[Source] My friend Mark has a metaphor that I think about a lot. If you lock someone in a cage with an angry pit bull, they’ll likely need to kill it before it kills them. That’s simply a requirement for survival. But assuming they live, it’s worth asking: who built the cage? Who brought the pit bull? Who keeps breeding more pit bulls? Who profits from the ticket sales?
I keep coming back to this because it so perfectly captures what I’m watching happen to people all around me, including many I love.
Recently, I watched a dear friend - someone who carries the weight of generational trauma much like I do - put his tribe on a pedestal while casting others as existential threats. Like me, he is a descendant of Holocaust survivors, inheritors of that particular brand of ancestral memory that lives in your bones whether you want it to or not. My other grandfather was Menachem Begin’s personal bodyguard for years. I understand Jewish pride, Jewish fear, and Jewish trauma in a very personal and profound way. Not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who heard the words “never again” from the time I was in the crib. I was told that a time to round up people would happen again and under no circumstances should I ever show my papers. In 2021, when vaccine mandates became a thing in many cities, including mine, alarm bells went off. I thought, “Grandma was right, but this time they’re coming for everyone.” I was blown away at the dissonance of my friends and neighbors who didn’t see this. The ‘othering’ was back - just wearing different clothes. And now I was watching it happen inside my own community.
And now, a few years later, I was watching it happen to someone close to me.
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