August 11th 2017 I was numbed by overwhelming helplessness after witnessing the long column of fire-bearing fascists snaking through UVA and hearing their chants ricocheting off the brick walls of the campus. The buildings were deserted. Mattresses leaned where they had been abandoned mid-move-in, as students and parents emptied out in advance of the mob. I was separated from my comrades and didn’t see them until we all made it back to our base.
When I got there they were washing pepper spray off with a hose. I went and found a relatively private spot and lit the shabbat candles I’d brought with me. I stared at them, humming prayers, Jewish lullabies, and antifascist songs, and crying, until they burned all the way down. I saw a lot of horrible things the next day, but that moment crouched in the corner, shielding my candles from the wind was a moment that wouldn’t let go of me.
I arrived in Charlottesville on Friday, August 10th, 2018 in time for the erev shabbat service at the shul before going to the house where the comrades of the Jewish Solidarity Caucus were gathered. I met face to face with people I’d been exchanging thoughts and ideas with for months. On our way into town to visit the shul the next morning, we sang along with the Yiddish partisan songs Shtil Di Nacht Is Oysgeshternt and Zog Nit Keynmol as well as the Spanish antifascists’ A Las Barricadas in the car on our way to hold our banner and our fists up defiantly in the space where last year there had stood fascists armed to the teeth.
When I returned home on August 14th 2017, it was Jewish comrades (who would end up also becoming DSA comrades as well) who welcomed me home with a banner peppered with magen davids, and a circle-A cake. Of the various types of leftists and DSA members I’ve encountered since joining the DSA in the intervening year, it has been Jews who most deeply and quietly understand what I mean when I say, “they want to kill us”.
My friends with the cake were talking about the newly-formed Jewish Solidarity Caucus, and wondering whether it made sense to organize specifically as Jews within the left. I was quiet, still pretty stunned by everything I’d seen over the previous 72 hours. When one of them asked me something like, “what do you think is the most effective way for us to organize?” I answered only, “with guns.”
Going back to Charlottesville, this time as a member of the DSA and surrounded by antifascist Jewish comrades, all drawing strength from each other and from the history of Jewish antifascism that we are still rediscovering, was an experience I could not possibly have foreseen as I stared at my little shabbat lights and shielded them from the wind with my hands the previous year. It was a complex and profound an experience to show up with Jewish Solidarity Caucus against fascism in Charlottesville and DC this year. I can hardly imagine what we will become together in this coming year.
Es vet a poyk tun undzer trot — mir zaynen do!
