Activating My Zionist Self

They said we killed Jesus. And though my sister and I thought we had an airtight alibi (being only seven and 10 years old), the kids of Mary Street could not be convinced. It was 1976, and my family had relocated from Long Island to a leafy suburb just outside New York City. The students of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School, with whom we shared a bus stop, said they’d been taught that the Jews murdered Christ. My sister and I were the first Jews they had ever met.

At first, the abuse was limited to name-calling—“big nose,” “k*ke.” Then, a game: Throw a penny in a bush and make us fetch it. I could retrieve the penny, but not without muddying my knees. When it escalated to hair-pulling, my parents started waiting with us at the bus stop.

But they couldn't always protect us. One night, my sister and I were home with a babysitter when we heard a commotion upstairs. Some of the older brothers of the Sacred Heart kids had broken in. They painted swastikas on our walls and threw our furniture down the stairs while we hid in a dark closet, nightgowns wrapped tightly around our knees.

The babysitter dragged the phone to the closet and called her father, who came quickly, as did the police. The perpetrators’ parents made excuses—“Boys will be boys”—and my father sold our house at a loss. We moved away and tried to forget. In a birthday video I made for my mom decades later, I included a single image of that time. I captioned the photo: “We Don’t Talk About Mary Street.”

I don’t know if it was because of the antisemitic harassment or not, but my family was almost completely non-observant. No bat mitzvahs, no synagogue—not even on High Holy Days. We celebrated Passover with Maxwell House Haggadahs, my mother breaking out the Dustbuster if crumbs of matzah fell on the table. We ate kugel on Rosh Hashanah and got presents on Chanukah, and that was the extent of our Jewishness.

After graduating from college, I moved to Manhattan, where cultural Judaism was omnipresent. Even my Dominican super used Yiddish phrases: “5B left their farkakte tub running.” It finally felt safe to be Jewish, and I began to crave a more observant lifestyle. At a St. Patrick’s Day party in Chelsea in 1995, I met a handsome Jewish man even more detached from tradition than I was. Something made me ask him, that very night, if he would be willing to marry in a Jewish ceremony and raise our children Jewish. Too fast? Yes. Too forward? Maybe. But I didn’t want to waste time with someone who didn’t want a Jewish family. 28 years and two Jewish sons later, I’m glad I asked.

We observed the holidays, joined a shul and sent our children to Hebrew school. But we rarely celebrated Shabbat and, over the years, our synagogue attendance dwindled. Our Judaism was merely an accessory: something we knew we had but didn’t bother reaching for, like a box of photos on a high shelf.

And then October 7 happened.

Like anyone who saw footage of the attacks, I was heartbroken. But one day later, when the world turned on Israel with a vile torrent of antisemitism, I was enraged. October 7 awakened a beast inside of me. That little girl cowering in her nightgown had grown up into an activated Zionist. I vowed to never again make myself small.

To that end, I knew I had to go to Israel. I traveled with six equally anguished girlfriends. We moved from dawn to dark, learning, seeing, listening, crying, but mostly admiring. We could not help but be in awe of the strength of the Israelis: their grace, their humanity, their incredible optimism. Men who had lost their legs in battle spoke of how grateful they were to be alive. Women who had survived the Nova massacre adopted the motto, “We will dance again.” I vowed to adopt a more “Israeli” outlook when I returned to New York.

Being Jewish today is like going through puberty: hearts are broken; emotions are at an all-time high. You can’t stop talking about how terrible it is. And yet, from that morass we emerge wiser, more mature: able to face challenges of greater consequence. I will survive the growing pains—and stand beside my Jewish brethren, my Israeli compatriots, to say, proudly and loudly, “Am Yisrael Chai.”