Learning Too Late: The Cost of Our Ignorance
This one is for anyone who had a hard time listening in history class and doesn’t understand some basic parts of the war going on.
You are not alone and I am not an expert.
A woman wrote to me recently on IG when I posted something from Ms. Rachel. If you don’t know Ms. Rachel, she is a YouTube creator for children. She is a cheerful kind-hearted woman who helped teach my daughter to speak in full sentences before she was two years old.
Anyway, Ms. Rachel has been posting about how wrong it is to let the children in Palestine starve. As a mother, I wholeheartedly agree with her, so I posted it.
The woman who sent me a message on IG is also a mother, living in DC and experiencing a completely different reality. She is on the front lines of hate crimes that are happening in her Jewish community.
A couple was recently shot and killed by a man who believed that Palestinians need to be freed.
Here's what I learned and what I am ashamed to admit I didn’t fully know and it is that Judaism originated in the ancient Near East, specifically in the land of Israel.
In my defense, when I hear about religion, wars, and specifically religious wars, my brain stops listening. I just leave my body and imagine I'm somewhere different.
My brain thinks: “What do I need to know about religions that don't concern me? Who cares if someone believes in God in a different way? What do these wars have to do with me?”
It all feels wildly complicated and over my head, so I just stay out of it.
A few days after this IG message, the same woman sent me a video of the hate crime that happened in Boulder, Co. I went to college in Boulder, and later that day, I received an email from the President of Naropa University saying how wrong this act was and how they need to come together as a community.
If you are anything like me and you’re wondering why in the world are people who are saying, “Free Palestine” going after Jewish people, now you know. It’s because they assume anyone Jewish stands with Israel.
Also, if you don’t know what antisemitism is, look it up. I have had to look it up many times; it is hostility or prejudice to Jewish people.
Okay, one short story for you about when I went to college and learned about Auschwitz for the first time. I remember horrified looks from people around me. “You haven’t heard of Auschwitz.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and then I felt very, very small. This happened too many times in college, and eventually, I learned to feel small and be okay with it.
I learned that Auschwitz was one of the largest concentration camps during the Holocaust. We learned about the Holocaust, but it was one chapter in a thick book of boring history that I knew wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Maybe if we started teaching true history, histories that include all of the cultures that truly make America great, maybe instead of lying to our children and then whiplashing back with horrific truths, maybe we’d be able to digest it all better.
We could take in the truth, see the wrong in it, and see the strength of the survivors.
If you’re someone who went to a school where you weren’t taught about antisemitism, find any book written on the Holocaust and learn something about that time or listen to it on Audible or watch a movie.
I still don’t understand all of the complexities of this war.
I do not stand on either side.
I stand in the middle, as a mother, as someone who is witnessing innocent babies dying, and no religious war will ever make that okay.
We are human beings first.
Spiritual and religious belief is secondary, and if the practice of religion or spirituality is not rooted in non-violence, it is just humanity blinded by hate and indifference.
I’ll leave you with this question I've been pondering.
If non-violence toward self and others came first, how different would this world look?
Love always,
Danielle Mallett
