There are still fewer Jews in the world today than there were before the Holocaust.
That’s a stark thought for the day. But in particular this day - Yom Hashoah, the Jewish memorial day for the Holocaust. A day to specifically honor the six million Jewish souls who were systemically murdered by 20th century Nazism. And I say 20th century Nazism, because we are now witnessing a second coming, and a perhaps even more dangerous wave, of this Nazism; the most overt display of which was in Southern Israel on October 7 last year.
This morning I posted a photo of an extraordinary tour guide and dear friend Samuel Green, who in the summer of 2022 took my friends and I around several places in Israel, including Yad Vashem, the greatest Holocaust museum in the world. This image (below) was taken at The Valley of The Communities, in which towering pillars of Jerusalem stone are carved with the names of countless towns and cities from which Jewish people were expelled and murdered. Samuel told us the history of some of his family. And I too have on more than one occasion found the names of the two places where my mother and father’s families were from two generations prior to being in Scotland.
I wish I could gather the ignorant here at this spot, and say to them - Look at these walls. Hear them. What do they say to you? These are their words. They are telling you that in order to understand ethnic cleansing, genocide and displacement, you can read aloud every name on every single one of these pillars, and with every syllable ponder the sheer scope of history’s desire to rid every place of its Jews. And then the final kicker would come when I would ask them to consider that these walls are preserved in Israel; the only place that guarantees the remembrance of the tragic yet glorious history of our people.
Samuel posted a video for Yom Hashoah today praising modern day Jewish heroes who are dedicating their lives to fighting this new Nazism; this new vigorous strain of Jew hatred. And in his post he included my name, and I remembered myself. I remembered why I brought friends to this place; to witness the survival of a small but relentless people. It’s a story that should inspire anyone, Jewish or not. But for too many it has become just another Jewish trait for the world to envy. Imagine envying the near annihilation of a people because society has dedicated itself to racing to the bottom of a pity party of victimhood. How desperate and terribly sad for the world — to envy a people for the atrocities they experienced. It’s on days like today that I realize why fighting Nazism has to be done. Because nothing has changed about the hate that we endure. It is time again to not become the vanishing Jew. To not be the leaves that disappear off the trees of our heritage.
A few months ago, I got DOV BER tattoo’ed on my arm. I know that arm tattoos can be provocative given our history, but to me they can be a reclamation. In fact, when I was in Northern Israel in February, I interviewed a man who had been displaced from his kibbutz. He returned to his evacuated home with me (we were both wearing flat jackets and helmets) and showed me photographs of his father. His father was an Auschwitz survivor and has since passed. The man pulled back his sleeve, and he showed me his arm, upon which he’d had his father’s number tattoo’d on his own flesh. I was speechless.
My tattoo – DOV BER – is not a number, but it was inspired by this man. DOV BER is an ancient iteration of my surname in Hebrew: Bear. I sought to acknowledge the lineage that I belong to; a blood line that is thousands of years old, traceable to the original people of Israel. A people who have forever evolved to evade persecution, yet who carry the same customs, the same values, the same songs in our hearts; a glue that reassembles our spirits after we have once again been scattered across the earth.
On Yom Hashoah, we must urge the world to understand the specificity of Jewish genocide. The Holocaust was not an anomaly blip in history. It was part of a cycle. A pattern. Generation after generation, Jewish people are expelled from the countries and communities we call home. Jewish people have to rebuild from scratch over and over, and often change our names and adopt new identities. When I shared an image of this tattoo earlier, I had hundreds of Jewish people connect with me over the name, and how it has appeared in their own families. We are a small, small people, renewing our connections to each other as though tying together old threads found in our back pockets. This has been our story for thousands of years. I wear the name DOV BER with pride. It connects me to thousands of years of ancestry, resiliency and survival. It’s truly a wonder that we are still here. Survivors, all of us.
This afternoon I had the honor of co-hosting a 90-minute session for college students from all over the world who require counselling in this dire moment of pro-Hamas encampments and university-wide aggression towards Jewish students. And as I listened to these students talk about their traumatic experiences, I couldn’t help but consider the repeated vignettes from our past; the social ostracization, the blame-shifting, the encforced shame, the pertinent and horribly unfair choices we are faced with in order to survive. I couldn’t help but understand that we feel as all Jews have felt in every iteration of this pattern with the non-Jewish world for centuries. For millennia, even. The students may be young but they are no different in terms of their challenges than we assimilated adults are. We spoke a lot about intimate ties, and the toll that post-October 7 conversations and actions have taken in our partnerships and friendships. How can those closest to us not understand our dilemmas, our pain, our fear? And how can we keep these relationships going? Can we? Is it possible?
I think about myself and what I would do if the tables were reversed. Without hesitation I kow that if someone I love perceived a friend or colleague as a threat, it would cost me far less to abandon said person than it would cost the person at risk if I had kept them around. That is a standard I adhere to and have practiced even when I couldn’t afford to do so, but it is a standard that Jewish people are rarely afforded with our non-Jewish friends and partners. I told these students today: that is not ok. No part of us has to be ok with a tolerance of hatred towards Jews in our midst. Basic reciprocity entitles us to at least be able to express the discomfort when something that threatens our very identities is indulged in places that are supposed to be safe and secure. Is it possible to sustain trust in such circumstances? I wish I could say yes.
On Yom Hashoah, this conundrum took on a near existential meaning to me. If the people closest to us cannot shut the door on people who deny Jewish pain, deny October 7, promote a Hamas agenda and believe in the dismantling of Israel, then they are part of the problem too. It should not need to be said but Jewish people are worth fighting for. We are worth loyalty. We are worth sacrifice. The Jewish people have always put more trust in others than we have received, because the natural position is to mistrust us. And that mistrust can make us feel worthless.
Despite our best efforts – and our efforts are often greater than anyone else’s – there is always an inherent scepticism around our true intentions. It’s been that way since Jesus died. What does it matter whether the Romans killed him? It’s a debate as old as time. Is there any other ancient death that is so hotly contested? Of course not. The capacity to frame the Jews is too great, and along with it the ability to justify thousands of years of denying us common decency. When I look at my arm, I know my worth. I know the worth of being descended from a people who live beyond the past. Who can imagine a future from the bleak ruins of the present.
This was taken at Kibbutz Nir Oz in December. This is the house of the Bibas family: Shiri and Yarden, and their children Ariel and Kfir. Still hostages in Gaza. Kfir, the youngest hostage, at one-years-old.
When I stood here and looked at the children’s toys, I remembered visiting the Theresienstadt ghetto when I was 16. Theresienstadt was a transit camp for Jews who would then be transported to extremination camps. Recovered at Theresienstadt was the art of the children prisoners (pictured below), who were still dreaming of a brighter future. It is harrowing to see representations of a child’s imagination and innocence while holding an understanding of the horrors they have witnessed, potentially endured and God forbid succcumbed to.
Never again is now.
In other news, today I learned that Blacklisted received 1/4 million views last month. I find that hard to fathom. Thank you to everyone who reads this newsletter. But thank you mainly to the people in my life who urge me to keep going, including you.
Thank you! If words could ignite our spirits and protect our people, yours would do it! Keep going!
You are a modern day hero, a Jewish hero, Eve. Thank you.