sat down on the bench and taught Ezra what Daniel taught me. I made him a tiny blue crane, and he gave me his tiny red dragon in thanks.

"We're good friends already," Ezra remarked. 

"It's called kinship,” I respond. “Relating to people who you feel warm about, like your family, your ‘kin’. Will I find people like you guys when I return home?"

"Wherever there are similar vibrations that you feel initially, you'll find them again."

~~~~~~

As I prepared my suitcase that night, I saw some horrifying news reach my inbox. Back in the States, a mass murder has just been committed at a Pittsburg synagogue. The shooter killed eleven senior citizens and wounded six Jewish congregants. I lowered myself onto the kitchen couch, and called everyone I knew from Pennsylvania; no one answered, but I called my brother in San Francisco. He heard the news, but sounds calm. Reaching my “kin” was reasurring in that heartbreaking time.

The next morning, I awoke early to make the connecting flight to France. I took in the boulevards of Paris from a chilly city park, with an endless parade of joggers in tight sportswear. I felt very different here, and I don’t speak the language--but I did know the language of bus transfers, and I rode a crowded shuttle back to the airport. When I reached San Francisco thirteen hours later, my father and brother were there to take me home. Looking out the window at the night, everything seemed familiar, yet I have already changed so much. My roots are strong, and the wanderlust has begun.

Talia Frank lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She contributes to the Donut Club, an East Bay writer’s group. Visiting Berlin in 2018 inspired a love of community gardens and allowed her to re-examine Judiasm within a global context.

Reach the author: [email protected]

Visual art: www.cargocollective.com/taliafrank

by T. Frank

My grandmother cannot fathom entering Germany. She was a child of the Great Depression and lived through the war safely from the Catskill Mountains of New York while her husband fixed radios on home turf. However, Germany represents a taboo in history for my grandparents as Jews. They would no sooner visit the Brandenberg Gate than they would try scuba diving without an oxygen tank.

 I constantly reflect on the trusted feeling of Home since I lived in Berlin for six weeks in fall of 2018. Previously, the longest trip I took was a ten-day tour of Israel through the organization Birthright: from the peak of a mountain overlooking three desert countries, to the crowded rush of the Jerusalem shuk, and my aversion to a display of American-Israeli nationalism on a military campus. The scenes and feelings form a whirlwind of hazy memories, much like any experience on new land. 

A few days after I arrived back in the Bay Area, I sat in Strawberry Creek Park watching the sun go down and the light blue sky grow faint as night approached, seeking those moments of "awe" that came so suddenly in Berlin. This bright green park reminded me of the open recreational space I loved over there, even though the grass was literally greener on this side of the pond!  I distinctly remember the moment when I scarcely had to look up at the street signs and felt like whichever path I took, I would find my way. Nevertheless, five months ago, I had sent in an application for an unusual art residency, an immersion into the study of grief. I reflected on those periods of my life that had led to some of my deepest creations. Drawings of cancer cells and lungs, struggles to breathe and heal in the midst of choking emotion, flowers and vines winding through the dark themes. I yearned to express my observations of the world through whatever moved me, again.

~~~~~

The journey to Berlin was a three-legged trip with two layovers, leaving Friday evening and arriving at 10:00PM on Saturday. A huge, crowded economy flight, cheap and minimal. I tried to rest as the crew turned off all lights on board. No sooner did I close my eyes than it seemed like the sun was creeping over the horizon, and we touched down to a windy, barren tarmac. It was 9:00AM, as all the passengers disembarked in Reykjavik, Iceland, we felt the chill burrowing through our thin layers and shivered.

On the second leg, as the plane glided to the lowlands, I appreciated the bucolic farmland. I was alone in the Copenhagen airport. The crowds in Reykjavik were more diverse, like a burgeoning metropolis.  By contrast, everyone arriving in this Danish terminal looked alike: tall, blond, and, permit me, Aryan. They traveled in clusters of family groups, chatting, gesturing, smiling. I dragged my suitcase past designer boutiques to a desolate, unfinished terminal, where passengers awaited their flights without customary notice; but learned to say, Takk, Danish for "Thank you". When I finally reached Germany, I connected to the U-bahn, the underground subway. The ride was over an hour long, and I gazed at the subterranean signage, lost once more. Until I arrived at Rathaus Neukölln, and my new roommate Shimon met me outside in the rain.

The next day, I left the mattress that our hostess Amelia had set up on the floor, staggering about with jet lag. Luckily there's oatmeal, my favorite companion. Shimon and his friend Devorah from Tel Aviv are home. We discuss the neighborhood. ‘What if I get terribly lost, not only physically, but mentally, too?’ I thought. ‘Is this a dream? Why am I so far from anyplace I know?’ Devorah suggested a walk to the canal, with a Sunday flea market. Late afternoon, I ventured outdoors and discovered a slice of paradise.

At the end of the block, a large mosaic mural adorned a staircase which I took to have the impression of a rooftop. A large concrete lot surrounded a beautiful community garden. Raised flower beds were home to a bounty of colorful flowers, tall green vegetables grew under the sunshine and painted poles flanked handmade structures. I spotted a concrete ping-pong table, and mustered up the courage to join two men playing. One of them wore a baseball cap with "Cal" emblazoned in blue and yellow; by chance, he attended law school at UC Berkeley, and lived several blocks away from me! After a few rounds of ping-pong, the Germans drank beer and suggested that I check out a nearby landmark before sunset.

Cheered, I walked along and found an "I Love SF" sweatshirt at a pop-up flea market. More surprises awaited. I heard music, and pushed aside brambles to emerge in Hasenheide Park, where a large circle of guitarists and drummers jammed for casual onlookers. I saw an ornate mosque with blue and gold trim, a wide courtyard, and an outdoor faucet for washing hands or drinking cool, crisp water. Next door was Tempelhof Field. A former airport utilized during World War Two to fly-in supplies from the West, the unused tarmac was reinvented as an open recreational wonderland. I entered the gates and was met with flocks of activity: bicyclists, joggers, even a pair doing synchronized roller-skating. Dry, dull grass covered the fields, but a victory garden shined under the setting sun, and the barista of an on-site cafe recommended finding a good perch. 

I joined two boys from Afghanistan, Hasan and Muhamed, watching the sky from tall ladder-seats. Muhamed and I grinned, struggling to hold a conversation between the lack of a common language. Google helped, but broken English got us farther. "Do you know there are still American police in my country?,” he exclaimed. My conscience bristling, I say that most people do not speak of the Afghan-American war anymore. The sun set in deep purple and vivid pink hues. Hasan saw my eyes light up at the sight of his bicycle, and offered me a ride--so, I sat sideways on the frame, clutching his black leather jacket, and answering "Ya" when asked, "Alles Gut?"until I grimaced from discomfort and Hasan laughed--"Kaput!" The two friends saw me off at a bus stop, and I stumbled on board as the passengers stared.

~~~~~

The following Monday, I walked twenty minutes from the apartment to arrive in front of a white-painted gallery, and no one around. Feeling nervous that the entire program was a hoax (just like my parents thought when they read the acceptance letter from the dubious-sounding organization),  I noticed a middle-aged man at a computer in the corner. I knocked on the window, and he let me inside. Here was a room devoid of decoration, save for a long rectangular table and six chairs, three of which were filled by women. Soon, another man entered the room and offered tea, introducing himself as our "mentor". We never referred to him by any name other than his own, even when I suggested “Alek”. He's over six feet tall, shaved head, and wore all black from his long-sleeved turtleneck to his sturdy dress shoes.

The participants introduced themselves. Sarah researched environmental grief, such as the devastation left behind from man-made disasters. Gwen studied grief theories in graduate school. Jasmine hoped to connect to refugees of war. And Sara--no error, there are two--prepared to make an installation honoring a departed friend. Linda would join us the following afternoon and plunge into an exploration of feeling othered through found objects. After we went over studio policies, we shared a bit on why we study grief, bringing several girls to tears. It felt like a group therapy session--and it wouldn't be the last. 

~~~~~

Dear Talya, Gone to synagogue. It's a short walk from the canal. I forget the street name-'Pflug'-something. Come join me for Yom Kippur services. Love, Devorah. Without consulting a map, I asked for directions from three different shopkeepers to find the synagogue. Luckily, they understood English and didn’t express unsavory reactions to my Jewish-ness. Once I found the path parallel to the Canal, the temple came into view: a large building curving around a tranquil block, with stained glass windows and a grand façade. Security officers were stationed outside, and I was screened before entering. "Are you Jewish?" they ask.. "Yes." Unmoved, they question, "Do you pray?" 

In August, I went to Washington, DC for my cousin’s wedding. Her family and friends are modern orthodox, or, religious. The day before the wedding, we were in shul for Shabbat services. During the long morning prayers, I read the English version of the Torah portion. The text alluded to the treatment of rape by virtue of marriage or the punishment of execution. By coincidence, this was the same chapter I studied for my Bat Mitzvah twelve years ago, but I must have been too young to grasp such explicit content. I left the room and spent the rest of services out in the hallway, tending to the potted plants as a distraction. 

Did I pray? Not willfully on that day in the synagogue. Internally, yes, throughout my life: the inner dialogue between my spirit and the spirit of a G-d. But in practice, only with family over Shabbat blessings. So I answered, "No. But my Israeli friend is in there, can I go in?" 

Yom Kippur services were surprisingly welcoming in Germany. Although the congregation was divided amongst the men and women, the dress code was more relaxed (jeans, white t-shirts), and several of the men held babies on their shoulders as the rabbi sang in Hebrew. I found Devorah and stood beside her. I recognized the somber prayer, "Avinu Malkeinu", and it felt no different than my family's congregation. The prayer books here were German on one side, and Hebrew on the other.

 After the ceremony, we passed by plenty of people enjoying the balmy weather at dusk. Devorah was reminded of holidays in her country, riding her bike freely while everyone took time off to relax. Shimon met us to break the fast with noodle phơ. I was lucky to connect with "my people", thousands of miles away from home. As a child, I remember feeling like my relatives’ religious differences divided us. However, my cultural upbringing is something I've retained and appreciate. Joining Israelis in Germany for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was akin to sharing a secret amongst friends.

~~~~~

  As the weeks went by, I developed a habit of visiting the community garden, mornings before heading to the studio and nights on my way home. One weekend, I felt antsy as I read a book called The Truth Will Set You Free by Alice Miller. There was a campfire at the garden as they observed summer changing to chilly Autumn. I surveyed the party scene before resting into a corner of a homemade wooden bench under the dim glow from industrial lights around the lot.  Although the setting was not condusive to reading, I was shy to join the group. But, when I repositioned myself next to the fire, it was apparent that these young, hip, multinational guests preferred to speak in English. Rosa asked what I’m doing in Berlin. When I told her I’m studying grief, her voice got excited and she invited her friends into the conversation.

Annika was vivacious and full of life. I noticed her wisps of fuzzy blonde hair, bright in the glow of the fire. She was working on a memoir, and was also the subject of a photoshoot documenting her journey with cancer. As she spoke, I folded a paper crane and gave it to her, provoking a sense of delight. My idea for the residency then was to make a handmade book for participants to share their experiences of grief, and to make origami together. Annika agreed to be interviewed the following week.

~~~~~

I took the S-bahn, the above-ground trolley, several miles northwest where the buildings  are close to the city center. Annika told her story: how, at age 26, she discovered the cancer in her breast and rushed into several months of intensive treatment including antibody therapy, anti-hormone medicine, and chemotherapy. She ultimately received a double mastectomy and chose breast implants. For a month after surgery, Annika couldn't lift her arms over her head. It was painful, but her energy was focused on how to function normally again. Now, she was in recovery, undergoing radiation and daily physical therapy. She wholeheartedly embraced her body, and I felt a mixture of awe and love for her resilience and positive attitude.

I encouraged Annika to leave her mark in a communal scrapbook of stories. She drew a breast in pastel colors with words circling the nipple, such as "soft"-, "round"-, "hope"-, and "loss".- After I left the apartment, I boarded the train and closed my eyes. In the dark, I envisioned a bare, cream-colored orb, shiny and wet, like a peeled lychee fruit. Perhaps, I reasoned, this represented Annika's true self.

Back in the studio, I was at a loss to contribute during our group discussion. I almost broke down, overcome with emotions that arose from the interview. So I took a break from the sterile white walls, and sat under the chestnut tree in the courtyard. I picked up a spiny shell, cracked it open to reveal a creamy-brown belly. I wrote a meditation on the seed of the tree. I reflected on impermanence, on patience, on Annika taking her time to heal yet reveling in every healthy moment. I like taking my time.

"Hey Aleksander," I remarked in the midst of studio time, "Since the interview with Annika, I’ve been feeling down.” My mentor was sitting at a desk, drinking tea and writing in one of his many small notebooks. "Do you feel your own grief surface?," he replied. "No, more like I put myself in her shoes, and feel compassion." He advised, "Keep a journal--one just for yourself, your thoughts and daily experiences. And one for your work in the residency; write down everything you're thinking. It'll help, trust me."

----- Talia Frank lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She contributes to the Donut Club, an East Bay writer’s group. Visiting Berlin in 2018 inspired a love of community gardens and allowed her to re-examine Judiasm within a global context.

Reach the author: [email protected] 

Visual art: www.cargocollective.com/taliafrank

Shaina Joy Machlus

shainajoy.com

twitter and instagram are @punimpie

CW: State and police violence, rape, sexual assault

The first time I actually sang, I cried. It was only a few nervous tears, enough to dampen my shirt cuff but not enough to demand the attention of my teacher. Perhaps due to my anxiety, this first class was completed outside of my own body. I watched myself leave my shoes at the heavy door, put on bright pink house slippers, shuffle through the hall and the sparse living room into a sun-soaked balcony enclosed in glass. I saw myself sit down in the wobbly, folding chair, look out onto the gardens and balconies of the other neighbors—my audience. I could hear the tap of a finger on the plastic electronic keyboard; what sounded like Morse code: SOS. There, in Barcelona, swept up in the struggle for Catalan independence, I found my singing voice.

Tap, tap, tap. It was my call to begin, to repeat. When I did not respond, my teacher Romi repeated the same note. Romi was my first and only singing instructor. I probably chose her because I did not know any other singing instructors. Also because her name was Romi and I loved the way she spoke in her thick Argentinian accent about her nontraditional singing method of accessing your inner child: “gritando como una niña.” Classes were 30 minutes twice a week. I always arrived promptly, ready to take my shoes off and begin.

Tap, tap, tap. Now more of a command. I watched myself open my mouth and push out silent air. I remember the thought: “How does one begin when they have no idea where to start?”

Most people have no memory of their initiation into singing. It was something that happened in toddlerhood; in passing. Their odd notes casually floating away with laughter, claps, a chorus of people joining in. That is not to say my childhood was not filled with music. Still, I had the strong feeling I had never personally experienced this milestone. I carried only one true memory of singing. I was driving in an old Volvo station wagon through a particularly lush part of New York State. I rolled down the passenger window beside my then lover who had just confessed to being unfaithful, opened my mouth wide as it could go, filled my lungs with summer air, and tried to let song escape me. The sound I made was so far from my intended aria, I kept quiet ever since. With the acception of the intake of alcohol, which never ceased to persuade me otherwise. Like the time I sang “Single Ladies” and the karaoke bar pretended to be closing in order to keep me from singing again. Or when my microphone was taken away mid-“Say My Name.” (Yes, I do have a Beyonce tattoo, thank you for asking.)

The December before I turned 30, something shifted. While at a very ordinary concert, I decided I could not spend the rest of my ordinary life not knowing what it felt like to sing. To live a life afraid of your own voice is no way to live. The next morning, without thinking, I picked up the phone, unwrapped a crumpled piece of paper with the word “Romi” scribbled on top and dialed the numbers below.

It took me two whole sessions to make any noise at all. Our classes were always the same; Romi would progressively tap a higher and higher note on the keyboard in quick threes: tap, tap, tap. I would repeat the note as best as I could, yelling in short bursts a sound that was halfway between an “ah!” and an “oh!”. To my surprise, creating those noises thawed a space inside of me. A space that was the opposite of where my tears came from—although the two seemed to function in parallel. It was a strange, but not altogether disagreeable feeling to pry myself open and closed simultaneously.

On the morning of October 2, 2017, I pressed the number four apartment button and rode the beautiful but creaky elevator up to Romi’s place. I took my seat beside her and her keyboard. Unlike our first class, I felt glued inside my heavy body. The density I was hauling on this particular morning had less to do with the one hour of sleep I had managed and more with what had come to pass during the previous day that I spent on the streets of Barcelona, from 4 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. 

Maybe it is worth mentioning that I had spent the previous four years moving my life in the USA to Barcelona. Like many other Jews, my family had been murdered and chased out of their Eastern European shtetls onto a variety of strange lands, one of which being the occupied territory of the so-called “United States”. Yampol, the thriving shtetl of my family, was burned so extensively to the ground, there is almost zero evidence of it ever having existed. The family history that we could piece together is a scrappy patchwork of survivals and profound attempts to survive. One of my most treasured appliques was that of my great-grandmother, whose name I am endowed with, who died in a plane crash in Malaga, Spain. In a somewhat cinematic turn of events, an audio-visual specialist from Pace University, named Carlton Maloney, happened to be on the same plane as said great-grandmother. Maloney was adding to his series of take-off and landing recordings and as a result there is an audio recording of the entire plane crash. Even before the world-wide-web granted me the possibility of experiencing the crackling booms, screams and ultimate silence of the crash audio, I felt the need to complete the little loop of immigration my family had made. Moving into a tiny room in Barcelona, steeping myself in the streets, the language, the culture felt something like tying a neat bow in my familiar tapestry.  

Four years in Barcelona granted me the ability to live and learn through a series of far-reaching events. Without a doubt the most extraordinary of which took place on that October 1 in 2017, when there was a referendum to determine whether the northeast region of Spain, Catalunya, would succeed and become its own independent country again. Catalunya, once a flourishing autonomous, anarchist country, had been owned by Spain since 1714. The Spanish government in Madrid deemed this new election unconstitutional. Both the President and King of Spain appeared poised and confident on TV, adjusting the knot on their ties while promising to keep all of Spain under the crown by any means necessary. The very next scene on the news showed armored vehicles being deployed by the hundreds from the capitol, they dotted every road leading to Barcelona. From above they looked like armored beetles, topped with Spanish flags and the buzzing of the National police hanging out the windows chanting promises of violence toward the Catalan people into news cameras and other onlookers. 

Back in Catalunya, no one could have imagined the violence that was unleashed by the government against its peacefully gathered citizens waiting to vote. Over 1,000 people were hospitalized because of brutal police beatings. Videos from cell phones surfaced, recording only a fraction of the police violence; a rubber bullet taking out one person’s eye, elderly people being dragged by their arms and feet away from voting polls, a woman having her fingers broken one by one and who was later sexually assaulted, blood stained hallways of the elementary schools that had been used as voting stations. We were forced to elect between watching or experiencing the horror. We gasped, searching for oxygen, unable to exhale. Hardly able to scream in protest.

State-endorsed violence is nothing new, far from it. And although it is entwined in the DNA of both the country my family immigrated from and immigrated to, it felt anew to me. During the day of the referendum time became wildly inefficient; the hours dragged by in a deep-sea manner. We trugged from voting center to voting center, locking arms to form human chains in an effort to protect the tiny white pieces of paper where people had checked “si” or “no” and the idea of revolution they represented. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I squeezed the arms of the strangers on either side of me. We hung on to each second, waiting to see who would be thrown into the prison wagons next. There was an enduring silence throughout every street. People seemed to be holding their collective breath, awaiting the inevitable moment when the armored trucks full of police turned the corner. I had no idea at the time, but I had been waiting to break the silence of that day ever since.

When friends ask me about my singing lessons, most find it amusing that after more than a year, a single word has never passed in song between my two lips. And I get that they do not understand. How could anyone, including myself, know just how far back this silence stretched? In my elementary school, I was the only student who was not invited to be part of the choir. My music teacher, feigning generosity, gave me the silent task of moving the stage curtains back and forth and told me I will be one of those girls who is seen rather than heard. Singing, something that formerly left me feeling deserted, had now become an unexpected oasis. 

The day after the referendum was sunny, I remember exactly what the sky looked like from the window of Romi’s balcony. The clouds hung lightly in cotton ball form against a neon-blue sky. Seagulls, farther from the sea than I had ever before seen, looked gigantic flying next to the bevy of ubiquitous pigeons. That was the day I cried. My tears were massive, heavy enough to form a cavern within my chest. Romi did not pause for a moment except to pass me tissues. Something miraculous happened in that little room. The more I cried, the louder my voice became, the deeper the space inside me opened up. I was like a balloon being inflated. I did not judge the noises that came from my mouth because I knew they told a story that was impossible to tell otherwise. I heard perfect notes and I felt grateful to finally understand the expansiveness of song.

We live between the notes of everyday life; some are beautiful like the popping of potatoes and onions being fried to make tortilla, others intensely painful like rubber bullets whizzing by into a crowd of people, and many are barely audible unless listened to very carefully, like the moment the wind shifts to carry salty sea air from the Mediterranean. I hear them all as song now. And I sing in response.

by  Rum T Franco

Contact:  [email protected]

1. Stories

Outside you can barely tell it is day time the sky is so full of clouds. Somewhere in a cloud is a dream I let go, that tells a story I have forgotten.

I  like to tell stories, but I was never good at a stream-lined narrative. I always want to tell you another story before I have got to the end. I miss things out. I add things in. I highlight moments I might never have highlighted when the story took place.

I have wallowed too long in this almost empty river. We have wallowed together, never acknowledging each other. Where does the rain go, if not here?

I do not want to admit what I have allowed people to say to me, to do to me, for being 'too much'. Too much loud. Too much chub.Too much hair. Too much Jew. 

I want it to be that when I close my eyes and lie face down, that the soil is clean and smells like real good dirt, that the grass is fragrant, and my sense of smell is keen enough to find water. That I will not taste bitterness where there is none. A sign of depression, says my mum. I always did experience things very viscerally. I didn't want this to be about me, I wanted this to be about a Jewish feminist queer utopia. 

I feel my feet are wet. I look down and see I've stepped into a puddle. It's no longer raining.

2. My Jewish Pussy

CN: antisemitism, abusive relationships, physical threat

I was 16. I met the guy (Kev) in Asda where he worked. He had long dirty mousey hair, blue eyes (pretty aryan, Kurt Cobainesque), and a girlfriend. He used to stuff the holes in his shoes with newspaper. Him and his mum funded their cannabis habits breeding kittens. 

We had a date round the back of the supermarket during his break. He rolled a joint on the palm of my hand. Called it a table. I fell in love. 

He said he wanted to fuck my Jewish pussy. I had never thought of my pussy as Jewish. Imagine – does my pussy light the candles on a Friday night? Does she humbly cast aside the challah? Does she cook cholent? Is she also a vegan or is she ravenous for meat? I realise now he must have thought my Jewishness made me exotic: kinda treyf, but for goys. 

-

One night, when my parents were away, I invited Kev and Jim over for drinks. Jim insisted on bringing a friend. They were already drunk. The friend recounted a joke about Madeleine McCann and I told him he couldn't say that shit in my house. He threatened me with a knife. We threw him out. He started shouting DIRTY JEWS outside my front door.

Months later the same man came into Pizza Hut where I worked and I served him. He didn't show any signs of recognising me. He even tipped.

3. Minha Queerida

I just got back from visiting my friends on their farm in central Portugal. I was happy there. I lit Shabbat candles with P and explained the rituals. I sang Shalom Aleichem and we saw a moth lying in the waxy pit below the shabbes flame. Later, P designed me a tattoo of that moth and her memory resides between my shoulder and armpit. 

Maybe I want utopia to be a place like that, where there is time to take a row-boat down the river and paint ornamental gourds. Where the local bread is made with flour from the mill next door, and as long as you are friendly and willing to give being part of the village a try, then people will come to accept you for who you are. Where neighbours give you fruit and vegetables from their quintas, practise speaking with you, call you when you are sick, bring you medicine. There, if you are queer you are pretty odd but it doesnt mean you are left behind. You have neighbours that kiss your cheeks and invite you in for cake and ice cream. But there aren't any Jews. I want to be somewhere like there but with a Jewish community too, you know? I have been on this long Jewish journey figuring out how I want to engage Jewishly and I can't leave it all behind to live in a Catholic village in Portugal. I don't want to do things just to escape anymore. But sometimes I wonder if that is what most of us are doing anyway. Waiting for the next moment to come, so we don't have to think about this one.

4. Pomegranate

That Rosh Chodesh, before Elul, a fire was lit in the Northern skies. A signal. An ancient tradition, now reclaimed by queer Jewish priestesses afar. Across the valley I saw her, her dark curls glistening in the flicker of the flames. I caught her gaze, turned away quickly, scared she would know what I was thinking. Her light tread. Her hand pulling my chin towards her. She wanted me to look and not stop looking until she was done. How did we become so close when I swear she was stood upon the other mountain? Time has changed. We no longer play by old time. We are no longer restricted. She stretches out the moment, twirls it around her elegant fingers, brushes it past my lips.

She takes my hand and leads me to boughs laiden with rich fruits; skins bursting with sweet liquid. She sits beneath the intermittent flow. I follow the trail of pomegranate juice with my tongue, above her navel to the soft well at the crook of her neck. This, this is where shekhina resides. I stir her and she tips forth: a delicate, flowery scent that seeps provocatively. My breast to her breast. My palms to her palms. There are rituals in everything that we do. There are brachot in everything that we touch.

5. Sunflower Seeds

When I was very small, I held a public ritual upon the green between our houses, where we used to eat ice pops and push each other in toy cars. I did not really know much about how plants grew and it was hard to dig the hole, but I was adamant that I would see a sunflower there one day.

Now I'm here, on the mountain, and you think I am alone. I had been told back then that there was not sufficient evidence for divinity. But I have encountered the divine countless times here. I saw a toucan watching over a human child! A she-wolf took on an abandoned litter of kittens! I tell you this now, because you wouldn't believe me if I met you in real life. Nobody wants to admit their utopias. Nobody wants to live them. I wonder how many hand-prints are still pressed into the window here? I wonder how far back we can trace these skin cells? 

I perch at the edge, one hand stirring a simmering pot and the other reaching out for yours: the many yous out there whose dreams intertwine with mine. We have danced together in another life. Now, when I say another life, I do not mean it in a historical sense, but rather, I believe we are all living multiple lives at once. This must mean, then, that our utopias are already out there somewhere. 

By:  Flo

@flotochdrums (Instagram & Facebook)

www.flotochdrums.com

Watching my dad die was the first time I really understood heartbreak. It made sense, then, heartbreak. The cracking and shattering and the space that somehow manages to fill the chest to bursting. The sheer force of that break rearranged me.

My family began to unravel. Cut loose from the love that held me, I looked for something that could swallow me and I found Community. When the pain of my dad’s death cleaved the meat from my bones and left a bitter rawness exposed, I shut down. In the absence of feeling, useful became my raison d’etre.

Like so many of us, I found useful in anarchist community. It would take years of counselling to turn what I learnt there into something truly useful, something that looked like care and nurturance for each other and a better world, but in the meantime it did what I needed it to. It gave me a structure, however uncompromising. It was—and still is—a well-intentioned project, but it fell short of the mark for me in important ways. Rather than holding space for the contradictions in social struggle, it provided a different kind of G-d: The Co-op. Something solid to replace individualist ideals of community is an admirable goal, but if there’s no room for the messiness of our lives then it is doomed to fail. Paradoxically, in unlearning the unhealthy ways of relating to one another (and myself) that I learnt there, I think I am coming closer to a living understanding of what anarchism looks like for me.

It means taking care. Of my community; my loved ones, those whose paths meet with mine, and, somehow, my self. That care was missing from this first foray into community, and as I dug into my Jewishness—part grieving, part healing—that realisation crystallised. One of the core tenants of my Judaism is that it holds space for an ‘us’, an ’us’ that is cared for ferociously. This care runs underneath culture and politics and organising and community, a groundwater that nourishes the public as well as the private, and all that messy space in between.

Although I didn’t find much space for myself in its more traditional forms, reconnecting with my Jewishness anchored me. Held fast by a way of life and a people, I could begin to explore the places in me that had broken with my father’s death. I saw the ways in which my grief resembled the grief of capitalism; the sharp hot anger of oppression and the white flashes of loss are not so different. I began to see, for the first time, the ways in which I had abandoned community for the flight of pain. One of the great tension points in anarchism is the pull between the community and the self, the whole and the shattered pieces. How do we make a world that honours all of that? Relearning my Jewishness—that is, my history and my context, both religious and cultural—made that pain communal. It unspooled like a thread, tangling my personal grief into a collective pain until the death of my father was no longer mine alone.

But turning this into functional community is the work of a lifetime. Crucially, it means learning how to feel my feelings. And although my Jewishness taught me how to feel pain, it also taught me how to suppress. Born of an Austrian Jew heavy with the Holocaust, I was raised in a quiet pain that sank under a hum of Why? Why? Why? The numbness of disconnection ricochets off my walls; I was different in a way I had no context for. The sharpness of my furtive explorations into Judaism bears resemblance to my late-night forays on Susan’s Place, an early forum for trans folk of all stripes. Both are spaces I explored only in private, treading carefully around the shame and trying on the pride of my difference. I didn’t know then that there were millions like me, under duvets all across the world, trying to fit the pieces of our lives together. I didn’t know then that I was not so strange. 

In the years since that first heartbreak, I have learnt how to hold pain over and over. I learn it in my queerness, when a passing joke hinges on a deep voice & a feminised name. I learn it on the rare occasions I attend services, when I must remember not to roll my sleeves up too high lest my tattoos out me as Not Jewish Enough. I am treading water in that hurt when I sit up past my bedtime, bearing witness to the very real effects the world has on our psyches; depression, anger, hopelessness, the relentless struggle to get by. This learning to feel is inextricably woven into community; in learning to feel my own feelings, I also learn to listen to others’. It’s this kind of care, with no illusions about the kinds of heartbreak the future will bring, that a specifically anarchist kind of Judaism taught me.

By:  Liv Grace

https://www.oliviamaxgrace.com

if i should pray to anything it will be to blood the blood on the floor of our history still warm while we throw dirt on grandparents’ graves too early and sing revolution songs written in Vilna where we were told great-aunts learned to sharp-shoot but we only started to really believe it now

if i should marry it will be covered in blood i will marry for broken glass and circle dances and yiddish and guns

By: daph

Contact them at: [email protected]

1 cheshvan 5780, rosh hodesh

Since dancing with our beautifully decorated Torah last week – since the holiday of Simchat Torah – my little queer and anarchist diasporic community in Montreal/Tio’tia:ke has now celebrated every single Jewish holiday this year, and almost every new moon. We have reclaimed and breathed anarchist and trans life into every part of this year. The grief and gratitude in my body and soul for this process has been and still is immense.

*  *  *

I didn’t use to write. Or make art. And then I came out as genderqueer/non-binary and went to synagogues in the U.S. led by other queer and trans Jews and discovered the world of Talmud, all in the same year and a half. And everything poured out of me. I drew, I sang, I wrote, I cried. Ancestors came to visit. I had found a world where I could be whole. Where all parts of me were not just welcomed but loved so deeply that it was impossible not to be forever changed by that love.

* * *

In contrast to the so-called U.S., there’s not many of us where I live; those who are Jewish and queer/trans/anarchistic, and looking for ritual spaces… that overlap isn’t so big yet here. But I feel like it’s growing, across all of diaspora – there’s this yearning out there for our tradition that I can feel so deeply. And I also know that journey is so hard and fraught for those who have been pushed out of the Jewish tradition, or who were never given much access to it, or who have had parts of their lineage kept from them, for so many reasons.

I just want to be among you, revel in you, share in your joy and your grief, and tell you that you’re beautiful. That whatever the world wants to strip from you is what makes you stunning, and to hold on tight. And to say that I’m here. So that I know I’m here. In a world that tells us we’re not – whether it’s our beautiful genders that we don’t even have the words for, or our anarchistic politics and belief in dignity for all that is called unrealistic or dangerous, or our Jewishness that is palpable only as long as it’s assimilated – we are here.

*  *  *

i'm swimming in a sea of symbols

letters words paragraphs

scrolling and scrolling

through the tanakh and the mishnah and the talmud

holding my breath

until i can’t anymore

a neverending journey

i could do this forever

my people have done this forever

my family has done this forever

i have done this forever

i’m floating in time

with vision of the future

and ancestry of tradition

in a rare moment

without anxiety

i am where i'm supposed to be

trusting in process

in my tradition to hold me

a smichut of hands

passed down through generations

a covering, a blanket, an embrace

of comfort and love:

“this is the road, if you choose it

it is both already here and doesn’t yet exist