The people of Jewish descent mentioned in the following article go un-named. In the current climate of increased anti-semitism in the United States and the world, I don’t want to put them in harm’s way.
I will always stand by Israel because Jews saved my life. Every Jewish person isn’t synonymous with Israel, I realize. And I love Palestinians, too. But Jews have always been there for me, and now I’m there for them. I don’t want to deepen the divisions among Israelis and Palestinians, and, to be sure, all of the world’s people. I still have to recount my experience with the Jewish people. Silence would be a betrayal.
“And God said: let there be light, and there was light,” Genesis 1:1, from the Torah.
In 1991, I left the Glenelg Country School (GCS), which I had attended from first to eighth grades. I had been bullied mercilessly for eight years for being an effeminate boy. It turn my fear of telling my parents I was gay (which is how I identified at the time, and still partially do–a woman and a gay man) into a terror that I would be rejected and reviled if I came out. By eighth grade, keeping the secret of who I was combined with the constant harassment by my peers had made me suicidal. I used to open the balcony door on my second-floor bedroom, looking down at the verdant azaleas, every afternoon and beg myself to have the courage to jump.
My older sister, Zee, had gone from GCS to The Park School of Baltimore four years before me. Baltimore Jews–all pictured in very serious-looking poses in the hallways–founded Park in 1912 so that their children could have a secular, private education. Most private schools in Baltimore at the time were parochial. Even though Park was founded on a progressive philosophy of education and was staunchly non-sectarian, most of the student body was Jewish.
I had always had a fascination (a premonition, which I do believe in) with Judaism and Judaica. I never understood why I did, but I did. I think now the story of a tiny minority group who faced persecution for thousands of years but persisted in spite of it drew me to the religion and culture. In the contemporary era, their experience has been one of “privilege and persecution,” I phrase I love but cannot recall the exact source of (it was on a pamphlet at Temple Beth Shalom in Laurel, Maryland). I also cringe at the “privilege” label now, given how today universities, right and left-wing groups, and your average Joe on the street announce their belief, wearing khakis and raising their hands in “Heil Hitler”–that Jews aren’t just privileged, but too privileged. It’s not true.
I felt tiny too. I was 5’6″ and 100 pounds, hunched over and always looking at the ground because with no one to tell me I am “whole, holy, and good,” as the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia says, I didn’t know it. I persisted too–but because my Jewish friends made. And I had grown up with great socioeconomic privilege, as so many accuse Jews of having. But I hated myself and my life anyway, suffering from ruinous depression and anxiety, no doubt due in large part to the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments I faced every day. The students and teachers at Park, in the hallways and classrooms of exposed brick and red Olefin carpeting, eventually made me stand with an erect spine and face the world. The friends I made there, almost all 100 percent Jewish, wanted to be my friend. Eventually, I learned I wanted to be my own friend, too.
In fact, I felt so bonded with Jews and Judaism, I once approached a kind-faced woman with dark brown hair and an easy posture, at a kiosk called, “Judaica,” in The Columbia Mall near my house and asked her if they were hiring. It was a funny moment. Because I didn’t “look Jewish,” she seemed so confused, the poor dear.
At Park, even in the 1990s, when LGBTQ+ issues were just beginning to be spoken about, I felt safer, more sane, and embraced by my friends. I hadn’t officially come out, but all my friends knew I was gay and celebrated it in big and little–but super-meaningful–ways. Once, a friend sitting next to me in class spoke up when a fellow student used the word “fag.” A young woman who rode the same bus I did saw me tearing up one day placed her hand on mine. The warmth of her touch, as I’m a very tactile-kinesthetic person, immediately calmed me. She said, “It’s going to be OK. I promise.” And the kicker–two of my closest friends (who are still my friends today), called me one night and asked me, “Akbar–are you gay?” I said, “yes.” I can’t overstate how meaningful that was. I stopped opening the balcony door in my bedroom every day after that.
Israel isn’t blameless. I understand that. In fact the rabbi at the temple my best friend attends, in a derasha, or sermon, delivered on the Sabbath two weeks before this writing said: “Israel has killed many, many thousands of Gazans, 40 percent of them children. According to U.N. data, in one month, at least 312 families lost ten or more people. At least 189 families lost between 6 and 9 people. At least 549 families lost between 2 and 5 people. Imagine that. 1.7 million people are displaced right now. They are hungry and thirsty and vulnerable to a massive disease outbreak.” I am deeply moved by the willingness of so many Jews, while stating plainly that Israel is the Jewish homeland, it’s government also makes mistakes.
I’ve learned from them that while I experienced hardship because of my 2.5-3 (:)) minority identities–half-gay-man/half-woman and Shia Muslim–I have to atone, as observant Jews do on Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement, for the wrong things I did in an effort to assuage the pain of that hardship. I struggled with a severe addiction for many years. While addiction is a medical disease of the brain and body, it’s no excuse for some of the things I did during the worst of it–stealing, lying, driving under the influence, and more. Thank you, Rabbi–who I know of own mistakes.
Is “Liberalism” Essential to Judaism
At first, I was just so relieved to feel embraced by my peers at Park and afterward by Jews in general, I didn’t question why they were so good to me. I just wanted to enjoy the feeling the that I could breathe, and use my breath to speak my truth. Literally! The first self-help book I read, and now I’m a regular reader of the genre, was The Common Book of Consciousness by Diana Saltoon. In it, she advises “belly breathing,” and noticing where you hold tension in your body, particularly how a lot of us hunch are shoulders. The first time I followed her advice, I realized…I hadn’t been breathing for a long, long time.
There is something inherent in Judaism that tends to make Jews more politically and socially liberal, though (with the exception of the generally politically conservative Orthodox communities). “In The Political Behavior of American Jews Lawrence Fuchs argued that liberalism emerged ineluctably from Jewish values, which stressed the importance of charity and social justice,” reads an article on myjewishlearning.com. Among rabbis and Jews in general, particularly in the shtetls of Europe a Jewish education to become a rabbi emphasized debate as a path to learning, unlike other religious faiths that take a “do it because it’s in the [name of holy book].”
Jews have been other-ed since…well, what seems like forever, starting 5,000 years ago when they were enslaved by the Egyptians. On the path of Jewish history before the assimilation that became so widespread, as Dr. Alan Dershowitz writes in, The Vanishing American Jew, when now 40% percent of Jews marry outside their ethnoreligious community, Jews stuck together–and many stuck by me. It is virtually written into Jewish DNA at this point, that the feeling of belonging to a community is an important antidote to rejection and hatred by the outside world.
Jews have largely felt like outsiders, just like their LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters. In a story recounted in “Life Is Messy,” by Matthew Kelly, the author writes that a Polish Holocaust survivor once told hin: “Matthew, I am very slow to make friends. When I meet someone, I ask myself, ‘Would they hide me?,'” meaning would they hide him from the Nazis as some did, in their homes, businesses, and churches, during their rein of terror.
I did start to wonder, as I explored the rich Jewish history, full of tragedy and triumph: was there something essential to Judaism that made Jews more open-minded than even my own South Asian Muslim community. Later I found out that many South Asian Muslims supported and embraced me and LGBTQ+-ers in general, but they generally followed an outwardly conformist life path–and one of silence, which is still hard for me to accept. David Letterman once interviewed Aishwarya Rai, the Bollywood actress (not Muslim, but South Asian) and asked why Indian movies never showed romantic couples doing anything other than hugging. She giggled and said, very innocently, “I think we do all the same stuff, we just don’t talk about it in public.”
I, on the other hand, agree with my favorite gay rights organization, ACT UP, whose slogan is, “Silence = Death.” ACT UP was founded, un-coincidentally, by the late Larry Kramer, who was Jewish.
There’s a lot of fun in Jewish culture too–and fun and laughter are coping mechanisms certainly for me, but kind of for everyone. For one, the art of kvetching is, some say, intrinsic to Ashkenazi Jewish culture. In Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture In All Of Its Moods, by Michael Wex, points out how Yiddish was/is a lingua franca for Jews, bonding them in exile; a method of coping…and it’s just darn fun. The Joys of Yinglish, by Leo Rosten, is a dictionary of phrases (and how many there are!) that English borrowed from Yiddish. For someone like me, who is always fascinated by and who finds solace in words, when a Jewish friend gave me the book, I fell in love with it.
For example, if someone were to say, “I have an important meeting tomorrow,” and their interlocutor responded, “You don’t know from meetings!” “you don’t know from” is a literal translation from Yiddish. And I had always wondered what it meant. Yiddish (and “Yinglish”) also has a soothing, sort of…loving cadence. The sing-song-y way a Jew might say, “How long is the drive, I’m wondering.” Fun!
Or if someone were a little annoyed with another person talking about the same thing constantly, they might say, “Again with the complaining!” is derived from the Yiddish phrase, “‘shoyn vider mit…?’ This interrogatory phrase adds the preposition with to the already complaint-drenched again?,” writes Rosten in Yinglish.
Then there’s Yiddish theater, irreverent and wise, which gave rise to the very first sitcom, “Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Goldberg,” a radio play that began the “problematic situation-figuring it out-resolution” format of situation comedies to follow. They’re a personal favorite of mine, and again, partially as a method of coping. The idea of a problem discovered, wrangled with, and solved in 22 minutes, was a stark and welcome contrast my problems, which I felt were eternal and unbearable as a pre/teen.
Comparisons to the Holocaust
In the wake of the October 7th, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, I heard someone say, with an expression of chastising on her face, frowning and nodding, “…the holocaust that’s going on now in Palestine.” While it’s important to acknowledge when a genocide occurs, it’s doesn’t seem fair to use that word to describe the Israeli government’s detestable policies toward Palestinians. Perhaps it is a genocide, I’m not an expert on the terminology.
But people forget. They forget that Nazis used the skin of Jews murdered in the Holocaust to make lampshades. They forget that the streets of Berlin were once paved with the centuries-old tombstones of German Jews so that cars could drive over them. They forget Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis officially began their genocide of the Jewish people by destroying Jewish homes and businesses and the smashed windows that ended up as broken glass, littering the streets of Berlin. That’s why the term, “Never Forget,” came to be. Because people so easily do.
I cannot forget what Jews have done for me. I will not. And although, the Jews who save/d my life don’t stand for all the Jews in the world, I won’t ignore what Jewish friends have said to me since October 7th and the following growth in anti-semitism around the country and world. One friend said to me, choking and gasping, tears, “Where are we supposed to go?” Another said, “My dad was born during the Holocaust and when the war ended no place would take him. He grew up in Israel, so I owe my life to the place. I have sympathies for Palestinians as well…” Or a friend who went to Park but now lives in Israel and is a hilarious, brilliant writer who said, “I just don’t feel like writing since October 7th.”
The New Rhetoric is a seminal text in modern rhetorical studies written by Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca after World War II. The war and the Holocaust inspired them to write the book in part to understand how Nazi rhetoric turned normal citizens into ones who would turn on their Jewish neighbors and turn away from their murder.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca write, “Thus the adjective ‘eternal’ often refers to a term II: to Germans opposed to the Third Reich, eternal Germany was the real Germany as opposed to the apparent, transitory, Nazi Germany; but to Hitler, the use of the adjective “eternal” was merely a form of superlative.
My experience with Jews was a tiny moment in the eternal history of the Jewish people–of all people, including Palestinians. But despite the fact that it was “transitory,” it’s so real and important to me.
Shiaism and Judaism
As I said, I am a Shia Muslim (of Pakistani descent) and deeply religious. Shiasm is an Islamic sect founded on fighting oppression and tyranny. The histories of Shiaism and Judaism both taught me to fight the oppressors in my own life, the bullies and insouciant abusers.
In an incident that’s related to my experience of salvation at the hands of Jews exemplifies how deeply good the nation of Israel and Jews can be, I found an example of the rare compassion and kindness of the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. An episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, which I loved, during the 1990s, featured the story of a Sunni Muslim woman, Zoynaba, who lived alone and suffered persecutions by Serbians during the conflict in Serbia-Herzegovina. She had hidden Jews in her home during the Holocaust, and because she was then, perhaps not officially, but in some way, “Righteous Among the Nations,” a title given by the Israeli government to non-Jews who acted to protect and save Jews during the Holocaust for no reason but compassion. The Israeli government invited her to live in Israel to escape her own troubled life. She was made a citizen of the country.
Park and the Jewish friends I made there taught me to love myself, despite that the larger world oppressed me, just like Imam Hussein at Karbala. On the sands of what is now Karbala, Saudi Arabia, he said, all alone in battle…”A’antha akhee?,” “Are you my brother?” Karbala is the most important moment in Shia history because it’s an emblem of refusing to “take the oath of allegiance,” as Maulvi Syed Mohammed Naqvi said, to a tyrant of the time. And Jews have refused for 5,000 years to give in to tyrants, too. Jews taught me to love myself not despite the fact that I was gay/trans, but because I was. They made me one of their own, like Zoynaba. My Jewish friends often say, in all seriousness, “…but you’re an honorary Jew.” An honor indeed!
For another example, my best friend, a Jewish woman a year above me at Park told me recently, during a difficult moment for me, “I will not let you discount how intelligent, creative, and kind you are.”
Paths After Park
The Alumni Director at Park in 2022, Pailin Gaither, asked me to share my story of getting involved in local politics for a program called, “Paths After Park.” I did, and when I went to Park that day the same warm, wonderful wave of acceptance and celebration I encountered in high school enveloped me. The same one that I rode like a depressed, anxious surfer soaked in love and friendship back then, by my Jewish friends at Park who taught me to, figuratively, surf.
In the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a hugely important ancient rhetorical treatise, Cicero explains how to write an epideictic speech, one that praises someone. “The following, then, can be subject to praise: External Circumstances, Physical Attributes, and Qualities of Character.” My Jewish friends and allies taught that my external circumstances, physical attributes and qualities of character (like being gay/trans) were good, that they deserved praise. These were all things I hated about my gangly, oily-haired self, before I met them. But now I don’t.
Also: read why communication of all kinds stresses me out!
Most of my best friends are still Jews who I met at Park, and, again they have saved my life–and do every day–as those two who called me and told me they knew who I was and loved me did by making that famed phone call to me. I don’t have the fortune to know any Palestinians, but I’m sure I’d find many who would do the same. However, I’m not talking about what would happen, but what did happen.
Another Jewish friend of mine wrote on Facebook in late October, “…instead of chanting ridiculous, genocidal slogans, people can be part of the solution: advocating for two states, for two people, living in peaceful coexistence…both of which have deep historical roots in the land. It is time for a safe, secure State of Israel, and a safe, secure State of Palestine next door.”
Well, my Jewish siblings, I can and do live beside you. I am alive because of you. A 2020 Scientific American cover story recounted that being friendly–and cooperative–is why humans dominated the planet. So, yes, my Jewish friend above, it IS time for friendship, a two-state solution.
I hope you can see, as I did, that the Jewish people are Chosen for a reason–they love. They make mistakes, but they love. They love me, and I love them. And because Israel is their homeland, I must always support it.
Say It Loud, Say It Proud
In Hebrew, “Am Yisrael Chai” means, “The People of Israel Live.” In Arabic, “Wakadhalik Nahn,” means, “So Do We.” And In Ubuntu, a language spoken in parts of Africa there is a saying, “I am because we are,” which I say to my Jewish and Israeli friends.
I’m a big fan of studying fallacies of informal logic. We are as of this moment, all over the world, stopping the False Choice fallacy of “either Jews win or Palestinians win.” Stop–now! My faith in humanity wavers, but I know we’re better than that.
In Urdu, the language of North Indian Muslims and the official language of Pakistan, there’s a saying: “Sag baash, biradiray khurd na baash.” It means, “It’s hard to be a little brother, because your older brother mistreats you.” Jews and Palestinians are siblings (both Semitic ethnicities). So let’s not let either be the younger brother.
I’m grateful for your readership! Check back with me each week here at politicalpoetrypastiche as my linguistic, literary, and generally loquacious involvement in local politics takes on a mélange of prose and poetry genres. After all: All Politics Is HoCo-al™. Join me on Facebook here, find me on Twitter at @politicalpoetr3, and follow me on Instagram using the handle @politicalpoetrypastiche.