Israel - Part 2: The Personal Part

[fauxklore]

One other thing I should have included in the previous post re: Israel has to do with the claim that Jews (and, specifically, Ashkenazi Jews) are not indigenous to Israel. This claim has been definitively discredited by DNA analysis. There is, essentially, no difference in DNA among various Jewish groups, with the possible exception of Ethiopian and Indian (Cochin and Beta Israel) Jews, though the latter two groups do show some evidence of ancient paternal Jewish descent. There is also substantial genetic overlap between Jews and other Levantine groups, including Palestinian Arabs, Lebanese, Bedouin, and Druze populations.

I made a few attempts to find a good segue into what I wanted to say about the personal side of what’s going on in Israel right now. And I failed. So let me just say a few things.

A few weeks ago, I started obsessing about my father’s nightmares. The thing is, I don’t actually remember him having nightmares. I mean, I sort of do, and I sort of know he must have and I have vague memories that may have been fever dreams, a remnant of the malaria he had contracted in a DP camp after the war. I think a lot about all the stories I never heard because Dad didn’t want to traumatize us. So I never know what are real memories and what are things I’ve read about the Kovno Ghtto and Dachau. I don’t know why I started thinking about Dad’s nightmares, but it feels prescient in light of the Hamas pogrom.

I don’t know if generational trauma sank into my DNA or if that even makes any sense. I do know my American-born mother had a large family, while my Shoah-survivor father had his father and an uncle in Israel. (Even at that, my maternal grandfather, who'd studied at a yeshiva in Petah Tikva and ended up in Havana in the 1920's because one of his brothers knew someone there who'd teach him a more marketable trade than being a rabbi, had a sister who’d survived Auschwitz.) I’ve always known it could happen here.

So a week and a half ago, I couldn’t sleep. I was able to get in touch with various relatives in Israel and verify that they’re safe for now, but they’re still worried. (In one case, I have a cousin whose son-in-law, who is a doctor, has been called up.) The operative words there are “for now.”

And I see people marching and chanting anti-Semitic slogans and, yes, it could happen here. I’m reminded of a man I knew 40-odd years ago (Australian-Israeli, living in Montreal), who ended a sentence like that by saying “which is why you shouldn’t be surprised if you see me parachuting into Lebanon.” (Er, no, not something I am planning on.) And I’m not okay.

I don’t think I can ever be okay.

Comments

[snippy]

My shul has had armed security for over a decade.

[days_unfolding]

When I was in high school, I worried that some idiot would shoot up or bomb the synagogue that my friends went to. The one across the street from my mom’s house has a police escort when events are going on. Scary times.

[cellio]

It can absolutely happen here, and has at smaller scale. Charlottesville was real. Tree of Life was most definitely real (and personal). With the PR campaign the terrorists have been running for decades and how deeply that's sunk in in some places here (universities I'm looking at you, but not only you), I think we are right to be frightened.

[matsushima]

I don’t know if generational trauma sank into my DNA or if that even makes any sense.
Epigenetic trauma is a real thing. This is a horrible time and I'm scared for everyone in Israel, everyone in Gaza - and for Jews and Muslims the world over.

[ron_newman]

I thought there were enough DNA differences between Ashkenazim and other Jews that there are genetic diseases specific to Ashkenazim.

[fauxklore]

My understanding is that most of the population ethnicity studies are based on using Y-DNA and/or mitochondrial DNA, both of which are focused on more ancient ancestry than would be studied by looking at genetic diseases.