Waking Up to War
When I woke up Saturday morning, Israel was under attack. My regular readers and listeners know I’m Jewish, but fewer of you know that my PhD is actually in Middle East Studies, and my focus was on the history of Israel and how it is presented in monuments and museums. I’ve spent several years in Israel if you add it all up….teen trip, junior year abroad, research for my dissertation. So the stories of Hamas’s invasion hit particularly hard. Luckily, my own family is all safe.
However, I learned that my dissertation advisor’s daughter and son in law were shot and his grandson survived by hiding under their bodies. You might have seen or heard my advisor, Ilan Troen, interviewed on NPR, CNN, BBC, and frankly almost every other outlet in the US and UK. Watch one such story here.
When I first told Ilan I was pregnant with my now 15 year old, he told me about his new grandson, or that he was expecting a new grandbaby (frankly, I don’t really remember now). That baby was the teenager who survived the massacre by hiding for 12 hours while texting his family. He, too, was interviewed on TV…in the clip linked above. So my head has been in the Middle East a lot this week. I haven’t found the words to discuss it, though you might have seen me on Twitter and Threads trying to inject some nuance into an insane situation while processing my own grief. The article below echoes my thoughts beautifully, so I thought I’d post it, rather than try to write something similar. Please read it, if you want to know what many of your Jewish friends are feeling right now. There shouldn’t be a paywall.
