The earlier me
The famous American blue box of the Jewish National Fund
Perhaps the clutch at my former Zionism serves me best when I encounter Zionist American Jews. I understand their discomfort. I can see their pain. I want them to feel the discomfort that one feels when one is learning, growing, and stretching. In the classroom, I tell my students that it is a good thing when they are starting to shift in their seats uncomfortably, when they feel alarmed and nauseous at learning something new. And that it is going to hurt them. I want American Zionist Jews to question these things about Zionism that we were never to question. Rarely they do, but sometimes they do. I can say to them, “I understand how you feel,” and have true empathy in my eyes when I look at them. I know too, though, that it could be years before they realize that the pull they feel is a lie and the pain they feel isn’t about them.
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