Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of
the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
Trump trounced Harris and the next morning, she conceded. Now,
all that was left was for Dems to do grieve. Except for the small matter of
sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with their Trump-happy relatives in just a
little over 3 weeks—less at the time of this writing. Should Harris voters be
expected to sit across the table from their cretinous MAGA cousins?
Calhoun’s advice, I’d venture to say, runs contrary to what most
of us were taught by our mothers; namely that is courteous to set aside political
differences at the holiday table for the sake of preserving family harmony. We can
agree to disagree, because presidents come and go but family is family until
death do you part. We spend time with family at the holidays not because they
are entitled to our presence, but because it’s a tradition we value and cherish
as a society.
In Israel, of course, there is no such November 28th
conundrum to worry about. For one thing, most of those celebrating Thanksgiving
in Israel are expat Americans. They left their families behind to make Aliyah,
so there’s no one to argue with at table.
Then again, Thanksgiving is something expat Americans mostly
celebrate for the sake of the food: turkey, stuffing, yams, gravy, cranberry
sauce, and pie. And guess what? Sitting down to eat that meal will be pure
pleasure not only because of the food and the lack of argumentative relatives,
but because Donald J. Trump won—which means that this year, the only
arguing around Israeli Thanksgiving tables will be over who gets the wishbone.
With our stateside cousins of course, it is a different
story. We spend time with them only virtually in fits and starts. That makes it
a little easier to avoid tense subjects. And if ever there was a tense subject
it was this election, with most American Jews wildly at odds with their
Israeli counterparts.
Our cousins care about the hostages, but not as much as they
care about domestic issues, for example reproductive rights. They care about
Iran, but they care about abortion more; they have been told that Donald J.
Trump will take away their rights to their own bodies. Kamala Harris told them
so.
Joy Reid told them so.
In Israel, we understand our Jewish cousins in America have
domestic priorities. But we have trouble understanding how they feel about
geopolitics. We don’t like to think that they are ignorant, but do they know
they voted for a woman who helped fund October 7 and all that has happened in
its wake?
Israelis are hyper-aware of these geopolitics. So much so
that in the run up to the election, all of us were tense. I was tense. My
neighbors were tense. We all knew that Israel’s enemies were watching and
waiting to see who would win the election. My personal fear was that if Harris
won, Hamas would take it as a green light to shoot all the remaining living
hostages dead.
I did not dare tempt evil by voicing my fears, but now, in
retrospect, I can talk about it because it didn’t happen—Harris lost.
But it was rough. In the run-up to the election I could literally see those
executions playing out in my mind’s eye. Over and over again. It was hard to hold down food. Hard to
breathe.
I don’t know if I was alone in experiencing these visions—but
I know my feelings of dread and terror were not exclusive to me. Everyone
around me felt the same way and we were all quietly speaking about it to each
other. The election was the Sword of Damocles hanging over not just the
hostages’ heads, but all our heads. This was something more than politics.
And it is that “something more” that makes it so difficult
to be polite as we were taught, and set aside differences for the sake of
family.
I know what you’re thinking. What’s the difference, Harris
lost. But you see, it’s the vote that counts. It’s the vote that hurt and
cut so deeply.
It’s hard to square it in our heads, how “family” could vote
for Harris, someone who sends money to Iran and ties Israel’s hands. Someone
who bears responsibility for the fact that the Jewish people are no longer safe
anywhere in the world.
Many of us have a very hard time with this. We think of what
happened on October 7, of the hostages and of the hundreds of soldiers who have
been killed since, beautiful young people, older reservists with wives and
children, and we can’t bring ourselves to agree to disagree and move on. It’s
just too hard. We can’t look the other way and call it “only politics.”
I myself think back to certain lovely childhood memories from back when I was a toddler, and I don’t know what to do. We are family and yet this "family" prioritizes something other than me, my family here, and our people. They prioritized something other than the hundreds of Israeli soldiers who died defending our people—something other than the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who can’t go home to their homes in the north.
How can I look the other way?
They put us all at risk.
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