Your Blindness
Recently I've had my first painful experiences around my Jewishness in the community singing world. Not infrequently throughout my life it has felt like the world is organized against that part of my identity. I had unknowingly idealized the community singing world, only to find, sadly and now unsurprisingly, that the same thing can happen there.
This poem came through me not long after, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to read it to the people involved in our mutual process of understanding, empathy, and repair. I share it here feeling even more urgency now, with a swastika having recently been spray-painted at an elementary school across the street from one of my choirs. This, at a time when there is a dramatic rise in antisemitism in our country, including recent murder and near-murder of Jews in the name of hate.
This comes at a time when there is an upsurge in hate and hate crimes towards many human beings and groups in the United States, perhaps toward those who share a component of your identity, too. Among the most treasured words I have heard from people who have heard or seen this poem are from a dear friend, who said, “It’s a zipper song.” A zipper song, in the community singing world, is one with some words that are replaced with other words each time through the song. If the Jewish content doesn’t resonate directly, perhaps you feel a resonance with a component of your identity as you experience the Jewishness of the poem replaced by words, feelings, memories in your own heart. May this poem land in a way that is of service to you.
[Note: I refer, metaphorically, to blindness in this poem. I want to acknowledge there are many, many people with actual physiological blindness with a wide range of remaining vision, including variances in light perception. More information is here.]
your blindness
your blindness does not prevent you from knowing
exactly how to hurt me
for as i make my way
through this Christian land
it is like walking through a forest
dense with razor-sharp leaves
on neck-high branches
and even as i walk so carefully
inevitably i am cut
many times a surface scratch
sometimes a deep wound
always leaving a scar
beloved events on my holy days
“Hanukkah, that’s your Christmas”
hearing “Jew” and “faggot” before the pummeling began
and so
quickly my armor forms
keeping away more of the hurt
keeping away more of the light
and quickly my evasion begins
shutting down
fitting in
hiding out in the fortress of whiteness
within those walls i am the face of the oppressor
may that shame and grief be transformed
and may my power
my privilege
my platforms
be used for good
yet let that not obscure
how life has so often been organized
against a treasured part of me
and that the cuts
continue to draw bright red blood
your blindness does not prevent you from knowing
exactly how to hurt me
hundreds of times
linked with lineages across thousands of years
and millions of Jews
through the generations an unbroken chain of suffering
for me all the more painful
because the gift of sight is ever-present before you
just waiting for you to receive it
willingly
hungrily
even greedily
and to say yes
i am curious
i am reaching
i am listening
i feel you
so even as i pray for that day
i will not stop there
i will stop hiding
stop accommodating
stop protecting
and I will shout from the rooftops
of my father’s kiddush
and my mother’s candlelighting
of blessing my children
and their voices singing camp songs
of Yom Kippur and Passover
and the seven circles of the betrothed
and I will seek out and uplift
the shard of Divine Light in everything
in people
in nature
in myself
and in you — that it may one day light your way out of the darkness
i will meet you there