guest post by Rabbi Jeanette Friedman

Long before social media became a “thing,” I knew about an outspoken and articulate feminist, Elana Sztokman. I followed her decades ago, when we were both on different paths pursuing the same thing: an end to domestic violence and child sexual abuse in the Jewish community—and she made a deep impression on me with her dedication to the cause and her determination to make a difference.

Her latest work as a feminist and anthropologist has once again brought her readers to the intersection of personal identity, religion, and political awakening. She deals with tough issues facing the Jewish people, the issue of conscience. In this exciting new book, Elana again emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, empathy, and the rejection of dehumanizing ideologies. She challenges us here to confront uncomfortable truths about nationalism, prejudice, and historical narratives.

We both began in the same place, with so many others: Brooklyn. We were both born into Orthodox Judaism. We were taught what we thought was authentic Judaism—a Judaism with ethics and menschlichkeit. But we learned otherwise when we experienced how the community treated domestic violence victims, abused children and agunot—without respect and human kindness. And those were things that convinced us to take a different path, a different derekh—and opened our eyes to injustice everywhere.

In high school, though we did not attend the same one, every brain cell we had was washed thoroughly and rinsed completely by the story of the post-Holocaust miracle of the State of Israel. Along with millions of American Jews, we bought the story of a righteous Israel, an army that never attacked innocent Arabs, never ethnically cleansed Arab villages, was never unfair, never destroyed homes, never behaved like superior, entitled privileged characters. As American Jews we swallowed the story whole—hook, line, and sinker—especially after Leon Uris’ book Exodus was published and turned into a blockbuster film telling the epic, and also mythic, story of the founding of the state of Israel in the early 1960s. The Six-Day War in 1967 put the exclamation point on the whole shebang. Literally—it was a miracle of miracles that could justify anything, and I do mean ANYTHING, that followed, even if it was horrendous.

We really believed in our heart of hearts that Israel could do no wrong. Our young, hungry brains were looking for a Jewish way, a Jewish place where we would be safe from garden variety antisemitism—and imbued us with a hatred of “the other” that was hard to excise from our hearts and souls. Meir Kahane, an old neighbor of ours, drove that hatred of “the other” to new heights—against Blacks in America and Arabs in the Middle East. My aunt in Israel, a Holocaust survivor, put it to me this way, and I remember how shocked I was when she said it. “The only good Arab is a dead Arab.” I never got over it.

In 1982, differently and apart, we both had the wool removed from our eyes by the war in Lebanon and the massacres in Sabra and Shatila. And since then, in an attempt to deal with facts, doing away with memes telling us that every Muslim on Planet Earth wants us dead, or memes that say we will never have peace until we kill everyone, Elana has become the voice of a moral minority trying to reason with the kind of thinking that leads to genocide. It’s the kind of thinking that led to the Holocaust and the kind of thinking that led to our current matzav—in Israel and in the Diaspora.

Not content to quietly change her mind, Elana delved into the issues. She met with Palestinian families, worked with them toward peace, cried with them and they cried with her, putting herself where few Israelis and no “farbrente Zionists” would dare go. She learned that the lies we were told about the Arabs were not much different than the lies the Nazis told about us. She wrote about it, talked about it and worked to effect change in a place where it can feel impossible to do so, fostering empathy and challenging the stereotypes that have been repeated ad nauseum for decades. She is in serious conversation with Eva, her Palestinian friend, who is as honest with Elana as Elana is with her.

This book is the story of her journey to the truth. In it she rips apart every lie, everything we hear every time we dare to consider the innocent Arab children, the innocent Muslims and Arab Christians who are our neighbors and who also want to live in peace. She shows us that they are not “Other.” They are human beings who carry the Divine Spark we all carry because we are created by God.
They call people like Elana Hamas supporters, UnJews, antisemites and traitors for daring to protest this insane war and The Occupation that is destroying the world Jewish community from within.

As for the government that keeps the fires of hatred burning, she writes about that, too. She writes about the hostages and makes an important, specific point: the Israeli government doesn’t care about the hostages. The Israeli government doesn’t even care about those internal refugees whose lives have been ruined and offers them no solace. They offer no solutions, but in this book Elana forces us to ask the real questions.

By sharing her difficult journey, Elana invites readers to question entrenched narratives, embrace empathy, and seek a more just and peaceful future. She is making a bold call for conscience and change in the face of systemic hate and prejudice. She warns us what the future will look like if we continue on the road called Hate. Unfortunately, those who should read this book, won’t. They are too afraid to be convinced they have been wrong for decades—and like Netanyahu’s government, continue to prefer hatred and war to love and peace. Mores the pity.
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Rabbi Jeanette Friedman, recent olah, author, editor, publisher, The Wordsmithy LLC.