_For my Jewish cousins, my Arab siblings, and everyone caught in the crossfire of propaganda_
I grew up Jewish-American. I attended a Sunday school until the third grade. I slept through a lot of it. I was Bar-Mitz-Fah'd at 13. Our family was never religious, but celebrated some of the holidays. My Dad's side of the family is originally from Poland and Ukraine. I know nothing about what it is like in those places. I don't have a grasp on the languages of my ancestors (Polish? Ukrainian? Yiddish?). They were not from the Levant. They were not from Israel or Palestine. My family is Ashkenazi. Most of my ancestry on that side of my family came from the Pale, which is now part of Ukraine.
My parents separated when I was 17. It was long needed. The didn't really share anything in common. My mother came from French Canadian settlers that likely intermingled with the indigenous people of North America. That's a very mild way to say there was likely sexual violence and murder. I don't know. But I have met Native American people with the same surname who I consider family. My maternal grandfather was always good to me and his other grandchildren. We would do yearly visits to his home in Cape Cod. I miss him, but I don't really forgive him. Since a young age, he would send me these chain emails with racist vitriol towards Immigrants and non-English speakers. He would follow political bandwagons about border security and enforcing English-only speaking policies. When I spent time around that part of my family as a kid, I was very cruel towards my peers at school. It's like I was indoctrinated towards being a cruel racist bully around them. I didn't like that. I live with that shame to this day, and knew as a kid that this didn't match my values as a person.
However my entire life, especially growing up, I have always been around Spanish. I've learned Spanish for most of my adult and adolescent life. I have been to México, and am way more fond and competent of Spanish-speaking cultures. It wasn't until I was in my late twenties that I learned that there are Spanish speaking Jews. I was never taught this by anybody growing up.
When my life fell apart, when I blocked my mother, and exiled myself to a different state to be homeless and live out of my car, I found myself connecting deeply to the story of the Edict of Expulsión in what we know as Spain in 1492. I found comfort and solace in the bits of Sephardic and Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) content I could find on the internet. I would find myself seeking refuge in Christian faith communities being on new ground in the American South. This is also very much part of the American Sephardic experience, where Sephardics who fled to the Americas pretended to be Christian while hiding from the Spanish Inquisition, an institution of persecution that lasted for over 300 years.
I learned about Al-Andalus, the Golden Age of Jewish and Islamic culture in Spain. I learned that Jewish people and Muslims have lived and coexisted with each other for a very long time as friends and neighbors. This matched my lived experience growing up around Muslims in a large metropolitan area outside of Washington D.C. as well.
I'm proudly Sephardic Jewish and support a free Palestine. There is nothing Jewish about Israel's actions or history.
I wanted to share my Israelism story because I know there are many American Jews out there questioning their relationship with who they are and what Israel is doing. I hope that by sharing my story, it can help others find their way. I also want to share because there are many people who have suffered unthinkable loss at the hands of the United States and Israel's militarism and barbarity. I want to separate myself from that by sharing this, and a vault of resources I have found helpful and redemptive in re-educating myself.
Not in my name.
