Borrowed Belonging and a Broken Illusion

I’ve always known I’m different; the black sheep amongst the flock of fluffy white lambs. But I’m not ashamed of my Jewishness, quite the opposite, I’ve always been proud of my heritage. However, if I told you my feeling and experience of otherness was always a good one? Well I’m afraid that would be a lie.

It’s hard to say when it first began; I think I’ve always felt different. I don’t think this otherness is necessarily a single event you can point to, or even a series of events. Rather a feeling that accumulates over time, a quiet awareness before you start to note the explicit treatment. Sure, I can recall some moments of awareness, not always overt antisemitism, but subtle signs that I wasn’t quite part of the ‘flock’ as it were.

Take Christmas for example. We’ve always celebrated it to some degree, a day to spend time together as family, exchange some gifts, and have a yummy roast dinner. But Chanukah was, and is still, our big winter celebration. When I think about December festivities that is where my mind takes me. And I’ve never really understood Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, whichever name you prefer. We weren’t brought up believing in him, and I have always found this abstract idea of an old man coming down a chimney a bit suspect. And the fact that all the children believed in him with such reverence really quite fascinating, if not also a bit foolish. So I apologise now if I ever exposed Santa for the fraud he was, little me thought she was protecting you from a lie dressed up as magic... Combined with feeling as though the real gift givers were due far more credit.

Beyond the cultural differences, beliefs, and world views we also have the more ’physical’ attributes. I want to start by saying that I don’t believe that there is any one particular Jewish ‘look’. We look like our history, a life in the diaspora, each with our own stories to tell. That being said, I don’t look ‘traditionally British’. I have olive skin, dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, further adding to this black sheep mentality. But hey, it made finding me in whole school photos pretty easy, quick sweep of the photo and you’ll fast find my brown face in the sea of white.

Of course there are also the instances of outright antisemitism, experiences I'm not sure I will ever forget, but those are stories for another day.

So this feeling of being other has always been there. Mostly quiet, but cumulative, seeping its way into daily rituals and playground glances. But October 7th tore the veil, what had been subtle became undeniable. We are Jews first, human last, the world made that very clear. Perhaps it was naïve of me to think the world might mourn with us, or at least acknowledge our loss. I wasn’t so deluded that I expected a red carpet, and had it been anything else I was well aware all we’d be hearing was crickets. But the silence that followed something of this magnitude, then the shouts that we were the monsters? That I was not prepared for.

I don’t think I have ever felt so isolated than I did in those, days, weeks, months, that followed. Even to this very day I’m acutely aware of just how alone I feel. And so that is why, to some degree, I relate to this idea of being an ‘October 8 Jew’. I’ve always felt different quietly, and yet, still wanted to believe in the promise of progressivism. But the events of 2023 sparked some clarity within me, I couldn’t rely on this borrowed belonging. I’ve grown up with people saying they don’t understand how the holocaust happened, and how if they were there they would have been one of the ones to hide the Jews. But I fear the last couple of years has shown us how it happened. I don’t want to be hidden, nor should I need to be, for that would be accepting my own erasure.

I refuse to surrender the one thing that makes me whole; handing victory to my persecutors; and betraying the bravery of the generations before me who lit candles in the dark so that I may stand here today.

October 7 was the event; the largest pogrom since the holocaust. And October 8 was the cracking of my kelipah, it was the day I saw who stood with me, and who did not. Rabbi Menachem Feldman once said “Everything G-d created, including evil, has a purpose” and that rings true. It has stripped away illusions and pushed me to live more visibly.

The result of this clarity? If I am to be treated as a Jew first then I will live as a Jew first, not as anything else. Our belonging in the West is conditional, and I can no longer pretend otherwise. October 8th is more than just a date, the day after, rather it has become an identity. The Midrash says, after a crisis, Jews can hear the silent covenant within themselves. Quite literally a spiritual phenomenon, I see the world differently, and so now I act differently. I go to shul, I’ve started learning Hebrew again, I’m taking on more rituals. But I am not alone in these acts, I am joined by the generations that came before me who also refused silence.

So here I am. A Jew who learns, a Jew who refuses to hide, a Jew who will continue to speak up, even as the world turns its back on me.