At some point in time, somewhere in the vastness of the internet, I swear I came across a quote saying, approximately, “writing is like breaking your own heart, over and over again.” To the best of my ability, I’ve searched for the source of this quote and have come up empty handed. I’ve found some that come close:
“Be brave enough to break your own heart.” - Cheryl Strayed
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” - Rumi
But nothing that hits the bullseye of what’s at the center of this quote for me - that as an artist, to create is also to ache, and to celebrate the joys of having thrust something out of yourself to show the world, you’ve also had to go through the labor of looking quite deeply inside at all the ugly and messy parts of one’s self and our world, and felt the pain of trying to make sense of it all.
Perhaps the reason I hesitate to claim this quote as a creation of my own mind is that it exposes a specific vulnerability I feel about my writing process at the moment. As the world in which we live is bursting with heartbreak and horrific violence, I have found it difficult to opt for more heartache on a personal level by sitting down and attempting to sort through my own sorrows by writing.
More specifically, since the events of October 7th, I’ve felt despair, disgust, rage, and hopelessness at the horrific violence of the Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and captured 253 hostages, followed by the catastrophic damage to Gaza and astronomical loss of over 35,000 Palestinian lives as Israel’s military response continues to relentlessly bomb, seemingly without an end in sight. Looking at this broken world, I have a hard time not fearing that this is a horror we can’t come back from.
This post is not really about the war in Israel & Palestine (or my views on the issue more broadly), but in trying to make sense of it all, words have often failed me. I’ve held my tongue in many conversations for fear of saying the wrong thing, or damaging a relationship, or sometimes simply for self-preservation, and subsequently felt the guilt that accompanies that silence. It’s taken an incredible amount of effort to protect my mental health, particularly as my Jewish community and secular queer community have felt so fraught and tumultuously opposed to one another.
While processing the tragedy of the Israel & Hamas war, I’ve felt a different kind of grief much closer to home. For the last year, I’ve watched my home state of Missouri attempt to legislate trans people out of existence by banning gender-affirming care for youth and many adults and prohibiting the participation of trans student athletes in competitive sports. More bills like this are advancing in the legislature right now, including one that would put teachers on the sex offender registry if they use a child’s chosen name or pronouns. While Missouri has long been a conservative state, this escalation of far-right-fueled hatred of LGBTQ+ people, women, and marginalized identities is frightening. Although I have many rights enshrined in Illinois, where I live now, my heart still breaks at the reality that I can no longer safely live where I was born and raised.
To say the biggest understatement of the year - the last 8 months have been hard.
Despite all this, as June approached this year, I found a lightness that’s been scarcely present in my life all year. I got a new bike saddle, fixed up my back porch with a new bench and greenery, and bought tickets to see G-Flip perform at the Backlot Bash. I started looking forward to outdoor gatherings, farmer’s markets, summer bike rides, swimming in Lake Michigan at Hollywood Beach, growing vegetables with my best friend in our neighborhood community garden, marching in the Pride parade with Chicagoland Jews, and just having the full creative license to be as outgoing and fun-seeking as I can be this month. However, as I’ve looked around my community, I don’t see much of the same sense of freedom and energy that normally permeates the days of June. Things feel muted, with an undercurrent of cynicism or apathy. I get why.
There is so much to be cynical and critical of this year. Of course, it’s extremely important to be critical of the commercialization and sanitization of Pride, “rainbow capitalism,” and the toxic positivity that can prevail in our culture. Of course, it’s crucially important to remember the roots of Pride as fundamentally a protest and a demand of trans rights, led by trans women of color.
Of course, it’s incredibly important to criticize a far-right, extremist Netanyahu government who is starving millions and murdering thousands of Palestinians, and abandoning the families of hostages by refusing to negotiate for a ceasefire agreement that would bring their loved ones home. It’s also important to criticize our own government's role in this war. And of course, it’s important to rebuke the antisemitism found in protest and organizing spaces in both the political right and left, and wherever it lives.
I’m tempted to add a “But…” statement here, but the artist in me gently nudges me towards finding the “And…” that is the ever-present, unturned leaf of our existence.
It’s important to be critical of these things, AND…
It’s also important to experience pleasure and have fun.
It’s also important to have community and be with others.
It’s also important to nourish our spirituality and deep connections.
It’s easy to see the truth and value in these statements on their own, but amidst the fraught of this current moment, I struggled to understand how to hold them all at once. Like any challenging truth of life, we as Jewish people can turn towards our texts and tradition for guidance.
Many people are familiar with the song “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season),” written by Pete Seeger and famously covered by The Byrds and Judy Collins:
As you might already know, the lyrics of this song are actually based on the book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet), 3:1-8.
1To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
לכל זמן ועת לכל־חפץ תחת השמים
2a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
ת ללדת ועת למות עת לטעת ועת לעקור נטוע
3a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
עת להרוג ועת לרפוא עת לפרוץ ועת לבנות
4a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
עת לבכות ועת לשחוק עת ספוד ועת רקוד
5a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
עת להשליך אבנים ועת כנוס אבנים עת לחבוק ועת לרחק מחבק
6a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
עת לבקש ועת לאבד עת לשמור ועת להשליך
7a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
עת לקרוע ועת לתפור עת לחשות ועת לדבר
8a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
עת לאהב ועת לשנא עת מלחמה ועת שלום
-The Koren Jerusalem Bible
I am not the first person, nor will be the last, to invoke these lyrics and turn towards our Biblical texts to make sense of our world, but I hear them calling out to me specifically in this moment. To me, these verses seem to be saying:
You are right to be angry and afraid. This is the time for that purpose.
You are right to call for peace. It is time for peace.
You are right to seek out that which lifts you. This is the time for being lifted.
What I love most about these verses is the very clear presence of the “And…” we so often shrink away from, and the space that is held for the expansive possibility of the human condition when we embrace it.
What happens if we embrace the idea that these times and purposes in our world are happening simultaneously? What if the times we are meant to feel joy and the times we are meant to feel sorrow do not exclude one another? What if it’s all wrapped up into one way of being? If that could be true, then maybe our criticisms of our governments and their wars, and our enjoyments of Pride and other summer festivities, don’t have to be at odds with each other, but rather, they are a balance to each other. Pride can be both a time to mourn and a time to dance.
The book Ecclesiastes is commonly attributed to King Solomon, and wrestles with the seeming contradictions of life, and how to find meaning and lightness amongst absurdity, loss, and darkness. I think many of us right now are wrestling with the very same thing, and these words have called out to us for generations as beacons of hope and promise when things get hard.
In a 2006 interview with the Smithsonian Folkways, when asked about writing “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Pete Seeger said:
“There's not only an audience out there, but it's a growing audience, as we realize this world has to stick together - and music is one of the best ways to learn this. A beautiful melody will leap language barriers or religious barriers or political barriers. Yes, a beautiful melody will will help tie this world together, and sometimes extraordinary words will. I didn't realize when I improvised a melody to a short poem in the Old Testament that these few words would be some of the most important words I ever would latch on to.”
You took the words right out of my mouth, Pete. He goes on to say:
“…even though we may disagree with each other, we feel like shouting at each other, we have to lower our voice and try - how can we say what needs to be said without making them so angry they will walk out?”
I’ll be the first to say that I often don’t know the answer to that question. I am usually uninspired by conversations around polarization, tolerance for differing opinions, claims that social media is killing our ability to connect, etc. In my experience, I have found that these conversations tend to rely on cliché or stereotypes, or seem to benefit only those whose voices are already most heard in our society. I think if we hope to make any progress in this realm, maybe we have to do less talking and more singing.
In writing this piece, I don’t want to contribute to the continuation of those types of uninspiring conversations or subscribe to a philosophy of optimism at all costs. I am not asking my fellow queer Jews to put aside their beliefs and their heartbreaks and their rage “so we can have a nice Thanksgiving” (queers & liberals/leftists of the family can relate). I don’t think it’s healthy to force a particular celebratory mood during holidays in general.
What I am attempting to do is stay in touch with the part of myself that desires to feel freedom, enjoyment, healthy optimism, movement, pleasure, and energy, especially at a time when this feels scarce, remain open to conversation and perspectives that differ from my own, and continue to call for peace and a better life for all Earth’s inhabitants.
If we read just a few lines down in Ecclesiastes 3 from where Pete left off in “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” we get something that speaks to this; in particular I’d like to look at verses 12-13:
12I know that there is nothing better for them, than to rejoice, and to do good in [G-d’s] life:
ידעתי כי אין טוב בם כי אם־לשמוח ולעשות טוב בחייו
13also that it is the gift of G-d that every [person] should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all [G-d’s] labor.
וגם כל־האדם שיאכל ושתה וראה טוב בכל־עמלו מתת אלהים היא
To me, this is a clear statement: it is holy and healthy to feel joy and enjoy life. And as we learned in the verses 1-8, not every moment of life will be a wholly positive experience; more often, life is a mix of both the sorrow and the joy. Pride month is no exception to this.
(Two great songs in one post? I know.)
For the rest of this June, I’m going to do my best to honor all of it, to not diminish my joy and not shrink away from the hard parts of this moment, either. If it feels possible for you, I invite you to join me.