Hatikvah and Other Feelings

I am Jewish.

I am a Jewish American person. And I get really tired of feeling like I have to prove it to people. Yes, my name is Montana. It’s not a Jewish name. And yes my last name isn’t especially Jewish either. And yes I have green eyes and don’t go to temple anymore and my mom is Catholic.

That doesn’t make me “half-Jewish”.

And it doesn’t matter that I went to Jewish summer camp for 5 summers or that I had a bat mitzvah and was confirmed or that I was the social action chair of my youth group or that I went to Jewish conventions or even that I went to Israel for a month in high school.

I don’t “look” Jewish or “seem” Jewish, so I’m can’t be.

However, here we find ourselves after another horrible shooting. This one hits home for me just as much as the one in my hometown. I’m just as much part of the Jewish community as I am the Jacksonville one.

And I don’t want to have to justify that. Because the truth is that my heart is broken. I can’t imagine the pain that the congregation is going through. I really want to have a hot take or something interesting to say. But the truth is simple. Our president is a monster, Congress is broken and republicans don’t care about us.

My brother and I were talking earlier about why people hate Jews so much. Not that any group of people should be hated, obviously, but what is it about Jewish people? And what makes someone Jewish? If they don’t practice or marry a non-Jewish person or decide that everything is the worst and nothing matters and there’s no heaven anyway (though Jews don’t really believe in “heaven”) so why even try, are they still Jewish? What if your aunts and uncles and cousins are and your mom thinks it’s important that you call yourself Jewish even though you’ve never really been to temple and hated camp?

What do we have to do to make us worthy or unworthy of this nasty, vile hatred?

Am I safe because I can pass?

People who hate Jews are certainly getting a pass right now. As I write this, I just got an email about Mel Gibson being cast in a new movie.

What.

Everything is just ok now? There are no consequences? People are barely even tweeting “thoughts and prayers” about Pittsburgh. Why would they?

They’re going to take it back next week anyway. It doesn’t fucking matter.

And yet.. we press on. We get out of bed and I wear my shamrock necklace and yell at my brother for not wearing his and tell my Jewish roommate that I think it’s great she started going to temple again and I go to my industry job and listen to people say that Jews control it. Because what else can we do?

Israel isn’t exactly crushing it right now with their response to this whole thing, but I am going to pull something from them anyway. The name of the Israeli national anthem is Hatikvah, which means hope. It’s a real Esperanza Rising vibe. Did you guys read that book in school? Should I be bringing this up in the middle of this nice thing about the Jewish spirit being enduring?

No.

But, the point is that Hatikvah means hope. And that’s what we really need right now.

To quote lyrics from the song that I still can’t get out of my head, by the star of the Jewish summer camp circuit Rick Recht, “This is the hope that holds us together, Hatikvah, the hope that will last forever.”