The Art of Brokenness

I wrote that little poem years ago and never published it. (The title, if you are unfamiliar, refers to a Japanese art form that involves repairing broken ceramic vessels by fusing the pieces back together using gold.) It’s been on my mind a lot lately.

I’ve been struggling, for months, to write about what this post-October-7 universe is like for me, and there’s something in this poem that expresses where I am now.

For most of this period I have been doing what I really learned to excel at during the pandemic: placing one. foot. in front. of the other. I affix mental blinders and stay wholly focused on what’s right in front of me and what I can control, and try to block out the chaos around me. It’s an effective coping mechanism that’s gotten me through a lot of hardship. But there’s only so long you can maintain that kind of tunnel vision.

Even now, more than 250 days in, I am still discovering cracks in my soul. Maybe I’m meditating to try to calm the perpetual anxiety before sleep. Maybe I watched a news segment, or heard a snippet of an interview, or listened to a song that used to inspire me. And it’s like I suddenly noticed that a limb is missing. New feelings are there that weren’t there before, or the opposite–feelings I expect to be there that aren’t anymore. My daughter tries to get me to play “hide from the monsters” with her and I suddenly can’t breathe. The guided meditation track says, “You are safe,” and my mind and body say: “No I’m not. I’m not safe. I’ll never feel safe again.”

Sometime in the first few weeks, the NYT reporter who wrote about me a couple years ago got in touch, saying he’d been thinking a lot about our conversation and about the characters in Disengagement and how this event would have affected them. (Yeah, I know, I’ve thought a lot about it too but I’m definitely not ready to write those stories.) He asked to interview me again; our conversation didn’t end up making it into the piece he was working on, but it was nice to chat with him anyway. He asked me if my political views had changed in light of what happened. At the time, I answered that I didn’t think so. The only thing that surprised me, I said, about October 7, was the scale of Hamas’s success. I always knew they would do something like this if given the opportunity, what was surprising was that they got it.

However, as time has gone on, some of those cracks have turned up within my belief system about the world and how it works. Do I really still believe that coexistence and listening to each other’s stories is the way forward in this conflict? Do I really still believe that most people are good at heart? Do I really still believe that most of the people right there across the valley don’t want me and my children dead, they just want to live with dignity, and once freed from the radical terrorist regime that controls them, they would choose peace? Do I really still believe that antisemitism, though always present, will ultimately not be tolerated in so-called progressive societies? Do I still have hope for the future?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

And moving through a world where those things might not be true–or at least as true as they were for me before–is incredibly painful and disorienting. I applied for a gun license in October. The weight of that pistol on my person feels like a physical expression of the weight of responsibility I carry with me now, to protect myself and my family, because I can no longer trust the government or army to do it for me.

What I lost on October 7 is much harder to define or quantify than what was lost by those directly affected. I didn’t lose a loved one, I didn’t see things no human should ever see, I wasn’t held captive, I didn’t even have to spend that much time sheltering from missiles compared to people in more central places. I have been able to show up for work each day. I have celebrated Shabbat and holidays and birthdays, I’ve shared meals with family and friends, and I have laughed and enjoyed things. But every day I encounter new evidence that something in me is deeply broken.

This is grief. It’s a process. It takes time. And I won’t come out of it the same person I was before. I still don’t entirely know who I am or who I have become since October 7. And that’s okay. If you are feeling a similar way, I want you to know that it’s okay. I am intimately familiar with this process of shattering and refashioning oneself into something greater and more refined. It’s the story of my life. And your life. And the Jewish people. And humanity as a whole. It’s the hero’s journey. And I’m still deep in the Abyss. Carrying my sorrow gently, gently. And waiting for those cracks to fill with gold.

Sending love to you all and prayers for better days very soon.