In our most challenging moments, can we find the path to empathy and peace?

Hi community members – I had a different, “normal” post scheduled for this week – but world events – and the rawness of all of this -- pushed me to write the piece below.

TW: This post mentions violence and murder.

When I was seven or eight years old, I saw films about the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

I saw the piles of shoes in these films, and understood that those shoes belonged to people who had been murdered by the Nazis. I remember seeing the images of thin, sickly people from the liberation of the concentration camps, and feeling the tragedy and sadness of all of this.

As a small child, I had nightmares for months, or maybe years, after seeing these images. (Honestly, sometimes I still have these nightmares.)

I learned something from these films and the stories around them. One minute, everything can be “normal” – and the next minute, a Jewish person can hear a knock on the door and everything can be taken away.

This is the multigenerational trauma that so many Jewish people live with, whether or not we have a relative who died in the Holocaust. The people in those films – the ones who lived and the ones who died – look like my grandparents, my parents, my children.

Over the years, my understanding of the weight of suffering and trauma has expanded. There are millions of people around the world who feel that same fear, or intergenerational memory, of the knock on the door or the fire burning down their community.

Closer to my home in California, there are Indigenous people who lived peacefully on the land until they were forced off by white settlers. There are members of the Black community who were economically prosperous until white community members threw them out of their homes. There are many people from all walks of life seeking asylum, fleeing countries filled with fear and violence.

This week, we heard the stories of Israelis living in peace in their homes in Southern Israel – until they heard a knock on the door from Hamas terrorists and, in a moment, everything was changed. Some were murdered, some were taken hostage.

As a Jewish person, this is triggering. It is a close community. Many of us living in the States are one degree of separation from loss: Yesterday I heard that the Israeli nephew of a beloved community member had been killed in battle. Several other Israeli friends have adult children who have been mobilized to the army reserves.

I am holding the grief and trauma, and re-activation of grief and trauma, that we are feeling right now. It feels so, so sad. Jewish tradition talks about how when one life is destroyed, worlds are destroyed. And that is what has happened – so many worlds have been destroyed.

But as an adult, I learned something else.

I want to live in peace. I want to build a world in which all people can live in peace and thrive.

I want leaders who move us towards empathy and peace. I am not sure we have those leaders, so maybe we need to stand up and become them.

Maybe I am being naïve.

I am a parent. I want to build a world in which my children can thrive – and all children can thrive. My white Jewish children, Black children, Asian children, Latinx children, Israeli children, Palestinian children, all children.

I do not want to burn it all down. I do not want another cycle of violence that creates more violence that creates more violence…

This week, I am holding all of this, as are so many of us.

These events will take me some time to process. However, as I lean into my work, I feel some comfort knowing that this is the work that The Ross Collective does daily, weekly, monthly, yearly: We create processes where people listen to one another, acknowledge different perspectives, and weigh in on the issues impacting their neighborhood and community. We encourage people to talk about power.

We design processes in which people see the humanity of those who are different from them and work towards collaboration.

In a world filled with divisive attacks, I think we could all use more empathy. Though, today? Nothing feels like enough.