The Grey Area

Reconciling Truth and Love

I am not a stable person. By that I mean, I am unable to control my emotions. While it means I get to experience positive emotions like love, inspiration, and joy in very deep and meaningful ways, it also means that a minor inconvenience can shatter me. So you can imagine that navigating the last 4 years under the Trump administration has been taxing. The hardest part, besides watching him run this country into the ground, has been watching the normalization of ignorance. It’s so frustrating to watch people you know, people you love, people you grew up with, suddenly start believing and spreading blatantly false information.

I’ve written here before, shortly after the attack on the Capitol, about my difficult relationship with my Mom’s side of the family. They are not Jewish, while me and my Dad’s side of the Family are. They have a very convenient way of dissociating us from other Jewish people and that way they can display anti-Semitic behavior while also loving me. One of the benefits of moving to New York from my hometown in Maryland was that I was suddenly able to spend a lot of time with this side of my family. I am very family oriented and for years loved having such access to my extended family. However, this newfound access to them came at a turning point in my life where I was becoming an adult. My rose colored glasses were beginning to crack and I was starting to see them, warts and all.

My extended family is from New Jersey, down by the shore, a short twenty minutes from Lakewood. The percentage of Jewish people in Lakewood is one of the highest for incorporated areas in the U.S., at an estimated 59%, many of them practicing Orthodox Judaism. This practice of Judaism is perhaps the most strict practice of the religion, rejecting the modern adaptations taken from Reform Judaism. Because of this, they may seem foreign to you. They are “easy to spot”. They are easy to blame.

Throughout history, we have a track record of blaming problems on groups of people we do not understand. The Jewish population of Lakewood has become a scapegoat for the problems facing that community in the same way immigrants have become a scapegoat for the problems in this country. All they have to do is breathe the wrong way and something is their fault. My intention today is not to dissect the deep rooted anti-Semitism directed at this group of people, but to establish a context for my own family’s anti-Semitism.

For years I had to sit quietly while inevitably the topic of “those damn Lakewood Jews” surfaced. This is an actual phrase I have heard uttered from the lips of more than one family member. As an 18-year-old I didn’t know how to articulate why I was so uncomfortable when this conversation arose, but as the years passed I became more aware that what I was hearing was anti-Semitism. I’d never experienced it before. Slowly I began to tell my family that I’d rather not talk about the “situation” in Lakewood. I took an easy way out that didn’t call them out for their bigotry, I simply said it was a local community issue that I didn’t connect with and I’d rather we talked about something else I can contribute to. That did nothing to curb the remarks. Then I began admitting that the conversations made me uncomfortable and I’d rather they not discuss it with me around. Still, my requests fell on deaf ears.

This all came to a head a few summers ago at a family party. My aunt, like everyone else, was drunk and once again the Lakewood Jews were to blame for something. I snapped. Raising my voice to her for the first time in my life I very clearly said that if she were to ever bring up that community with me again, I would stop visiting. While this certainly slowed the comments, they still slip out sometimes and in certain situations it almost feels like I am being baited to say something so she has an excuse to talk about it. There is a compulsive need in Southern Jersey to hate this group of people.

That brings me to the Capitol riot, where anti-Semitism was at the forefront of the attack. I watched with an aching heart as neo-nazis stormed the Capitol. They were wearing shirts that said things like Camp Auschwitz STAFF and 6MWE (6 Million Weren’t Enough, referencing the 6 million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust). I watched as police stepped aside, aided and abetted, these terrorists. And then I watched and saw who was justifying this behavior.

You all (hopefully) read my piece published shortly after the attack about when family isn’t enough. It still isn’t. My aunt who has continued to make anti-Semitic comments after I told her it hurt my feelings is the same person who was really upset and offended when I took to Facebook and said:

If you voted for Trump, fuck you. I don’t care if you’re a friend or family. Fuck you. I wish I could be as eloquent as some of my peers, but this demonstration has left me speechless. Whether or not you agree with what is happening in DC right now, you are part of the problem. Were you spreading fake news online? Did you make a passing comment questioning the validity of a clearly valid election? You did this. You legitimized this. You allowed this. So fuck you.

This Facebook status lead to a very sad confrontation between me and her in the comments where I laid out very specific and factual statements regarding the attack and why her, and other family members’, inability to recognize it as an act of anti-Semitic terrorism is problematic. She didn’t care. She was blinded by the giant FUCK YOU in my status, more concerned that I was being disrespectful and unable to hear the hurt in my words when I said I felt disrespected.

It has been almost 6 weeks since the attack on the capitol and the only contact I have had with her is when she texted my mom, my grandma, my sister, and me in a group chat asking what movie she and my grandmother should watch on Netflix. Being the unstable person I am, I couldn’t let it go. My mom texted me to the side and said don’t engage, but I had to. While it is unfortunate that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 isn’t streaming on Netflix, I did suggest they watch 13th, a powerful documentary from Ava DuVernay about race in America and the connection between modern day incarceration and slavery. It is unclear if they actually watched it, but they would most definitely hate it.

I cannot shake the feeling that this relationship has been irreparably broken, but what’s more interesting is that I, to an extent, do not care. I feel no guilt, no anxiety, no nagging gut feeling that I am doing something wrong. Quite the opposite. I feel incredibly steadfast in my decision to stand up for myself. It is simply unacceptable to allow ignorant people go unchecked anymore. That’s how we got ourselves here in the first place. The larger issue of ignorant people going unchecked is the group of people who are not liberal leaning, but also don’t agree with Donald Trump and his cult of followers. These people have a choice to make: side with morality and denounce him or remain silent. In the Impeachment vote this week we watched them choose silence.

As much anger as it causes me to see extended family posting QAnon conspiracies on Facebook, it also scares the shit out of me and makes me really fucking sad. They are aligning themselves with a group that hates me, hates my sister, hates my father, hates my gay friends, hates my black friends, etc. They hate who I am. Every time my sister shows me something new and stupid on their Facebook, I am reminded of why I am not friends with them on the social media platform. It isn’t because I don’t want to see it. Quite the contrary, I want to see it all. I want to leave really nasty comments on their posts. I want to hurl at them all the creative insults I can muster. I want to dox them on TikTok for being really bad people. I want them to know that I think they are the absolute scum of the earth for being this fucking stupid. I also know that would be going too far. I would not be able to control myself if I was friends with them on Facebook. I would go into a blind rage at the slightest hint of QAnon conspiracy. So I remain untethered, unfriending anyone I don’t agree with, not because I am trying to shelter myself in an echo chamber, but because I know I don’t live in an echo chamber. I am not stable enough to have an open discussion about our “differences” when the differences at hand are who gets human rights. I just don’t have a grey area in my heart for my family to occupy anymore.