Dear fam,

Today, my first baby completed her sixth revolution round the sun. Six years ago, I was in a hospital bed with an epidural in my back and a baby about to emerge, screaming, into the world. I was certain this was the most difficult and intense thing I'd ever do; surely nothing could be harder or more painful than these endless hours of riptide contractions, right? Nothing more visceral than these growls, shrieks, otherworldly sounds that didn't sound like anything I knew I could voice?

I didn't know I was about to step, blinking in the blinding light, into a technicolor wonderland. Like Alice, I would soon discover that, on this side of the looking glass, everyone is mad. Me included.

Also like Alice, I would encounter a host of strange and wonderful companions, guides, perplexing puzzles, infuriating moments, rivers of tears that threaten to wash me away, and whimsical grinning pals who offer encouragement when I least expect it.

I'm belabouring this metaphor. But the truth is, parenthood often feels like being through the looking glass. You can see your life as it was, everything and everyone just beyond reach, but you cannot touch them. They can't hear you, not really. Instead you're in a world that seems illogical -- but it isn't. It's just that you have to puzzle out the logic in the madness.

At first, I wanted desperately to get back to the before times. To my before self. Now? You could offer me anything at all and I wouldn't take it. This nonsensical, crazy, wonderful madness is exactly where I want to be.

A moment ago, I sat on Toddler's bed and explained why she is not allowed to kick my wife, even though she's very unhappy about having to go to sleep. An hour or so ago, I sat with Big Kid in the bathroom and read facts about colossal squid. This afternoon, we all went to get ice cream and then adventured down a creek bed in a local park looking for water left from yesterday's storm.

Six years ago I had not yet met either of my children. That seems unfathomable to me now. How could I have lived without wild emotions, ice cream afternoons, and ocean facts?

My life now, wild and chaotic though it may be, is more vibrant than I knew possible. I will never stop being grateful to these magical fairy children for making me a mama.

I hope wherever you are, there's a bit of magic and craziness (the “makes-me-more-alive” kind), in your days.

Love,

Mikhal

Welcome to the Chaos Palace is where I write about being a parent with ADHD to a kid with ADHD. I also write about queerness, Judaism, otherness, creativity, and how they intersect. Oh, and poems sometimes. If you want to tap the little heart or share this with a pal, I'd be honored. Thanks!

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Some recent posts…

Dear fam,

It’s Friday morning and summer is finally here. Well, Big Kid would say that technically summer will be here tomorrow — June 21st — and we should be precise. But I think the smell of wildflowers coming in on the breeze through my window is precision enough. The sun on my skin n the playground this morning felt like health. Finally, warmth. Calm. Breath.

It’s been a bad week, world-wise, to say the least. I’m more than a little stressed and sad. I spent most of the week following the news and trying to see how my loved ones back home were doing as they scrambled up and down stairs into bomb shelters. I texted with my bestie from Berklee, whose family lives in Tehran; together we lamented the reality of fearing for the lives of the ones we love. And, while I have the privilege of not having lost friends and family, it is not lost on me that this is a matter of luck and circumstance. Nearly 40% of folks in Israel either lack access to a shelter at all or are crammed into an under-maintained public shelter. Once again we see that, while things are unfathomably shitty and painful, there are levels to the shittiness.

One story of a person w/o a shelter

Today in Haifa, where a lotta my fam is

So. All that being said, I actually have some good news to share with you! My wife, Ella, and I are launching a podcast along with our wonderful pal Asher Kurtz. It’s called Queer Sages, and it’s an oral history of queer folks — as told by them to us in candid interviews. We’ve been working on this for over a year (we got a little sidetracked by, um, the apocalypse) — editing audio, composing music, and more and more.

We’re finally ready to release the first three episodes, beginning next week.

All Chaos Palace subscribers will be automatically subscribed to the pod here on Substack unless you tell me otherwise. Of course, you can always unsubscribe — no hard feelings at all, ever. Everything will be free to read or listen to. If you want out — drop me a note!

Queer Sages is being created in collaboration with Sage USA, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people. We’re not looking to make any money off this pod, but if you want to share some dollars with Sage, we think that would be a wonderful thing to do. LGBTQIA+ elders face all the same challenges regular seniors do, plus unique issues like being less likely to have a supportive family structure, facing discrimination in many housing situations or senior living facilities, and having healthcare denied them due to discriminatory practices. Sage does incredible work advocating for these folks, as well as creating opportunities for community-building and so much more.

Learn more about Sage USA

You can expect the first episode Monday morning (I’m gonna go schedule it now). It’s a conversation with Richard Daniels, a wonderful choreographer, filmmaker, dancer, and all-around fascinating person.

In the meantime, wishing a you as peaceful a Shabbat as possible.

Love and hope,

Mikhal

Hey there! Welcome to the Chaos Palace is a space uplifting ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to find opportunities for growth & creativity in the messiness of life.

You can support my work by sharing this post with someone you think might get a kick out of it, upgrading to a paid subscription, or just clicking the little heart button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you, thank you!

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Recent Chaoses…

Dear fam,

One thing you should know about me is that, in my best moments, I’m a damn ray of sunshine. Truly. I say this with no qualms about being overly confident because, to be honest, I’m actually pretty self-conscious about it.

One time, in college, I was so happy to see an acquaintance at a party that I leapt into his arms and hung off of him like a koala bear1. Was I close to this person? Not really. I can’t remember his name today. I’m also the person who goes back through emails to delete extra exclamation points, lest the recipient think I was high when they read my words. I can often be found either (a) jumping up and down, (b) rocking out in a public place, like a gas station, or (c) shrieking with delight because a song I like came on the radio.

I am, as the young folks say, a little bit extra.

My good fortune led me to a wonderful woman who thinks this is cute most of the time. I never feel too extra for my wife, and thank goodness. Because Lord knows I expend undue energy trying to contain myself for the rest of the world. If you ever detect me bouncing a little on the balls of my feet, that’s me not jumping.

But you know what’s even better than a wife who loves your tsunami-level excitement at the blooming of a tulip on an afternoon walk? A life partner who doesn’t make you feel guilty for all your less-than-great moments. One of the most common side effects of living with an ADHD brain in a neurotypical world is deep shame. This meta-analysis of scientific works pertaining specifically to women with ADHD shows consistent findings in many papers that all point to “notably low self-esteem and self-efficacy” in women with undiagnosed ADHD, as well as struggles with “negative automatic thoughts, feelings of shame, guilt, and self-blame.”

I was diagnosed in my mid-30s, so yeah, I can attest that these findings check out. Three and a half decades of not knowing why you can’t do all the stuff other folks can do (like be chill) can really mess a person up.

When I told my wife I’d be writing about a few of the ways in which she supports me she laughed and said there are a lot more than a few. She’s right! But these emails have length limits, so we’ll have to limit ourselves to three areas of support. I chose these because I think they’re the most actionable for other folks out there who may be trying to support an ADHD-er in their life.

1. Staying Unfazed in the Face of Chaos

Yesterday, when I looked out the kitchen window at our newly planted flower garden, I didn’t expect to see a swamp. Alas, that is exactly what I saw. This is because I’d forgotten to shut off the hose the night before when I’d been watering the garden. Thinking about it, this made sense — the water pressure had seemed wonky the night before in the shower. Now, though, all I could see was our newly purchased seedlings floating around in the muddy pond that was once a flower bed.

You know what, though? I didn’t panic, didn’t spiral into a swirling tornado of shame, didn’t fall apart. I knew everything would be ok because that’s the messaging my wife and I have been working on learning for the past decade and a half.

She knows I’m trying my best, even when I forget my wallet, or lose my phone for a few days, or leave the door open all night. This helps me to remember that I’m trying my best, too, even when my best looks a little different than it does for neurotypical folks. Here’s how you can show your ADHD-er you’re not ruffled by their missteps:

• Stay calm. When you keep you voice and demeanor calm, it helps us to avoid catastrophizing.

• Ask practical questions. Is it broken? Do you need help cleaning it up? Do you need a minute? These are actionable questions that can bring us back to earth. They also remind us that most things are fixable.

• Reassure us. This can seem tough when we’ve done something totally wacky, but it’s crucial. When we’re lost in a swirling internal monologue about our inherent failure, we can’t move on. We also can’t help fix whatever happened. A quick, “Hey, it’s gonna be ok. I’m here.” can make a world of difference.

Stepping In When Things Get Rocky

As I’ve written (here), emotional lability is a major feature of ADHD for many, many people. This can mean mood swings, or a short fuse, or a tendency to be heartbroken one moment and exuberant the next. To the uninitiated, it can be confusing or even disconcerting to be around.

When you’ve been in it for a while, though, you begin to notice the warning signs of a major meltdown. And when you’ve been in a partnership grounded in trust and respect for a while, you begin to be able to express these signs to your partner.

A few weeks ago, for example, our Big Kid had a meltdown at the playground. The details don’t matter, really — she just didn’t have the emotional capacity to handle what was happening. So, she became a swirling chaos-machine. I carried her two blocks to our house, pushing Toddler in her kid-car with my available hand. For the entire two blocks, Big Kid smacked me across the face hard and screamed “YOU’RE THE WORST!”

When I got home, I was at the end of my rope. I yelled to my wife, who was working, that I needed her now. And, because I don’t do that unless it’s an emergency and she understands the meaning of emergency, she came right away. Took one look at me, and said, “It’s ok. Go.”

I went. I gathered myself. I returned. The whole time, I never had any doubt that my wife had my back. We know we can count on one another in moments of crisis, no questions asked; if it had been her coming through the door with red cheeks and wild eyes, I’d have done the same. I know she’s not scared of me, which is a huge gift.

Here’s how you can show your ADHD-er you’re not scared of their outbursts:

• Help us step away. When we lack control, the best thing we can do is go somewhere to let the Big Feeling move through us. If you’ve had a conversation about stepping away before the Big Feeling (which you should), you can remind your ADHD-er to take a moment.

• When we’re calm, talk about what happened. Not (!!) in the moment, when we’re blind with anger or sadness or whatever else. We’re not there. Wait until later, and then debrief without, and I cannot stress this enough, judgment. Trust me, we already feel bad about it.

• Ask before touching. When we’re in the thick of it, our sensory selves are on high alert. Any Big Feeling like rage or despair is basically an iteration of the fight-flight-freeze instinct, so we’re deep in our animal brains. We may not react so well to a hug or even a hand on our shoulders, so ask before you come near.

Building Strategies for Success

When we first moved into this house, I kept leaving the door to the basement open. Which was kind of a problem, since Toddler was just learning to scoot around and could easily have toppled down the stairs. My wife reminded me again, and again, and again to close the door.

My brain is not so great with the habit building. In fact, one of the key impairments found in ADHD brains has to do with forming habits and routines. Basically, it takes us longer to make our brains remember a habit, and if we skip it even once it’s kind of back to square one.

Nonetheless, Toddler (née Baby) needed to stay safe. So, instead of making me feel like a pile of hot garbage by reminding me every time I got it wrong, my wife did three things I think are absolutely brilliant. Here’s what you can do to help your ADHD-er build towards a strategy of success:

• Ask what we need, and offer suggestions. In this case, what I needed was a piece of masking tape that said “Close the door!” in bright purple, placed at eye-level on the door. We talked about it, and recognized that I respond well to visual cues. Since then, I’ve used the masking tape strategy to help me form other habits — locking the back door, taking my wallet, unplugging my phone charger. A partner-forward approach made it feel like our joint responsibility to solve this problem, not my brokenness to fix.

• Let us know how you’re going to support. Yesterday, my wife told me she’d noticed I was leaving the AC on when I open windows. “I’m going to start reminding you about this,” she said, “so let me know if it gets annoying or I can say it another way.” Now, when she reminds me, I have context and, once again, a commitment to partnership on building this structure.

• Offer encouragement. One thing all ADHD brains have in common is that we are thirsty for dopamine. When you say something nice, even the tiniest thing!, it encourages us to continue trying.

All of this may make it sound as though my wife is my caretaker and I am but a helpless, hapless person wandering around, held captive by my Big Feelings and executive dysfunction. In fact, the opposite is the case! I am, in fact, a very capable adult. With a neurological makeup that makes certain things more difficult.

Truthfully, the most important thing my wife has done to support me is to engage in a shift of consciousness — and that’s something we’ve done together. We recognize the areas in which I struggle, as well as the areas in which she struggles. This recognition is very matter of fact — her being better at scheduling and me being better at spontaneous water fights is not inherently good or bad. It’s just the truth. This shift in mindset, attained by talking things through for about 1.2 million hours over fifteen years of partnership, has helped me see my challenges as just that: challenges. Not failures. Not inherent brokenness. Not a sign of my wanton, slovenly, useless self.

This joint clarity also means we’re able to divvy up the household responsibilities without keeping a running tab of resentments. We each play to our own strengths and, when possible, we try to support one another in getting better at certain things. Sometimes that means she tells me I need to figure out a system to stop forgetting my keys. She can help, but ultimately — this is my responsibility to figure out.

Sometimes that means she accepts I will be losing my headphones 12 times a day and I accept she will not be helping me find them. We are who we are. We love each other — all of each other — even the annoying bits.

Sending love from my chaotic heart to yours,

Mikhal

Hey there! Welcome to the Chaos Palace is a space uplifting ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to find opportunities for growth & creativity in the messiness of life.

You can support my work by sharing this post with someone you think might get a kick out of it, upgrading to a paid subscription, or just clicking the little heart button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you, thank you!

Subscribe now

Dear fam,

Two nights ago I was in over my head. The girls were arguing about… honestly, who knows? Something inconsequential. They’ve been bickering a lot lately about nothing at all (each more stubborn than the other), digging in on issues like whether the Cheerio is heart-shaped or circular.

My wife was out for an hour or so at a community event. Toddler was running a low-grade fever. Big Kid decided she urgently needed to bake cupcakes. My phone was dinging with Slack notifications — edits and tweaks needed on work stuff.

Why are Mondays like this? And other days, too?

Eventually, the day ended (they all do) with two sleeping kids in two beds. Deep breaths in the sweet darkness.

Stepping out into the blinking bright hall, I felt my chest tight. I knew, deep molecular knowing, that I needed to be outside. Desperately. To walk, to breath, to disconnect from the day and reconnect to my body-mind-soul. But it was pouring down rain. Lightning and thunder. Deluge. Rivers in the streets.

I went anyway.

For the next almost hour I splashed and sploshed and breathed in the rain-clean air. I listened to an whole album from beginning to end (this one). I danced in the streets. I stopped trying to focus my ADHD brain, instead letting my sticky psychology grab onto every last sensory input. You know, I spend so much of the everyday trying to squeeze my ADHD brain through the playdough fun factory of the neurotypical world. It feels like this:

Monday night, for an hour, I let the playdough soften, until any space between me and the universe was… incidental. It felt glorious. Every one of my cells was alive.

This is the poem I wrote about it.

Wishing you a week of connection.

Love always,

Mikhal

Hey there! Welcome to the Chaos Palace is a space uplifting ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to find opportunities for growth & creativity in the messiness of life.

You can support my work by sharing this post with someone you think might get a kick out of it, upgrading to a paid subscription, or just clicking the little heart button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you, thank you!

Subscribe now

Dear fam,

One amazing side-effect of writing this newsletter every week (often multiple times a week) is how it’s made me more aware of the little moments in life. I never want to find myself on Friday with nothing to say, so I’m always trying to take little snapshots with my mind.

*flash* Big Kid riding her bike on the blacktop at school.

*snap* Toddler walking into preschool clutching her kangaroo-fox.

*flash* My wife reaching over from the passenger seat to put her hand on mine.

Each one of these is like a tiny geode, crystalized time glittering inside. I place them carefully with the rest of my collection, and try not to forget their specific shine.

Before I began Welcome to the Chaos Palace, I wrote a parenting blog for a paper based in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. I’ve never been to Minnesota. Nonetheless, the editor liked my pitch — Parenting by Parashah — a weekly column about parenting as understood by thinking about the weekly Torah portion.

Sort of a proto-Chaos Palace, as it were.

In Jewish practice, the Five Books of Moses (collectively, the Torah) are read each year in their entirety, one bit at a time every week. Each of these bits is called a portion (or parashah) and is paired with a selection from one of the books of prophets, known as a haftarah. Traditionally, the Torah portion is chanted publicly according to specific, very old melodies (that differ in various communities). Each portion has a name, usually taken from the first or second verse of the section.

I wrote 52 of these, each week for a year, and it helped me to read the biblical text through this specific prism. I grew up going to synagogue every week, where I’d heard every portion many times. But this was different. I was different. The words came off the page into a mind changed by the radical experience of becoming someone’s mama.

I’m so grateful to that editor for taking a chance on me. Like so many other generous editors before and after him, he helped me become the writer I am today. And even though I continue to change, and now-me is different than then-me, I’m still proud of the work I did during that time.

When I thought about what to share for this week’s grab-bag, it occured to me that it might be interesting to dig up the Parenting by Parashah post for this week’s Torah portion I’d written back in the day. So, I got in the way back machine [read: my Google Drive] and found it. The experience of reading this now is both bizarre and resonant. I’m not her anymore, but I also am.

There is so much she doesn’t yet know, and that’s kind of lovely. We didn’t even have Toddler yet when this was written! Makes me almost wistful, but also thrilled. Because this Mikhal hadn’t experienced the many, many moments of joy that were yet to come. It’s exhilarating to think about what joy awaits me, and all of us, in days to come.

During these dark days, it feels good to remember that future joy is on the horizon.

I hope you enjoy this blast from my past, and that you hold past me with compassion. That’s how I’m holding her.

See you Friday (which I guess is tomorrow, even though I’m writing this Wednesday evening) for a Chaos Palace update!

With much love,

Mikhal

Parenting by Parashah: Ki Tisa (2022)

Parenting is hard. Of course, it’s also joyful, and awe-inspiring, and wondrous. All of that. But it’s okay to say that it’s hard, too. Anything you do day in and day out, especially anything you’re learning on the job, would be hard. Parenting, though, is a special kind of hard, and that’s because it comes with a veritable trousseau of baggage that you’ve collected over the course of your lifetime. Everything you think you know about yourself, about your strength of character and the way you were raised, will come into question when you have a child.

I know it’s just part of the process, but it can be a very painful part. Your child will be a reflection of some parts of you or your partner (if you’re raising a child with a partner), and that reflection will be sometimes adorable and sometimes terrifying. ‘Oh no, is that what I’m like when I’m angry?’ you’ll wonder, knowing that the answer is absolutely yes. They’ll inherit some traits that you didn’t know you loved about yourself, and some traits you kind of hoped would get lost in the mix.

Some parts of them will be brand new, too, and you’ll have to figure out how to navigate those as well.

I’m thinking about all of this because a verse jumped out at me as I was reading the Torah portion this week. God is giving further instructions on how to craft the Ark of the Covenant and telling Moses who will be tasked with the creation of this sacred object. “See, I have singled out by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah,” says God in Exodus 31:2. Why Bezalel, you wonder? God answers that right away. “I have endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to make designs for work in gold, silver, and copper, to cut stones for setting and to carve wood — to work in every kind of craft,” He says in Exodus 31:3–5.

In other words, Bezalel was just born talented. Which is not a revelatory statement. Of course we are each born with our own specific gifts and abilities. As a mom, I would be happy to sit and tell you all about my child’s inherent genius. Yes, I know this is a cliché, and no, I don’t care.

The part that has me thinking is what this means for my role as a parent. I know that some things about my kid just are the way they are. For example, the way she never sits still. This is not an exaggeration. My wife loves to tell the story about how, at our very first ultrasound, when she was just a teeny, tiny blueberry-sized person, the technician couldn’t get a good view because the blueberry kept jumping.

Folks, she is still jumping. [Note from now-me: She is still jumping now, too.] She was born a ball of energy and has remained so. She was also born with a sensitivity to sounds, an affinity for music, and a determination that has led her to master physical skills long before she should have. I, for one, could have lived with her taking first steps a little later than she did, but (like so many things) this was not up to me.

Before I became a mother I thought that my role as a parent would be to teach and guide my little one. The Hebrew word for parent, horéh or horáh, depending on the gender, comes from the same root as the one for teacher—moréh or moráh. It also shares a root with the word Torah, which is sometimes described as a guide for how to live a life of spiritual connection to God and our ancestors.

The thing, though, is that I’m not so sure this is the definition of my role anymore. I mean, of course I teach my child things. My wife and I spend all day explaining how to put Legos together, how to brush teeth, how to ask nicely, and on and on. But part of me thinks that my role is more preservation than it is guidance.

Who my child is right now, this unadulterated version of herself, is so bright and bold it can be blinding. Her emotional self has no inhibitions: When she’s sad, she’s heartbroken; when she’s angry, she’s furious; when she’s happy, she’s overjoyed. She speaks her truth. If she doesn’t like something (or someone), you’ll know about it. When she loves a song or a story, she wants to submerge herself in it. In truth, I’m learning a lot from her about how to be authentic and vulnerable.

So much of what we do as we get older is about hiding ourselves in order to be acceptable by societal norms. We don’t want to be too much, or not enough, or weird. We don’t want to have too many big feelings, or to say the wrong thing. We fear rejection. Is my job, as a parent, to protect my child from the rejection of society by teaching her to rein it in? Or is it my job to do the opposite, despite the ensuing heartbreak at the hands of those she will undoubtedly encounter?

I do believe that God gives us innate abilities, that much of who we grow up to be has to do with who we’ve always been. It’s clear to me that my wife and I will encourage her to pursue her various interests (music, cars, magna-tiles) and I know we want to help her figure out how to keep her ability to be in her feelings, and to be honest about what she’s thinking and feeling. This will be hard, but it’s worth it. Maybe that’s a truer meaning of parenthood, not teaching a blank slate about the world but recognizing that our children are rich beings and nurturing those parts of who they are. Instead of adhering to societal expectations, maybe the more radical thing to do, as parents, is to forge a new, more authentic society full of people who are connected to their most honest selves.

Did you know? Welcome to the Chaos Palace is a space uplifting ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to navigate the mess that is the world. You can support my work by sharing this post with others, getting a paid subscription, or just clicking the like button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you!

Subscribe now

If you liked this, you might also enjoy…

Dear fam,

Once a week, I try to send a surprise post — a poem, or a Q&A with a creative person, or a deep-dive on a lesser explored symptom of ADHD, or some other thing I think you’ll find engaging and valuable.

The poems come least frequently. This is mostly because poems are, in my opinion, the form of writing most worthy of reverence. To distill a human experience into a perfect few words is just… well, pretty impossible. I don’t really think I’m capable of such divinity, if I’m honest.

I still write poems, though. And part of my personal journey is accepting that, although my writing will likely never be even an arm’s-length away from perfect, it is still valuable and worthwhile. Indeed, the act of sharing is a worthwhile endeavor — it is this welcoming of others into our own little silos that creates the wonderfully messy human experience.

So. Now that we’re done with the caveats.

I originally wrote this poem seven years ago, in the weeks following my mother-in-law’s passing. At the time, the poem was trying to express a specific ache and absence of words, but as I revisited it this week it seemed to express something very real I see now in my day-to-day. A sort of inability to express the bewildered fear and grief that follows so many of us around. Even though this is a poem from a specific time and place, it felt resonant to me.

I changed a lot of words this time around. Tried to get even closer to the beating heart of the poem. Tried to tune into whatever radio message the universe (God?) is sending when I’m writing. Tried to ask good questions about what should be and what shouldn’t be and how it all should come together. Tried to answer them.

Sending you this with love, and compassion, and strength to sustain us all through the hard days that have been — and the hard days yet to come.

Yours in messiness,

Mikhal

Just a reminder that Welcome to the Chaos Palace is a space uplifting ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to navigate the mess that is the world. You can support my work by sharing this post with others, getting a paid subscription, or just clicking the heart to tell the bots you liked this post. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you!

Subscribe now

Extra Chaos!

Dear fam,

Last night, I was thinking about what I want to share with you for our mid-week post as I drifted off to sleep. As I’ve written, I think about falling asleep as unspooling — all the threads of thought I’ve collected during the day coming undone until my mind can relax into a bed of tumbled wool. This is when my best thoughts float to the fore, and I suspect this is because it’s the only time of day when I’m not actively trying to filter and control my ADHD impulses and noticings.

Drifting through the flashing, whooshing thoughts last night, one thing came through to me with perfect clarity: I want to share some love.

Especially now, in a moment of shocking hatred and anger. Especially now, as gay love and queer existence is under attack. Especially now, as the world spirals into more and more darkness. I wanted to take a moment to notice the light.

Barefoot Angels was one of the first essays I ever wrote, long before I knew I would be a writer for real. It tells the story of how my wife and I met at music school, both closeted gays, and fell in love. It’s about being lost, and figuring out how to find the courage it takes to live in your truth. It’s about the power of love to heal the pain of societal rejection. It’s also just about two lesbians being cute.

I wrote this in 2017 and it was initially published in 2020. Reading it now, I’m struck by how long ago that all seems. Not just in a geopolitical way (although, yes, that as well) but as a pair of people in the world.

We’ve been through so much in the past almost-decade of love and partnership! We became parents twice, lived through a pandemic, got a cat and lost a cat and got two more cats, got mental health diagnoses that changed how we view ourselves in the world, learned how to navigate the special education systems in both New York and New Jersey, bought a house, moved, launched careers… I could go on.

I also want to note that there are sections of this essay relating to the struggles my family and I faced when I came out as gay, which also feel wild to read now. Even though I know they’re true. We all had a lot of growing to do, but we grew. The idea that my wife and my folks wouldn’t get along seems very, very far away. I left it in because it’s part of the story — sometimes things are hard before they get easy.

So much of this had the potential to break us. Instead, through very hard work and dedication to facing the hard things head on together, it made us stronger. I can unequivocally say that we are a better couple today than we were when I wrote this (even though we were pretty great then, too). Where will we be five years from now? Ten?

So, this is my gift to you, fam. A story with darkness bending towards light.

And to my beautiful, inspiration of a wife who I love with my whole heart (and who reads this newsletter diligently, bless her) —thank you, thank you for making my life constantly better.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Mikhal

Barefoot Angels

Our first kiss was equal parts intention and hallucination. I don’t remember which poem we were reading — when did the air get so thick with desire? I remember shallow breaths

I didn’t even know her that well.

Her whole room was a mattress on the floor surrounded by piles of clothes strewn everywhere. And two young women, frozen by the enormity of this feeling. What is this?

Silent, we waited for it to pass. It didn’t.

So I kissed her.

And she kissed me back.

***

“If I could make this go right I’d go home. Then all I’d ever learned would fade away, like a photograph, a word in a mouth…” the sound of her voice fills the room, accompanied by folky guitar fingerpicking, “We’re like barefoot angels that glow in the dark. Sing it hard, sing it hard, sing it lonely….” her voice trails off and now the guitar is left alone, filling the room with stardust and visions. I’m mesmerized, and frankly, a little stoned. But regardless of the weed-induced lethargy creeping in my muscles, I can’t stop staring at this woman who is casting a spell on everyone present, seemingly without too much effort. Just by being herself.

My chest is choked with contradictory feelings. I feel free, which only makes me more aware of how ensnared I am. How many times have I gone over this in my head? Too many to count. I cannot be gay. Not now, not ever.

If I repeat the same sentence to myself enough times, does it become true? How many times until it works? I am a good daughter. I am a good girlfriend with a good boyfriend from a good family. I am happy, I am happy, I am happy. I can be perfect. Brick by brick I had constructed a sturdy structure of identity, bonding together each statement with the thick mortar of fear and shame at the possibility of being caught.

There are ten or so of us sprawled on floors and couches in this humid Tel Aviv apartment. The air oozes in the gaping windows, hot like a breath. My shirt is sticking to my skin. The room smells like stale beer and joints. The girl with the guitar is still singing and I close my eyes. I take a breath.

Later, on the ride home, I look around at these new friends and wonder: Is this what belonging feels like? Just a car full of people getting lost together.

***

Two, maybe three months after that first kiss we’re lying in bed, the lights are off, and I’m almost asleep. I don’t have a fan, and it’s hot, so we’ve left the bright blue hardwood shutters open to let in the heavy night air.

The girl with the guitar and I have been secretly dating for a while now and tonight she snuck over to my place, late. No one at college knows. Neither one of us is ready for that.

We’re both nervous about what people might begin to assume about us. We don’t even know what to make of all this. In most of the country, being openly gay is unthinkable. It’s 2009, just a few years after an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed three people at Jerusalem Pride — in my hometown. The year after the stabbing the parade was cancelled and the international LGBT community decided to hold WorldPride in Jerusalem, resulting in violent riots for months on end.

This turned into an enclosed gathering instead, with heavily armed policemen surrounding the queer community on all sides, and screaming fanatics protesting outside the arena. Tel Aviv is easier, but it’s still an uphill battle. People stare, mutter under their breath as gay people pass by, cross the street, offer unsolicited comments, ask hurtful questions.

We had recently told our families. My mom got uncharacteristically quiet and told me that she’s not angry, “just disappointed”, as if that was better. My dad was quiet, too — eyebrows raised in an unspoken question. Now, neither one mentions the girl. When I go home for a weekend, I make a point of mentioning her as often as possible (am I the asshole?) because I want to be as in-their-faces as possible. My mom looks pained every time this happens.

But none of that frustration or fear matters right now, in this room.

“You know something?” the girl says, her voice warm with sleep. “I think, maybe, I might kind of love you.”

Caught off guard, my eyes open wide, but all I see is the dark room and the streetlight glowing yellow through an open window. She hasn’t ever said anything remotely close to this before. I’ve been trying to play it cool for months. Not very well, I think, but still. I’m terrified of scaring her off.

“OK.”

“That’s it?” she turns to me, surprised.

“I mean. I think, maybe I sort of love you, too.” Now I’m just trying to keep up. Hopefully this is the right answer.

She grins, snuggles closer. “I think you more than sort of love me.” I snuggle closer, too. The city swirls around us and we lay completely still, dreaming together.

***

“You’re like a word on the tip of my tongue, and suddenly I remember your sound,” Just one year after I admitted to the girl with the guitar that maybe, probably, I may be out of my mind in love with her, I’m singing to her on the navy-blue corduroy couch in the apartment we now share. We inherited the couch from the previous tenants. We have an upright piano and two guitars. We sing each other songs, and work hard, and sweat, and cook for each other with the cheap veggies from the local market “I’m like a mess that’s finally clean, like the best version that I’ve ever been, like a sky touching the ground.” We sing each other songs, and work hard, and sweat, and cook together in our tiny kitchen. We look at each other in wonder.

We also fight. She won’t kiss me, or even hold hands, in public. I get it, but I’m still frustrated and mad. She doesn’t want the stigma. I’m ready to rage at anyone. I want to rage at them.

One night, we’re walking back home from a date when two guys try to hit on us. “Actually, we’re kind of together,” I say, grabbing her hand.

They laugh, and not in a kind way.

“No, for real. She’s my girlfriend.” I’m trying to be stern. She’s standing there, waiting for this to be over, her eyes somewhere else.

“Ok, kiss her then.” They laugh again, keep laughing as we walk away.

***

One night, in that teeny two-bedroom in Tel Aviv, she stays up all night writing a song on our piano. “When everything’s a lie, there’s nothing to hold on to. You can see it in my eyes, my dear, the weight has tired me,” she sings it to me the next morning, over ice-coffee, “My love is leaking.” Her long, lovely fingers stroke the keys lightly as the sun comes in our bay window, shaded pink by the curtains we had sewn together. Afterwards we talk about the song, and she swears it isn’t about us. But I know it is.

That morning, after she left for the day, I wondered if our relationship could hold water. We may have met too soon. We both have so many dreams, and with this much confusion about who the hell we are, how can this stick? A friend tells me that if I’m so miserable I should just call it quits, enough already.

Maybe it’s because I’m stubborn. Maybe it’s because we more than sort of love each other. Who knows why anyone does anything? We stay.

***

I am Ella’s first (and only) serious lady and she is mine. All of my previous explorations were drunk, disastrous, and fraught with the terror of actually being gay. By the time we met, I’d spent hours arguing with myself about the idea of actually dating a woman and had reached a very clear conclusion: Not a good idea. It’s not worth the rejection, the stigma. Some people are just not destined to enjoy sex, I tell myself, Why be greedy? There are other things to enjoy about life. Many nights, I end trying to drink it away.

One such night, long before we’d met, I got drunk enough at a house party to kiss a woman. I knew she was into me. She knew I was into her. Both of us were supposedly straight. She leaned over me to say goodbye and her hair made a soft curtain around our faces. I went for it. She kissed me back, but then quickly pulled away, shocked.

Later that night, barefoot and filthy, I sat down cross-legged in the street outside the party and wept on a friend’s shoulder, makeup running in thick black rivers down my cheeks. “The worst part is I meant it.” I couldn’t stop repeating those words, loathing their truth. “I meant it, I meant it, I meant it.” This was not the dramatic, beautiful crying of the movies, right before the heroine discovers her true self and is redeemed. This was ugly crying. Snot and salt and puffy eyes and shame.

The more I tried to like men, the more I failed, the more I drank. I shrugged it off. Everyone drinks too much in their 20s. Everyone’s hiding something. I told myself, maybe this is all there is, and growing up means being ok with that.

***

We’ve been living together for a few months when the girl with the guitar decides to move to Boston, to go to Berklee College of Music. I don’t even know what Berklee is, but I know I’m going. We audition, and she receives a hefty scholarship. I receive admission and that’s it.

The jealousy nearly tears us apart.

For the next few months, my arguments with my mother and father turn from skirmishes to full blown warfare. They think that this is a terrible idea, and they make their point vividly — I have no money and no plan, and all I’m doing is following this woman they think I shouldn’t be dating.

In response, I spend six months finding money in various places and enroll in my first semester at Berklee. I buy a ticket to Boston. I find an apartment. Never mind that I can only afford that first semester, these things will figure themselves out.

***

I don’t think either one of us believe we’d make it through that first year in Boston. The first few months, we live in a tiny studio apartment above our landlords who asked us to please not walk after 9:00 pm. Ella had never even seen, let alone shoveled, snow before that New England winter. Both of us studied every waking hour, and I worked any leftover hours at various odd jobs. Every cent counted. The stress on an already tenuous relationship should have broken it, but somehow it didn’t. Instead, far from home, we could try on our new identities in earnest. It feels like a long exhale.

At Berklee, we sign up for different majors, begin forging our own distinct musical identities. We have space. Space to try on new skins. Space to be different. Space to support each other in ways we didn’t know were possible. We hold each other’s fragility in our hands. We grow.

***

That first Christmas morning we move to our second Boston apartment, a ridiculous basement situation with no kitchen. For six months, we wash our dishes in the bathroom sink, but it doesn’t matter: the place is cheap and furnished.

Later that winter, my mom and little sister come and stay with us and, over the course of a few days, something shifts. Begins to thaw.

This visit is followed up by increasingly regular Skype calls. Them and us. Over time, my parents start to ask how she is the minute we start talking. They listen to her music. They call her sweetie. When we visit Israel, we stay in my childhood bedroom.

***

Two years after we move to Boston, the girl with the guitar writes me a love song. “My love keeps her sleep beneath her eyes and wakes slowly, as the sunrise. Angels rest beneath her wings.”

Our bedroom in Boston is flooded with sunlight and looks out onto autumn leaves and a rainbow of New England houses. She is shaking me awake, and seems to be asking me something. My eyes, still blurry and heavy with sleep, squint open and I see a box in her hands. Wait. Wait, wait.

All at once I’m awake, upright, holding her hands in my hands. She’s putting a ring on my finger and the room is full of love, and disbelief, and, once more, the wonder that comes with us wherever we go. The ring is inscribed with Hebrew words that read ‘אל אשר תלכי אלך’ — ‘wherever you go, I will go’ (Ruth 1:16)

***

On an overcast day in mid-May we stand under a canopy crocheted by my great-grandmother and receive seven blessings from our family and friends. By the banks of the Charles River we stand, overcome with too many emotions, surrounded by our community and declare our intentions to love each other with respect and compassion for as long as the earth will let us. Each set of parents reads our marriage contract aloud – once in Hebrew, once in English – and two of our dearest friends sign it into Jewish law. We had worked for months with our friend, the rabbi who married us, to write out our vows. “Let it be known that our souls have become entwined in love and mutual devotion, and that we intend to live a life full of passion and curiosity, a life of wonder and thankfulness.”

Then we’re dancing, and dancing, and dancing, until our legs are weak with joy and whole world is spinning.

***

This morning I woke up and looked at those promises we made to each other, where they still hang on the wall above our bed. “We commit to create a home that will contribute to the community in which we live, a home that respects people whoever they are. May we cherish in our home love, companionship, peace and friendship.” I looked over at Ella, sleeping the deep slumber of an artist who’s working on too many projects. “I’m so glad you’re my teammate,” I whispered, and she smiled, her eyes still closed. Then I got up to make us coffee and breakfast.

Welcome to the Chaos Palace is the space where I write about ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to navigate the mess that is the world. You can support my work by sharing this post with others, subscribing, or just clicking the like button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you!

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Here are some of the songs in this essay:

Dear fam,

What a heavy morning. It feels as though there’s a weight on my chest; I can’t breathe all the way into my diaphragm. My phone keeps vibrating with new messages, calls, notes expressing various levels of dismay and disbelief.

Me? I feel blind terror.

A few days ago, I wrote about being scared all the time for the fates of the ones I love. Underneath the fear, though, was a whisper of hope. After all, until yesterday the world could still be saved. Now, I’m not so sure.

The word nightmare comes from a Middle English word for a spirit (mære) believed to sit on one’s chest at night, restricting the breath and creating a feeling of oppressive weight. When you wake up short of breath and panicky, that’s the mære on your chest, the myth goes.

This morning, the mære on my chest is not mythical. It’s the tangible knowledge that many, many people will suffer in the next years because of what happened yesterday. People will die. This is just true.

They will be varied in every way, the people who will suffer and die. They will be Ukrainian soldiers on a battlefield who lack supplies to defend themselves and trans people who lack access to healthcare and face daily discrimination. They will be Israelis and Palestinians and Lebanese and Iranians who are caught in an unbridled conflict — a Trump win is the best-case scenario for both Netanyahu and Khamenei, somehow. They will be women, bleeding out in parking lots because they couldn’t get the abortions they needed to live. They will be journalists. They will be Black, and Brown, and Indigenous. They will be people I’ve never met, and they will be my family.

Every person who is not a white, Christian cis-het man should be very scared right now. I know I am.

Back in 2021, I wrote a piece for Parents Magazine about second-parent adoption. It’s since been taken down (maybe it was too controversial? I’m not sure), but maybe I’ll repost it here sometime. In the piece, I wrote about spending thousands of dollars so that both I and my wife could be legal parents of our then baby (now kindergartener). I wrote about the invasive process of having a social worker spend an afternoon checking if our home was safe enough for our new child, about my wife getting fingerprinted, about trying to remember all our addresses from the last 28 years, about appearing before a judge. In summation, I wrote this alarmingly prescient paragraph:

When the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges, the right to marriage became law across the United States, and many LGBTQ+ couples began to feel more secure in their rights. I am one of those couples. My wife and I married the summer after the SCOTUS ruling; the decision of the justices was very present as we said our vows. While we do now have more, and increasingly equal, standing on a federal level, it’s important that we don’t become complacent. As the Supreme Court tilts to the right, key rulings (such as Roe v. Wade) are being called into question. As long as these rights aren’t legislated by our lawmakers, they can be overturned at any time. 

We all know what happened to Roe v. Wade. And the GOP seems very ok with overturning gay marriage. Not to mention rolling back gender-based protections, feeble though they may currently be. So, yeah, maybe I won’t be able to be married soon. Thank goodness we took preemptive legal action to ensure that we can remain one another’s next of kin and medical proxies even if our marriage is dissolved.

I wonder, has it ever occurred to the heterosexual couples I know that they might wake up one day with no rights?

I know families with trans kids who are wondering if they can stay in this country. Honestly, I don’t blame them. Lord almighty, what will we do?

In the coming days, I’m sure a lot of folks will write about the ways in which having a vengeful, demented demagogue at the helm of the most powerful country on earth will ripple out. This is also on my mind.

I have it on good (albeit confidential) authority that the Israeli government, for one, decided to bide their time until a Trump win. They’d let things play out, ignoring potential opportunities to end the war and bring the hostages home, and then Trump would let them do whatever they want.

To be clear: What you see now is Netanyahu and his government of criminals restraining themselves. It’s about to get a lot worse, and very fast. This is not abstract to me. Everyone I know back home knows somebody who either died or was injured or was taken hostage. Everyone I know has spent long nights in bomb shelters calming their crying children. Netanyahu wants to keep expanding this war to infinity and beyond and Trump will let him.

This will, of course, also spell destruction for Palestinians and Lebanese as well. Or, to quote the Gazan friend of my friend Tamar:

Seeing as I believe the fates of Israelis and Palestinians are inextricably tied to one another and until both of us are safe none of us will be safe — this is a disaster in every way possible. On a human level, the volume of death and devastation is already unbearable. Even one slain child is too many — and there have been so many thousands of them. On a political level, this will almost certainly doom my family to life under Netanyahu until And much more of this is yet to come.

Do you feel that? It’s the night-mære.

Some of you might remember the now-defunct Entropy Magazine. It was a pretty great place, while it lasted — an online literary magazine and community space for writers and thinkers. It was also the very first place I ever published anything I’d written.

That first essay was something I probably wouldn’t write today. It was called Why Women Artists Might Be Like Sabre-Tooth Tigers and let’s just say I have a more expansive view of gender and the world than I did back then.

Nonetheless, without Entropy (and specifically without , who took a chance on me) I would never have believed I could be a writer. I’ll always be grateful to Sarah; she guided me through that first piece with kindness. I learned a ton just from responding to her notes.

In the days after the 2016 election, she reached out to ask whether I had anything I wanted to write about the outcome. I was then, as I am now, in absolute shock, walking around in a daze. I had written something, though, and I sent it to her for notes.

The resultant piece was a short essay called What the World Needs Now, a play on the famous song by the (almost) same name1. Reading it now, it seems so very naïve. Lord, I want the strength to believe in it today. Am I lying to myself? I don’t know.

In any case, I thought today would be a good day to republish the piece (with a few adjustments) and share with my Chaos Palace community. Will you tell me how you’re coping today? If there’s on piece of this that I still believe, it’s that supporting one another is the only way through. I have to believe there are better days on the way or I’ll just lie down and give up. Even if those better days are far in the distance, they must be coming, right?

With love from my broken, terrified heart to yours,

Mikhal

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What the World Needs Now (Revisited)

November 9th, 2016 is not the end of the world. It isn’t the first time a demagogue used an existing system to take control of a country. It certainly isn’t the first time a critical mass has felt unsafe because of the hatred pouring through off of a government and into the streets. Even so, when I awoke this morning, the grief and disbelief were palpable. The hatred and finger-pointing were already rife on social media and in conversations with friends. The divide that had cleaved America had endured the long night. 

I have, unfortunately, seen this before. I came of age in Israel, a country that has been divided since before day one, amid various expressions of both implicit and explicit violence. I’ve had ample time to see how division is created, and why.

It’s in the interest of a centralized government to divide its citizens as much as possible. This division keeps the population weak and disorganized, unable to challenge a status quo that is harmful to basic rights and dignity. A disorganized crowd mills around aimlessly, while a unified one becomes a battalion of forward motion. They want us to hate each other because it distracts us. 

But unified doesn’t mean the same. It means a group of people with a deep bond. It means working together towards a common goal, regardless of disagreement, and allowing our differences to encourage growth and to challenge things we take for granted. When our discourse excludes those we disagree with we become stunted. There’s no one around to sharpen our understanding of the world around us. We need to work with people we don’t agree with, even those whose opinions make our blood boil. 

When it comes down to it, we are all people, with real fears and needs. I know that it sounds banal, but I actually believe that this is the highest truth. I only wish those in positions of power saw my family and the families of other marginalized people with the same basic humanity as I see them.

All humans want is to be acknowledged as legitimate and spoken to as people. If we ignore the fears, discomfort, and anger of others they won’t go away. They will fester and ooze poison into our society. We’ve seen what this looks like: Fear-mongering, hateful speech, violence, death.

It looks like Donald Trump suggesting his political enemies (and the media) should be shot. It looks like Palestinian-Israeli citizens being arrested for social media posts. It looks like trans kids being forcibly outed and brutalized at school.

President Elect Donald J. Trump isn’t an anomaly. He’s the result of an anger that has been intentionally stoked by power-hungry folks who don’t care about the consequences. People really do feel disenfranchised and abandoned by their government. People really don’t know who to blame, and feel as though their sense of self is being threatened, helpless in the face of a world in which they feel unwelcome.

As a queer, Jewish, liberal woman I have to summon all of my humanity to find compassion in my heart for the masses I’ve seen at Trump rallies. Many people I know have loudly denounced (or unfriended) anyone who voted for Trump as inexplicably blind to the rights of minorities, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and more. I’m looking inside myself because I believe that our task now is to explain the inexplicable. To demand that those we don’t agree with listen to our explanations as well, while continuing to fight for the rights of those who have been blatantly disowned and abused by Trump’s campaign. I refuse to take part in the hatred. That’s the only way I can see to heal the fractures.

According to Jewish tradition, God has thirteen key attributes, found in two verses from the book of Exodus (34:6-7):

ה׳ ה׳ אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב־חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת׃ נֹצֵר חֶסֶד לָאֲלָפִים נֹשֵׂא עָוֺן וָפֶשַׁע וְחַטָּאָה וְנַקֵּה…׃

The ETERNAL passed before him and proclaimed: “GOD! GOD! a Deity compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin…”

In his commentary, the 18th-century commentator Rabbi Chaim Ibn Attar emphasizes the order of the attributes and suggests that word רַחוּם ("compassion" or “mercy”) comes first because everyone is deserving of mercy, even if they choose to sin. I’d say that’s especially when they need mercy — and consequences. Mercy to help us keep our own humanity; consequences so they stop causing harm.

Even if every damn leader in the world continues on a path to destruction, I will hold this truth before me. May it be a guiding light in the dark years to come.

Welcome to the Chaos Palace is the space where I write about ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to navigate the mess that is the world. You can support my work by sharing this post with others, subscribing, or just clicking the like button. Or just read! That’s huge, too.

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Update: Yesterday I sent this, but it turns out Substack’s editor doesn’t keep the various specific formatting choices when writing poems. For me, this is crucial — the way the words look and feel on the [digital] page is a part of the whole shebang. Here’s the poem again, the way it was meant to look the first time. Thanks!

Hey fam,

I almost never write poems, mostly because I think poetry is a sacred art form. I wouldn’t want to do anything less than the absolute perfection crafted by the poets I revere.

Nonetheless, this short poem tumbled out of me this evening, after a very long day that came after a long week, that was part of a long month, in what can only be described as a long damn year. It’s far from perfect but, frankly, aren’t we all?

I hope you read it with affection and understanding. If you see yourself in it at all, please let me know in the comments! If you think it’s super weird, feel free to let me know that as well. Weirdness is high praise here at the Chaos Palace

More on what’s up and what’s down among us chaos monsters tomorrow.

Until then,

Mikhal

Welcome to the Chaos Palace is about coloring outside society's boring ol' lines.

More specifically, it's about ADHD, parenting, queerness, and Judaism. Subscribe to get new ideas (big and small) about how to expand the boundaries of societal rules. Paying subscribers get updates from my own Chaos Palace, as well as conversations with folks who are whistling their own quirky tune and reported essays — for just $5 a month (or $55 for the year)! The latest of these is an interview with the thoughtful and hilarious Noha Beshir about making time for creativity, deepening one’s faith, and finding community.

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Writing about Israel — my homeland — is the hardest writing I do. It would be impossible to write everything I think and feel about this in one essay. Today, on February 27, 2024, I’m writing from within the depths of my heart but, as we all are, I am always learning and growing. If you have something to contribute to the conversation, I welcome it as long as you write from a place of kindness and compassion. I hope you read these words with an open heart. For previous roundups of resources and thoughts about Israel and Palestine, click here and here.

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For the last week or so, I’ve been thinking that it’s time for me to write about this again. I stopped because, well, I didn’t know what to say. As time goes on and the pain becomes sharper and less bearable for everyone I know, I’ve been getting more nervous about hurting someone with my words.

With these essays, I’m trying to excavate an idea that feels messy without trying to put things in order. To keep the conversation messy. I see folks grasping for simple narratives or absolute truths, and I get that, but those will inevitably splinter. This poll, or that statement, or the other analysis — none of it is the whole picture. When I think about the situation, I feel as though I’m turning a multi-sided die over in my head. Each facet is flat, easily read, but it’s comprehension is impacted by proximity to all the other sides. Everything I read and see feels like it should end in an ellipses; no description can possibly represent the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me G-d I cannot figure this shit out.

I pray about it. I ask G-d for strength. Over and over, I whisper shema Yisrael Adonai Elokeinu Adonai echad meditating on unity of spirit and the oneness of humans with the divine. Every day I wake up hoping this will be the day people begin to see what I see — that we are all born worthy of living in dignity and that violence only begets more violence. Every one of us is a world. Every one of us is inherently holy. Every. One.

Then I read the news.

And I don’t understand how.

How can Hamas leaders have claimed they had no responsibility to shelter Palestinian citizens?

How can Itamar Ben-Gvir block a shipment of flour (flour!) to the people of Gaza?

How can Hamas militants steal aid from their own people — who are literally starving?

How can soldiers film videos of destruction, expressing levity and dedicating missiles to loved ones?

How could Hamas have killed children in front of their parents? Paraded victims? Committed such heinous acts of sexual violence?

How can Netanyahu and his horrible cabinet pretend that tens of thousands of dead Palestinians is the best they can do to keep civilians safe?

How can anyone declare success or victory?

This is all a fucking tragedy. There is not one thing to celebrate, hasn’t been anything to celebrate in a long damn time.

I’m beginning to believe this is my own naiveté and narrowness showing. Maybe it’s me who’s limited. Why can’t I wrap my head around what these folks are thinking? I know humans have incredible capacity for hatred and violence. But the amount of poison that would have to be coursing through your veins to do the things that have been done — it’s staggering to me.

I don’t see any compassionate adults in the room. Not on any side. I see politicians sitting in fancy suites around the globe, making decisions about their political futures. Decisions that have real consequences for children, for innocent civilians shivering in squalid tents in Rafah or cowering in bomb shelters in northern Israel. I guess I still thought some leaders had the best interests of people at the forefront of their minds as they made decisions.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in keeping track of who did what when how and whose fault everything is that we lose sight of the most basic, most important thing — the lives lost and shattered.

Every time a ceasefire is vetoed or rejected, it feels like a gut punch. I want to shake these suited men by the shoulders and scream “PEOPLE ARE DYING! DON’T YOU SEE?” I want them drenched in my spittle as I over-enunciate. I want them shocked out of complacency and into action.

What matters is never doing this again and finding a way to (somehow) repair what has already been done. Insofar as that’s possible.

Over the last week, I’ve been talking about this a lot with my mom, who is also heartsick at what’s happening. After all, she’s the woman who taught me the values of respecting human life, and fighting for peace, and looking hard truths right in the whites of their eyes. Those same values that are making it so hard for me to stomach what’s happening before my eyes. To (re)learn my history and come to terms with all the decisions made by political leaders that have led to this point.

As I do this relearning-newlearning-unlearning, I find myself inhabiting a strange brainspace of mixed-up cynicism and optimism.

My inner cynic sees the hateful movements salivating at the opportunities presented by this war. The extremist right-wing in Israel declaring expanded settlements, for example. For Netanyahu, this is a gift — the war means he doesn’t have to go to jail for corruption yet. Hamas has successfully changed the status quo and derailed the normalization of Israeli relations with Gulf countries. Russia and Iran, backing Hamas, are creating an even bigger schism in United States politics. Lots of people have a vested interest in keeping the fighting going. My inner cynic looks around and says, “Fuck it. These guys will never end this war. They have too much to gain by it continuing.”

Then my inner optimist chimes in and reminds me about the activist movements who have gained so much traction in the last months. About the ongoing demonstrations in Israel, literally every day now, calling for Netanyahu’s resignation and the return of the hostages by way of a ceasefire. About the municipal elections this week in Israel, where few (if any) folks were willing to admit affiliation with Netanyahu’s party. Sally Abed, a Palestinian activist from the Standing Together Movement, was elected to Haifa’s city council and liberal, left-wing parties made gains in many other municipalities. My inner optimist reminds me of all the people I know, of all nationalities, who are clinging to compassion like a life-saver in an ocean of rage. They are not the loudest, but they’re persistent. My inner optimist looks around and says, “Persistence will win the day. We cannot give up. Everyone deserves better. Besides, we know we’re right.”

I don’t ever know which voice in my head will be louder. It gets noisy in here. But I know I have to keep trying to understand. I have to keep writing about it and talking to other people who are as heartbroken as I am.

Words and Sounds I Found Helpful for Understanding

• In the New Yorker, the poet and teacher Mosab Abu Toha wrote a heartrending essay about his journey out of Gaza. I cried for days after reading this. I still can’t quite wrap my head around it.

• In Hebrew: This article from Haaretz by Tamer Nafar about the way media algorithms are siloing folks so they don’t see one another’s pain.

• Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg’s Statement on Rafah.

• A collaborative statement by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg and Imam Monawar Hussain on the importance of standing together in the face of hatred.

• Barak Ravid wrote on Axios about how President Biden is losing patience with Israeli leadership. Alas, this has not materialized into any actual policy change.

• In Foreign Affairs, Aluf Benn writes about how Netanyahu is so bent on not finding a lasting resolution to the war that he is willing to destroy the whole country to feed his delusions.

• on how even if destroying Hamas were possible, it still wouldn’t make Israel and Israelis safer.

• on the utter devastation that led to Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation in front of the Israeli embassy.

• on the impossibility (and necessity) of seeking justice and peace.

• Ezra Klein interviewing Salam Fayyad, who was once the Palestinian Prime Minister and has many important things to say about how this could all play out.

• Ezra Klein interviewing Thomas Friedman, who has been writing about the Middle East for decades and has many important things to say about how this could all play out.

• The Unapologetic Podcast hosts interview peace activist Hamze Awawde about life in Hebron.

• May Pundak and Dr. Rula Hardal on the work A Land for All is doing and how to support a vision for peace.

• Once again sharing the translated transcript of Dr. Hillel Cohen, Hebrew University historian, on the history of Palestinian-Israeli relations in the region and many other philosophical ideas about the conflict.

Organizations to Support

• The Standing Together Movement: “A grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice. While the minority who benefit from the status quo of occupation and economic inequality seek to keep us divided, we know that we — the majority — have far more in common than that which sets us apart.”

Representatives from ST are coming to North America in March and April. Do you want to host a gathering with them? Let me know at chaospalace@substack.com

• A Land for All: “A shared movement of Israelis and Palestinians who believe that the way towards peace, security and stability for all passes through two independent states, Israel and Palestine, within a joint framework allowing both peoples to live together and apart.”

• Combatants for Peace: “A grassroots movement of Israelis and Palestinians, working together to end the occupation and bring peace, equality and freedom to our homeland. Committed to joint nonviolence since our inception, we use civil resistance, education and other creative means of activism to transform systems of oppression and build a free and peaceful future from the ground up.”

• The Parents’ Circle — Families Forum: “A joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of over 600 families, all of whom have lost an immediate family member to the ongoing conflict. [We have] concluded that the process of reconciliation between nations is a prerequisite to achieving a sustainable peace.”

• Not an organization, but a petition for a ceasefire now.

• Heal Palestine: an organization that “envisions a Palestine where every child and young adult has access to quality healthcare, education, urgent aid, and opportunities to thrive.”

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Welcome to the Chaos Palace is about coloring outside society's boring ol' lines.

More specifically, it's about ADHD, parenting, queerness, and Judaism. To get new ideas (big and small) about how to expand the boundaries of societal rules, along with updates from my own Chaos Palace and conversations with folks who are whistling their own quirky tune for just $5 a month. Wanna join the chaos club?

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More specifically, it's about ADHD, parenting, queerness, and Judaism. To get new ideas (big and small) about how to expand the boundaries of societal rules, along with updates from my own Chaos Palace and conversations with folks who are whistling their own quirky tune for just $5 a month. Let’s get messy (and chaotic) together!

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A note:

Writing about Israel — my homeland — is the hardest writing I do. This isn’t everything I think about Israel and Palestine. It’s where I am now, on January 16, 2024. As all people, I am always learning and growing. If you have something to contribute to the conversation, I welcome it as long as you write from a place of kindness and compassion. I hope you read these words with an open heart. For previous roundups of resources about Israel and Palestine, click here and here.

On Monday morning, at 9:30 am, I got a message in the WhatsApp group I use to keep in touch with two of my closest friends in Israel. “OMG are you ok???” one friend wrote. “Yes. We’re ok. It’s scary. Reminds me of our childhood,” the other friend replied. They didn’t need to say more for me to understand there had been a terror attack.

Nonetheless, I asked. My heart dropped into my stomach as I typed with shaking fingers. Two Palestinian men had stolen cars and mowed down civilians around the city where my friend lives with her husband and two kids. One elderly woman died; 17 others were hospitalized with varying degrees of injury.

According to reporting by CNN, Hamas leadership called these violent deaths a “natural response to the occupation’s massacres and its continued aggression against our Palestinian people,” encouraging their supporters to carry out more such attacks on Israelis.

On people like me.

I’ve known these two friends for two and a half decades. We’ve been through a lot together. I knew exactly what my friend meant when she said it threw her back to our childhood — it threw me back, too. Back to the day there was a car-ramming at the junction near my house that sent me running for my phone, frantically calling my parents to see if they were alive. Back to when we decided to spend my friend’s birthday in, only to discover the following morning that the restaurant we’d intended to eat at was blown up the night before. All the kids we were supposed to meet were either in the hospital or dead.

Back to the worst day, when my older sibling called home to say there had been a bombing. Asked me to try and call our parents. Told me the name of the hospital. Got cut off.

I was 10 or 11. Too young.

On Monday morning, at 9:30 am, I was in New Jersey, feeding my kids breakfast. There were, thank G-d, no bombs around. I was safe. But I didn’t feel safe — I felt like the teenager I had been. Running. Afraid. Of everything.

I am thinking, these days, about the legacy of trauma. How things don’t end when we think they do. It’s been 20 years since the second Intifada, those years of turmoil and death and injury and destruction. There is a part of me that will never heal, that will always feel bone-cold terror when I hear fireworks. When I get a panicky text asking if a friend is alright.

The years of the second Intifada coincided with the years during which I was a teenager. Formative years, as they say. And, indeed, a big part of how my psyche was formed had to do with the constant, palpable fear I felt during those years.

I know the hold this kind of trauma can have on a person, how its tentacles hold you in their grip. Which is why, when I think about the future of the Land I come from, there is a pit in my stomach. Will we — and I do mean all of us — ever be released from the grip of the trauma being forged in these weeks and months?

There are a lot of ways to destroy a people.

In 2023, some 14 million people lived in Israel and the Palestinian territories. And whoever is left when the dust settles will be some kind of broken. Heck, I feel broken and I’m not even there right now.

I think of my friend’s kids. Why should they know the sound of an air-raid siren? That metal-taste in your mouth when you’re running to a bomb shelter? When we were kids, we didn’t want this for our kids. Back then, the future seemed far away enough to solve things before we made our own families. Now, I don’t know if it can be cleaned up in our lifetimes.

I think of the children in Gaza. No home, no food, no clean water. Bombs explode everywhere, reducing their homes to piles of rocks and dust. Why should they know the sound of a jet dropping explosives, of a building crumbling? Why should they fall asleep wondering if they’ll live to see tomorrow?

When I wash my baby’s chubby belly every evening, I think about the bellies of the displaced children who cry to their mothers in tents outside Khan Younis. The empty bellies. I think, if my babies were hungry, I would probably hate whomever kept the food out, too. Those mothers, those children, those fathers — the tentacles of their trauma will grip them for a long time.

I imagine Israeli and Palestinian souls hardening in towns, cities, villages, makeshift tent encampments. Fear turning to rage turning to vengefulness.

The shadow of today is long, and I fear it will block out the light for many years to come. It scares the shit out of me.

Nonetheless, despair is not an option, as the New Yorker’s David Remnick wrote when the war first broke out. Even with a lump of fear in my throat, I continue to believe there are people who want a future where the skies are not a source of fear. In fact I know these people exist. And I feel a responsibility to amplify their voices. Here are a few that help me understand.

History Podcast: Part III

I’m slowly wading my way through the work of translating and organizing a conversation between Professor Hillel Cohen and podcaster Ariel Klatchkin. In it, the two men speak about the philosophical differences between Palestinians and Israelis. There is no judgment here, no supremacy of opinion. There is only open curiosity and willingness to hear what other people are thinking.

There’s a lot in this document, which I’ve made public so it can be shared far and wide. You’ll find links to relevant sources, footnotes where I explain words or concepts and add my own thoughts, and highlighted passages that I found particularly potent.

“The first step towards talking about agreements and peacemaking is for people to understand how others experience their reality,” says Professor Cohen, who has been studying the conflict and its history for decades, “You don't have to accept it, you don't have to adopt it, but at least see how they see it.”

I am trying to be able to see all sides. I am trying to remember what my faith teaches me — that we are all created in the image of the Divine. I am trying to learn about what happened/is happening so I can work towards a future where no one knows the sounds of bombs, and guns, and sirens.

In the linked document, you’ll see three parts. I’ve added a few bullet points to the beginning of each with the main themes included in each section.

Highlights of Part III Include:

• How the framework of settler colonialism applies (or doesn’t apply) to the actions of the Israeli government

• The idea of “strategic stupidity” — intentional gatekeeping of information in order to minimize opposition to various policies (on both sides)

• How linguistic barriers keep people apart (on both sides)

• Current events as an opportunity for right-wing extremists (on both sides)

Read More Here

Reading Resources

• In Hebrew: This report about how the same battalion that shot down Israeli hostages were also involved in shooting Palestinian militants who had already surrendered is very detailed, horrifying, and depressing. Maybe I’ll translate that, too, if you would be interested in it. Let me know in the comments?

• In the NY Times, writes about what the future of Gaza may look like after the war.

• In Jewish Currents, Maya Rosen writes about the role of disease in the unfolding humanitarian crisis.

• The organization FactCheck.org is doing an excellent job of battling misinformation and disinformation. This breakdown looks at the facts behind three things that a lot of folks on social media claim didn’t happen, but definitely did actually happen on October 7th.

• The NY Times reports on the vast (and clearly expensive) network of tunnels Hamas built under Gaza during its years of leadership in the Strip.

• In Hebrew: This profile of Masha Gessen in Haaretz’s weekend edition was compelling and left me with a lot of food for thought. This is a gift link, so you should be able to access it.

• In the NY Times Thomas Friedman argues for something I’ve been screaming for a while: The United States to be tougher on Netanyahu’s government. A lot tougher.

• wrote about how capitalism is playing a major role in the United States’ decision to attack Houthi militants in Yemen in this piece. As I wrote to him, I find his description of the Houthis too kind and wish the brutality and indifference to human life with which they, too, treat Yemeni citizens didn’t get lost amid the descriptions of all the other horrific things being done to Yemenis. Nonetheless, it’s a helpful, well-researched, and compellingly written piece.

• is a wonderful new publication, bringing forth personal essays by people in Israel and Palestine and their experiences. Honestly, I recommend everything on there. Here are two to start with:

  • On Loneliness by Michael Licht

  • Solidarity Under Arrest by Yahav Erez

• writes about staying aware of one another’s humanity, about how he views antisemitism, about grief, and more in his essay, “threading the needle.”

Listening Resources

• Unapologetic is “a new voice concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” I binged the whole thing, and can’t wait for the next episode. It’s not always easy for me to hear, but it’s always important. Ibrahim and Amira are two activists continue to fight for peace and human rights despite it all and I find them inspiring.

• This episode of Plain English with Derek Thompson is called “The Fragile Hope for Peace in Israel-Palestine.” It’s part of a series I found very compelling and helpful.

• Two episodes of On the Nose, a podcast by Jewish Currents, were really interesting to me:

  • Hamas: Past, Present, and Future

  • The Loneliness of the Israeli Left

• This episode of On the Media by NPR is an excellent illustration of something I’ve been trying to grapple with for a while now, namely the way in which Israeli media bias creates an echo chamber that lacks the Palestinian narrative. I wish they also talked about how other media outlets lack the Israeli narrative. But, as an Israeli, I’m primarily interested in looking at my own people’s institutions and how they do or do not function. And I’ve been noticing the missing portrayal of Palestinians’ suffering for a while now.

  

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This is a special edition of dedicated to exploring the nuance within the conflict in Israel and Palestine. I hope it’s helpful! For more ideas (big and small) about how to expand the boundaries of societal rules, along with updates from my own Chaos Palace and conversations with folks who are whistling their own quirky tune, make sure you’re a subscriber.

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In just a few days 2023 will be over, which seems impossible. Where did the time go? Looking back at the last 12 months is confusing. So much has happened this year. Last January feels like it was yesterday and also an eternity ago at the same time. Which doesn’t really make sense. And yet.

Baby was born in December of 2022, so this was the year we got to know her sweet, hilarious personality. She makes the funniest sounds and faces, she loves dancing, and she is up for pretty much any adventure. She and her brother are already conspiring against us and it’s pretty fun to see the nonsense they get up to.

As I’ve written about here, Big Kid had to leave his school in December of 2022. This means that 2023 has been a year of learning so much about Big Kid — his sensory needs, the way he thinks about the world, how to support him, how to take care of ourselves so we can be there for him, how to advocate for him. When I think of how we thought about parenting a year ago it seems so rudimentary as to be ridiculous. I was so afraid of him being kicked out of school! Now, I know he’s far better off in a place that understands and appreciates him for his quirky self.

As a result of this learning, my wife and I have also become more mindful of the places and relationships we’re in. We want to be in spaces understand and appreciate us for our weird selves, too. The more we’re open to learning about our kids, the more whole versions of ourselves we become.

A lot of folks have been putting together year-end summaries. Personally, I’m a sucker for a good opportunity for introspection. I love to sink into a reverie on my birthday, New Year’s Eve, Rosh HaShana… whenever the calendar allows me to overthink what I’m doing I go for it. As evidenced by this nice little existential crisis I sent you after Yom Kippur.

Of all the round-ups, though, I was particularly moved by this annual report by , who had a very topsy-turvy year what with her new book becoming an NYT bestseller and the truly crazy aftermath of all that. I love that, in this round-up, she takes the time to celebrate her wins, while acknowledging what a mess the year was. It’s pretty rare to see a woman unabashedly own her successes. I think it’s pretty badass. In it, Virginia writes the truest words ever:

“I still do not know how to hold together all the parts of this year—it was wonderful, it was horrible, it was often both at once. But I will say this: I think I’ve learned that plans don’t fail or succeed. They just change.”

Yes. A thousand times yes.

To that end, here are some things my wife and I did this year that were pretty good — besides the aforementioned parenting wins. I would be overjoyed if you took the time to share some of your wins in the comments as well! Let’s make a whole thread of joy and success.

Leave a comment

We bought a damn house.

Folks, I still wake up most mornings and can’t believe I live here. My wife and I are both artists — I have a degree in classical composition and conducting, for goodness’ sake — and the housing market is a dumpster fire. But we bought a house. A real one. I want to acknowledge the privilege involved in this purchase — we could never, ever have done this without the help of our parents, who gave us both advice and funds towards the house. I, in particular, doubt I would have been able to successfully navigate the endless bureaucracy and legal hoops without my wife. There’s a lot of being On Top of Things involved in buying a house, much minutia, many emails to follow up on — none of which are my forte. As a team, though, we were able to move our family to a place much better suited to us. Big Kid has more quiet, we both have offices to work from, there is nature everywhere to enjoy. Huge win.

I launched the Chaos Palace.

This has been a pipe-dream of mine for a while, and I’m pretty proud that I made it happen. There are now almost 350 of you! The messages I receive about meaningful the writing is, the interesting conversations that go on in the comments sections, and the opportunity to speak with folks about how they move through the world has been a source of so much inspiration.

In honor of the years’ end, I’ve taken the paywall off all the Q&A conversations for a few weeks. You can find them here. Looking back at these, I’m still so in awe of the incredible folks I’ve had the honor of chatting with. I spoke to Caitlin Cook about her one-woman bathroom-graffiti-based musical, to Katherine Studley about her advocacy and accounting work for sex-workers, to Dr. Andrew Kahn about how ADHD can be a strength, and to Patty Roache about bringing queerness into opera. Among many other amazing people.

I’ve got a lot of exciting interviews planned for 2024. I’ll also be continuing the I Am Chaos column, wherein I explore the less-discussed symptoms of ADHD. These essays bring together personal experience alongside academic research and expert insights for an in-depth take on things like ADHD & Anger or ADHD & Empathy.

If you feel moved to share the Chaos Palace with someone in your life who you think would enjoy it, that would be wonderful.

Both of these series’ are for paid subscribers (except for right now), and I’d love for more folks to be able to read them. Which is why I put together a New Years’ sale! If you subscribe before January 15th, you’ll get 20% off a full year of chaos (the good kind). As always, if the price is out of reach, please message me and I’ll take care of it.

Get 20% Off!

Music about home.

I am constantly in awe of my wife, who is a veritable fount of inspiration. When we first started dating (14 years ago!) I told her that she sings feelings. That continues to be true. She released some stunning music this year, including a song for National Geographic’s photos of the year. She also released a visual album about what home means spiritually, geographically, bodily, and in many other ways. In one way or another, “What does home mean?” feels like the project of my whole life. That being said, it has been especially present this year. It’s the year we left Brooklyn. The year our home country rose up against its leadership. The year a war broke out that has torn that same country asunder. This music, made in collaboration with artists from across the globe who are also asking who and what they are, has been a profound anchor during the months of confusion. You can listen to the first six songs off the album here.

Here are some of my faves:

We made and kept relationships.

This may seem like a tiny thing, but to me it’s meaningful. I am bad at staying in touch with people, generally speaking. Having ADHD means my object permanence and short-term memory are only so-so, which means I forget to answer messages and emails all the time. When I type “I’m sorry” into my phone, it completes the sentence with either “for being late” or “for my delayed reply.”

This year, we left Brooklyn, and I was terrified I’d lose my New York friends when that happened. But I’ve managed to stay in touch with more folks than I thought I would. I also had frank (and uncomfortable) conversations with several friends about our differing communication expectations. It’s always awkward to do that, but this time it really resulted in a better understanding of how we all communicated. In this way, we’re able to support one another in better ways. Also as a result, I felt less alone during the last months of upheaval. Turns out being an adult about a relationship actually does help when both people are dedicated to making things work and hearing one another out.

We did other creative stuff.

• I became a culture writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, covering Jewish cultural events in NYC.

• My wife wrote the song for National Geographic’s photo of the year campaign.

• I wrote an Op-Ed for Parents magazine that made the internet mad at me, but I don’t regret it.

• We co-wrote a Jewish meditation album called KAVANA. Keep your ears ready, that’s coming out in 2024.

• I began a series of essays and resources about the war in Israel and Gaza, which I had previously been really scared of writing about. I’m glad I faced my fear, especially in light of the beautiful messages I’ve gotten in response.

I hope all of you are snuggled up with something cozy (tea? cocoa? soup? a burrito blanket?) as you read this. I hope you can feel me sending you a warm hug through the magic of the internet. I hope to see you in the comments section of the Chaos Palace next year.

Sending love and wishes for peace and light,

Mikhal

An Extra Treat

Joining Substack this year meant discovering a wealth of writing. Such a joy. Here are some of my favorite publications:

• by :

  Oldster Magazine explores what it means to travel through time in a human body—of any gender, at every phase of life. It focuses on the good, the bad, and the ugly we experience with each milestone, starting early in life. It’s about the experience of getting older, and what that means at different junctures.

Burnt Toast is an anti-diet, fat positive community about body liberation. It’s also a newsletter and a podcast about how we navigate diet culture and fatphobia, especially through parenting. (But non-parents like it too!)

• Mothers Who Make by

Mothers Who Make is a world-class gallery of creative mothers. Some are new mothers. Some are more experienced. Many of these women are known for their creative work. They sing, dance, write, paint, and share their work with their communities. Others live quieter but no less creative lives, problem solving, repairing, making up bedtime stories, baking bread, finding beauty and meaning in every day moments. Every mother in the collection is someone who considers creativity an essential part of her life and the lives of her children.

• by

Torah thoughts about the challenges and potentials of Jewish life in the 58th century.

• by

A fresh, expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. It’s a book about which a lot of people have a lot of Big Feelings, to be sure—but I believe, passionately, that despite the fact that it’s been used as a bludgeon by too many people over the centuries, it’s really a roadmap for transformation in all the most critical of ways.

Dear ones,

It’s been twelve days since I sent my last round-up of materials about the disaster going on in Israel and Palestine. Looking now at what I wrote then, it seems insufficient. Although, to be honest, everything feels insufficient these days. All the words in the world can’t really explain the inexplicable. All the images in the world can’t really capture the wide-eyed horror at what is unfolding, the feeling of helplessness in the face of ruination.

Did I send that newsletter an eternity ago? So much has happened since then. The situation was already so bad as to be incomprehensible. From where I’m sitting now, things feel even worse.

To be fair, where I’m sitting now is at the foot of my child’s bed, where he’s sleeping off a fever. He murmurs gibberish in his sleep. Baby is coughing in her bedroom. We all have a preschool head-cold.

This room in suburban New Jersey feels about a million miles away from my family and friends, in Jerusalem, in Haifa, in the Jordan River valley. Somehow, though, I also feel pressed up against my homeland, so close to all the tiny details of its existence that I can hardly breathe.

Part of what I’m grappling with these days is the elasticity of space and time in my homeland. I grew up in Jerusalem, which felt aeons away from the big city of Tel Aviv, both physically and spiritually. My Jerusalem was also, however, a lifetime away from East Jerusalem, a place my friends and I never went or even really thought of — except in fear. My parents’ home is only a handful of kilometers from Ramallah, a city which might as well be on the moon. Close is not close; far is not far.

Meanwhile, 45 miles south of Tel Aviv is Gaza City. Or, I guess, it’s more accurate to say was Gaza City. All that’s left there now is devastation. A city obliterated, reduced to rubble and dust.

Now, when I talk to friends and family back home, they describe the sense of a country where space and time have collapsed in on themselves. Everything, everyone, is too near for comfort. Time, too, stretches and contracts. Freezes. Is it still October 7th? What does time mean, when your entire reality is crumbling like so much sand?

Ever since October the 7th, I’ve been reading and reading and reading, aghast and incredulous. At first, I read everything — even horrible comments posted by those who trade in outrage for online fame. Then, when my chest tightened for the third time in a single day, I began to curate my intake.

I still cannot fathom how people came to do such horrible things. I don’t understand those who decry certain atrocities while denying the existence of other atrocities. As my dear friend told me this week, in a group chat I’ve come to cherish, “It’s important to remember that Israeli and Palestinian civilians are in the same boat. We want to live our lives. We’re on the same side. And the horrors that have happened and are happening must stop at once. ”

As I wrote last time, I’m trying to be careful what I invest energy in. As I find useful pieces of media, I share them with you in the hopes that you, too, are seeking constructive anchors in these turbulent days.

By useful, I mean media that either (a) helps me understand how we got here, (b) helps me understand how other people are perceiving and feeling through the situation, or (c) helps me understand the details of the situations and the politics that underpin the decisions being made by various parties.

When I look at an image, or video, or text, I ask myself, “What is the goal of this?” If the goal is nuance and details, I read or listen. If the goal is outrage or proving someone wrong, I scroll on past.

I’ve been sharing some of these materials with you all on the last few newsletters. Below are some materials that take more space, and it’s important to me to lift those up and encourage you to give them a listen or a read.

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More History.

As I wrote last time, I’ve been gravitating to historians and their work. Maybe it’s my naiveté that leads me to believe history has some answers. Maybe it’s because history has already happened, so it’s not as scary. Maybe it’s so I can recognize patterns as they re-emerge.

In any case, I have continued to listen to a great deal of historians speaking on their topics of expertise. As I do, it makes me want to share these insights with you all. Unfortunately, a lot of them are in Hebrew, but I’m doing what I can to translate as quickly as possible. To that end, I’ve continued translating this conversation between Professor Hillel Cohen and podcaster Ariel Klatchkin. In it, the two men speak about the philosophical differences between Palestinians and Israelis. There is no judgment here, no supremacy of opinion. There is only open curiosity and willingness to hear what other people are thinking.

“The first step towards talking about agreements and peacemaking is for people to understand how others experience their reality,” says Professor Cohen, who has been studying the conflict and its history for decades, “My attempt [when writing my book] was to make a kind of introduction, to get to know the other side's story. You don't have to accept it, you don't have to adopt it, but at least see how they see it and understand something very basic — what motivates the Zionists and what motivates the Palestinians is not evil. But what motivates them is their sense of justice and freedom, their desire to reach a state of living as liberated people.”

In the linked document, you’ll see two parts. I’ve added a few bullet points to the beginning of each with the main themes included in each section. I’ve also added footnotes and links to articles that explain people and events crucial to the information. This section talks about events that impacted my personal story, so I added some details about that in the footnotes as well.

Part 2 includes:

• Thoughts about the difference between good intentions and concrete actions

• An imagining of what could have been different had far-right factions on both sides not torpedoed the Oslo Accords

• An exploration of what motivates different streams of opinion on both sides and how that influences the actions of others. 

I’ve decided to release this transcript in four parts, because it is long. I’ve tried to organize it in an easily readable way, and have highlighted the bits I think are particularly potent. Feel free to share it, and to let me know if you have questions.

Read the Transcript Here

Learning About the Region

The Forum for Regional Thinking is doing some incredible work exploring what’s happening in the Middle East outside Israel and Palestine. Their podcast, כאן זה שאם, is a collection of conversations about other countries and how their respective narratives impact what’s happening within the whole region. In particular, the episodes about Lebanon as a home to many different populations, about the Gulf countries, and about the civil war in Yemen were all fascinating. All of these are in Hebrew, but here are some links to writings by the various speakers:

On Lebanon — Dr. Abed Kanaaneh and Dr. Oren Barak

On the Gulf — Katie Wachsberger

On Yemen — Dr. Shmuel Lederman

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Glimpses of Humanity

There is so much hot hatred and terrifying screeching at one another out there right now. There is violence. There is blood. There is justification for the squander of human life.

Amidst it all, though, there are people who are trying to see one another as people, worthy of dignity. Here are a few that both made me cry and gave me hope, sometimes all at once.

Tala Abu Rahmeh writes about how her mother taught her to find humanity in the Israelis who caused her family pain, and how hard she finds it to do so:

“Make no mistake, we are probably one of the few who understand how a lot of Jewish people might feel right now, with their collective trauma resurfacing and nightmarish images of gas chambers and intentional annihilation for decades flashing before their eyes with rawness, as a confirmation that they will always be persecuted as a result of their religion and culture. But if you are perpetuating violence against Palestinians from your comfortable and safe homes in the West, you are personally participating in the continued unsafety and instability of your fellow Israeli Jews. It has become clear that Israelis will only live in peace when Palestinians are afforded the same luxury, and that the constant oppression of another people is not an appropriate or productive trauma response.”

Yasmin Rimer writes1 about the challenge of finding light amidst the pain of her friends on both sides of the conflict:

“It doesn't make sense that all men in Israel should walk around with weapons. It’s dangerous. Weapons are not a solution. War is not a solution. Death is not a solution. I light Hanukkah candles every night, but I really have a hard time seeing the light.”

A Standing Together Movement activist, whose parents were murdered on October 7th, speaks about the urgent need for peace and co-existence:

In English: “War is not the answer. War has never been the answer. War will never be the answer.” He talks about how peace and hope are not passive, one must work to create and maintain them all the time. He describes the importance of having an audacious vision for peace. In these ways, he echoes the Ethics of Our Fathers, “Be like the disciples of Aaron — a lover of peace, a pursuer of peace, one who loves the creatures and draws them close to Torah.”

, my new Substack friend who I’m so very glad to have met, wrote this very lovely and heartbreaking poem called “the prophet’s sujood.” An excerpt:

“on our way home
my boys play makeshift soccer
with a chunk of ice pulled off the ploughed Ottawa sidewalks.
their voices ring out
impromptu groans and cheers
at goals that hit the garbage bins
nutmegs on the curb.
they remind me of the videos
of children
playing in the rubble
sliding down the sand
a lifetime and sixty days ago.”

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Some English Listening

These recommendations come from my wife, who sent them to me. Alas, I have been listening to Hebrew language pods and need to catch up on these. But I trust her about a million percent on these:

The Fragile Hope for Peace in Israel-Palestine, a conversation with Sally Abed of Standing Together Movement

Two Israel-Palestine Historians Explain: How Did We Get Here? And What Happens Next?

And from me:

How the Israel-Gaza Conversations Have Shaped My Thinking (The Ezra Klein Show)

Some Music

Sharon Tova-Levi is a wonderful musician and a great friend who went to music school outside Tel Aviv with my wife and I back in 2009-2010. She released this song last week and it cracked me open. The chorus:

“Even when the day is long / and nothing makes sense / and there is no one who understands / and your legs ache / remember everyone / returns home in the end.”

So much has been written about what’s happening in the Middle East right now. It’s hard to know what media to consume, how much of what I’m reading is true or helpful or relevant. A lot of what I’ve seen, whether news articles or social media posts, seems unproductive — to say the least. A lot of words and images are being thrown around without a whole lot of forethought.

I’m trying to be careful what I invest energy in. Truthfully, I’m trying to focus on consuming media that either (a) helps me understand how we got here, (b) helps me understand how other people are perceiving and feeling through the situation, or (c) helps me understand the details of the situations and the politics that underpin the decisions being made by various parties.

When I look at an image, or video, or text, I ask myself, “What is the goal of this?” If the goal is nuance and details, I read or listen. If the goal is outrage or proving someone wrong, I scroll on past.

I’ve been sharing some of these materials with you all on the last few newsletters, in place of the reading and listening recommendation segment. Now, I want to take it a step farther. There are some materials that take more space, and it’s important to me to lift those up and encourage you to give them a listen or a read.

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Looking to History for Answers (and Questions)

One thing I’ve been doing consistently is listening to what historians have to say. We didn’t end up on October 7th out of nowhere, after all. Things have been complicated and multi-faceted for a long time. I think it’s crucial to first name the gaps in one’s knowledge, to come humbly to this situation and say, “I’d like to know more before I make any sweeping statements.”

My understanding of Middle East history has been shaped by the education I got in Israeli schools, and it’s fair to say it was lacking in nuance1. We had one unit of study on Islam in 7th grade and no follow-ups afterwards. I’ve done a lot of independent learning since then, something I will probably continue to do for the rest of my days. Organizations like Ir Amim, for instance, have been instrumental in my learning.

This conversation between Professor Hillel Cohen and podcaster Ariel Klatchkin was a revelation. It was so good that I spent the better part of three hours transcribing and translating it into English for more accessibility. In it, the two men speak about the philosophical differences between Palestinians and Israelis. There is no judgment here, no supremacy of opinion. There is only open curiosity and willingness to hear what other people are thinking. “The first step towards talking about agreements and peacemaking is for people to understand how others experience their reality,” says Professor Cohen, who has been studying the conflict and its history for decades, “My attempt [when writing my book] was to make a kind of introduction, to get to know the other side's story. You don't have to accept it, you don't have to adopt it, but at least see how they see it and understand something very basic — what motivates the Zionists and what motivates the Palestinians is not evil. But what motivates them is their sense of justice and freedom, their desire to reach a state of living as liberated people.”

Some highlights:

• Professor Cohen introduces the conceptual framework of the Big Time (The Arc of History) and the Small Time (The Everyday Minutiae) and how the philosophical mismatch between these ideas is the basis of a lot of the conflict itself.

• Some of the history of Hamas, a lot of which may surprise you

• Some of the history of Jewish participation in the Arab nationalist movement of the early 20th century, a lot of which surprised me

• So. Much. Compassion.

I’ve decided to release this transcript in four parts, because it is long. I’ve tried to organize it in an easily readable way, and have highlighted the bits I think are particularly potent. You can find the document here. Feel free to share it, and to let me know if you have questions.

Is this helpful? Would you like more of it?

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People are Writing About Humanity

Amid the endless posts of vitriol and anger, I’ve been trying to keep track of posts that express humanity and compassion. One such post, raw and honest, was written by a friend of mine who I knew when I was still living in Tel Aviv.

Adi writes about the home-grown militias and weapon-bearing security patrols popping up in Jewish-Israeli towns that: “the truth is that I am terribly afraid that this will only lead to the death of more and more people like Yuval Castleman2 and will only deepen the feeling of fear and hatred of foreigners that is still bubbling in us in these difficult days.”

I translated the rest of what she wrote, which you can read here.

Also, has been writing consistently and beautifully in defense of nuance and compassion. Her words are a balm. On October 12th, she wrote a lot of things are true, a list of contradictory statements that are true at the same time. “At the end of the day, everyone must be safe, free and allowed to flourish, because everyone is holy, created in the image of the divine,” she writes. I wholeheartedly agree, despite how naive I know this makes me sound. Then, today, she published this helpful history of Chanukkah, which goes into the nitty-gritty of the Maccabean revolt and the subsequent corruption of power. As a student of my own people’s history, I found this piece fascinating and very prescient.

Some Mainstream Media Coverage is Actually Good

I find that mainstream media is only useful if you read a lot of contradictory pieces and layer them on top of each other until you find that sweet Venn-diagram spot where there might be a kernel of truth.

Full trigger warning for both of these pieces.

One piece I found important was this profile of the hostages who have been released from Hamas’ captivity, written up in the New York Times.It is an important read for two reasons. (1) It reminds us that there is sorrow and danger on all sides, and that what Hamas is doing is abhorrent, bad, and wrong, and (2) It reminds us that there are many people still in Gaza — both Palestinians and Israeli hostages — who are still experiencing violence hunger and fear.

The second piece I found interesting was this investigation by +972 magazine. These journalists spoke to Israeli intelligence officials about how they decide where and when to drop bombs on Gaza. It’s harrowing, but thorough, and I want to know more about what Israel is doing, not less. In this way, I can be more aware of how to imagine a different future and what steps I believe need to be taken to get there.

Some Music

When I was living in Tel Aviv, I had the incredible fortune to study music alongside Leat Sabbah, a sublime cellist and composer. Today, she released this beautiful melody for Jeremiah 29:11

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There is so much more to share about what’s going on back home. This is, as our rabbis would say, k’zayit (a Talmudic unit of volume approximately equal to the size of an average Talmudic-Era olive), just enough to whet one’s appetite. I’ll share more then next time I have the strength.

In the meantime, sending you strength, light, and peace.

B’shalom,

Mikhal

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A note:

The following is an essay that was very hard for me to write. Writing about Israel — my homeland, the place where I was forged and formed — is the hardest writing I do. This isn’t everything I think about Israel and Palestine. It’s where I am now, at 10:00 am on November 6, 2023. As all people, I am always learning and growing. If you have something to contribute to the conversation, I welcome it as long as you write from a place of kindness and compassion. I hope you read these words with an open heart.

Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, when terrorists busted through the huge wall and instead of attacking the Israeli army decided to go house to house and behead children, gang rape women, and kill elderly people in wheelchairs, I have been writing about how we need to challenge ourselves to dig deep and find compassion in our hearts for people on “the other side.”

I wrote about this when friends and family in Israel told me they couldn’t find any compassion for Gazans because they are too appalled by the brutal massacre of Israeli innocents. I wrote about the need for compassion when I saw my friends posting that the Hamas had no choice but to ravage citizens because they are oppressed. I wrote about it as everyone around me, on the streets in the real world and in the virtual cesspool that is social media, seemed to have lost every semblance of a moral compass.

I’ve seen tweets about how it wasn’t that many beheaded babies in Southern Israel, as though that is a sentence that’s comprehensible in any way. I’ve heard friends and family say it probably isn’t that many thousands of innocent Palestinians being pulled from the rubble of their homes. As though that is a sentence that makes sense to anyone concerned with the value of human life.

And lately, I’ve read many, many, too many think pieces that talk about the ravaging of the Gaza strip without any context. Not one mention of anything that happened on October 7th, as though Israel woke up one day and decided to walk into Gaza for no damn reason. No mention of the vast reserves of food, water, fuel, and everything else that Hamas — the actual leadership of the Palestinians — is intentionally hoarding despite the fact that their citizens are drinking salt water. That babies in incubators are dying as the electricity shuts off. That people are, on average, living on two slices of bread a day. All this while, by the account of a released hostage, Hamas militants in their underground tunnels (that they built with cement intended for homes) eat pita with cheese and cucumber. Fresh vegetables, while your citizens starve? Surely, there should be some onus on a leadership that makes these choices.

No mention of the fact that Israelis and Palestinians don’t even like their governments, by and large. Or the political complexities behind the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to stay in power so he doesn’t have to go to trial for corruption and is therefore beholden to his coalition members who are, in short, a dumpster-fire. Or the fact that there haven’t been elections in Gaza since the early aughts.

It’s complicated, is what I’m saying.

I want to be even-handed, despite the fact that no one on the left has accorded me the same kindness. Israel is bombing the shit out of Gaza. There is nothing surgical about what is happening — it’s like dealing with a broken leg by amputating it. I don’t know what a “proportionate response” to the murder and mutilation of 1400 citizens, kidnapping 240 more, and displacing 200,000 more. But I cannot watch what is happening to Palestinian citizens and think this is the only way to take out an army of terrorists set on our destruction. If a physician told me the only way to fix my broken leg was to cut the whole thing off, I’d get another doctor. There must be some middle ground between killing 10,000 Palestinian civilians in order to get rid of Hamas and not getting rid of Hamas.

I wrote last week, and I will write it again:

Children being harmed are children being harmed, are they not? Is an Israeli child somehow guilty of a crime because of their heritage in a way the Palestinian children are not? Or vice versa?

Of course not. Children should not be held accountable for the political or ideological ideas of the adults in their midst. Unless, of course, you believe pain is finite or that some people are not deserving of empathy.

Palestinian civilians should not be punished for the actions of Hamas murderers. Israeli children should not be punished for the actions of settlers in the West Bank.

To me, this is not hard to understand. And yet. So many fucking think pieces. Everyone seems to think it’s easy to decide what’s right. Worse, depending what side you’re on, it’s as though the other people’s pain is either non-existent or isn’t that bad anyway.

It is that bad. That doesn’t take away from the legitimacy of the claim that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve justice for what has happened — not just in recent weeks but over the last 75 years of ongoing struggle, murder, displacement, hatred, and grief. On both sides.

Here’s one thing I am not going to do in this piece. I’m not going to tell you, in detail, about all the people I’ve known and known who were bombed, shot at, killed, soaked in the blood of their friends. You’ll have to believe me that I have known this kind of fear my whole life. I’m not going to make a spectacle of my trauma to prove that lives of my family and friends matter, too.

I will tell you that, as someone who grew up in Jerusalem during the second Intifada, I know a lot about Israel and Palestine. And I know that there’s a lot I don’t know. The sheer audacity to think you can have an opinion on something so complex, with so many intertwined narratives (many of which are both contradictory and true), with so much rich history and so many conflicting accounts, without a dedicated course of study is baffling to me. I have dedicated a great deal of time and energy confronting the myths I was taught and questioning the information in books, articles, speeches, and more. I know a lot, and I am learning more all the time.

I’m not equivocating when I say it’s fucking complicated. It just is complicated.

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And all these slogans, all these Op-Eds with their bright (and simple) ideas about how to solve a decades-old conflict, have ramifications in the real world. A Palestinian-American boy was killed. Non-Israeli Jews and Israeli Jews alike are facing harassment and violence. Suddenly swastikas are showing up at leftist rallies. What the hell, folks?

When I hear people say that Israelis should just go somewhere else, what I hear is that my family should just uproot themselves and move somewhere else. When I hear that the Israelis in the South had it coming to them, what I hear is that if I had been murdered on that day, you would be ok with it. Revolutions are bloody, after all!

There’s only two things I know for sure about Israel-Palestine.

1. No one is going anywhere. 10 million Israelis are not going back to Poland, Latvia, Yemen, Algeria, or anywhere else. The children being raised there now are the fifth generation of Israelis. They belong there. Likewise, the nearly 7 million Palestinians are not going anywhere. Even under the horrifying conditions in Gaza, people have been reported as saying they want to stay. As is their right. A two-state solution is the only damn solution so we should all stop pretending the other side doesn’t exist or is just going to cave and cede all the territory at some point. Not gonna happen.

2. Humanity and compassion are our greatest tools to a solution. Unless we begin to see one another as human beings with legitimate pain and grief, we’ll be killing each other forever. This is the hardest part. It’s why organizations like the Standing Together Movement and Breaking the Silence are so important. Worldwide, we are too focused on punishment and a zero-sum view of pain. If we cannot understand that one person’s loss and horror does not detract from the loss and horror of another, we’ll never get out. There’s a reason this is the hardest, and most important thing. If it was easy, we would have figured it out already.

If you’re interested in learning the various narratives of the conflict currently, I recommend reading multiple news sources and comparing them with a critical eye. This is what I do, to ensure I’m not just in my own little echo chamber. To be clear, I am not saying I support everything (or anythign specific) written by journalists on these sites. I’m saying it’s important to see what other people think and really try to understand how they’re thinking and why they might think those thoughts. Here are a few good ones:

Israeli / Jewish News Sources

• Haaretz

• +972 Magazine

• Yediot Achronot

Arab World / Palestinian News Sources

• Al Jazeera

• Palestine Chronicle

• Middle East Eye

For books on the topic, I recommend these two to start. Again, as a way of hearing multiple points of view and narratives:

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

I have read the latter and the former comes highly recommended. It’s on my TBR list.

If you don’t want reading homework, that’s fine. I get it. The only thing I ask is that you try, try, and then try some more to remember that human lives have value regardless of where they’re from and who their government is. Then, if you express an opinion about Israel and Palestine, remember that everyone is hurting. A lot. Remember that having empathy for endless people is not only possible but crucial, especially at this time when it’s hardest. Come humble to the situation. Come open to learning. Come loving. Imbue your rage over the atrocities in the region with love for humanity. The only way out is through the heart.

Sending love,

Mikhal

Some organizations to donate to:

Standing Together Movement

“We envision a society that serves all of us. A just and equal society that treats every person with dignity. A society that chooses peace, justice, and independence for Israelis and Palestinians – Jews and Arabs. A society in which we all enjoy real security, adequate housing, quality education, good healthcare, a liveable climate, a decent salary, and the ability to age with dignity. Such a society is possible – we’re already building it.”

B’Tselem

“B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end. That is the future we are working towards. B’Tselem (in Hebrew literally: in the image of), the name chosen for the organization by the late Member of Knesset Yossi Sarid, is an allusion to Genesis 1:27: “And God created humankind in His image. In the image of God did He create them.” The name expresses the universal and Jewish moral edict to respect and uphold the human rights of all people.”

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

“Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), founded in 1991 by concerned humanitarians in the USA, provides free medical care to thousands of injured and ill children yearly who lack local access to care within the local health care system.  Over the years, we've sent over 2,000 affected children abroad for free medical care, sent thousands of international doctors and nurses to provide tens of thousands of children free medical care in local hospitals, and provided tens of thousands of children humanitarian aid and support they otherwise would not get. “

Leket: Providing Meals to Displaced Israelis

For Homebound Individuals and Seniors: Leket will purchase 320,000 cooked meals . These meals will be delivered to recipients directly or through local NPOs.

For Families: Leket will purchase essential supplies, including food, diapers, formula, and more, from local grocery stores in the South. These supplies will be distributed by local NPOs in the South, supporting both families in need and local business owners.

Leket will provide financial assistance through magnetic cards, to help individuals affected by the war. This program aims to assist those whose income has been impacted or who lack access to their consistent sources of aid.

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The surface of my desk is cold, but I rest my hands on it anyway, closing my eyes, breathing. My breath is shallow, and I try again to fill the cavern of my chest. Slowly. Outside, the street is fading in muted tones. A watercolor bleeding into the indigo of evening. 

My thoughts are a nonsensical jumble. They come in waves.

I keep scrolling through the images and clips and headlines, even though my heart is too weary and broken. I am so tired of reading about people killing people. I am so exhausted from the work of believing that most people are basically good, while the world tries so hard to prove me wrong. In an ocean of inhumanity, I’m treading water, choking on the salt of how bad things are.

I shouldn’t be surprised; this isn’t the first time the front page of every newspaper was soaked in blood. Not even close. Some say the Situation has been allowed to careen out of control. Was anyone ever in control, I wonder?

On both sides, a governing body intent on proving might. Each pretending (believing?) to have their nation’s best interests in mind, despite all evidence to the contrary. At night, do these naked emperors dream of the future? Are their visions only of vengeance? Do they cry out, wake in a sweat, as I and so many others do? Do they taste blood?

The flames these hateful men light lick at the walls of our only home. The fire blazes brightly, but the world remains dark.

Deep, ragged breaths. I close my eyes.

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—

In August of 1995 my family moved to Israel from Baltimore. I was nine years old. Around the same time, a young, charismatic politician named Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu was making waves in the opposition of the Israeli parliament. I didn’t speak Hebrew yet, so I didn’t understand the thundering speeches he made at the right-wing rallies. He had a steady voice and a powerful manner, and he used it to call the government antisemitic. They’re all criminals, according to Bibi, for considering a path to peace with Palestinians. The forgotten Oslo Accords.

This young man claimed the government should be punished in the harshest way possible. His followers screamed assent as they burned effigies of Prime Minister Rabin dressed in an SS officer’s uniform.

Saturday night, November 3, 1995, one of Bibi’s followers pulled a handgun out of his pocket, clicked the magazine into place, lifted his right arm, and shot the Prime Minister three times in the chest. At a peace rally. Later, us schoolchildren would be taught that he had refused to wear a bulletproof vest because he couldn’t fathom the death threats being credible. People believe in peace, don’t they?

He died early the next day. 

The gaping hole in Israeli politics and society was promptly filled by the hate-mongering of Bibi, who assumed the office of the Prime Minister 18 months later, in June 1996. And, sure, there were certainly flaws in the Oslo Accords. But it didn’t even matter, because there went the peace process, down the drain in a whirlpool of tears and blood. 

What I remember most about November 4, 1995 is my parents on the couch, staring at the TV news anchor, silent tears streaming down their faces. My dad took us to a vigil, one of so many spontaneous gatherings sprouting up everywhere. So many candles. So many flowers. Empty shells of people walking aimlessly on sidewalks, riding busses to nowhere. An assembly at my new school, where we all stood for a moment of silence. 

I didn’t understand then, but I do now. 

Words matter.

—

Yesterday, I was scrolling through an Instagram page dedicated to locating missing Israelis, folks who may have been abducted during the recent attacks in Southern Israel. From every tiny square a young face peered at me, emblazoned with the words Missing נעדרים and the person’s name. Some squares are death announcements; they say ת.נ.צ.ב.ה, which is what Jewish people write on gravestones. It’s an acronym, representing a line from the El Maleh Rachamim (G-d Full of Mercy), the traditional Jewish burial prayer.

I was looking at these faces, hoping not to see anyone I know. Thinking how ironic that sentence from the burial prayer. These young people were bound up in the bonds of life. They were bursting with life, creativity, passion. To be clear, I don’t know any of the people on this page, but what 20-something isn’t full to the bursting with a zeal for life?

May they be bound up. In the bonds of life.

Then I noticed the rhetoric in the comments section. You know how they say never to read the comments on social media? They’re right, whoever the hell they are.

“Hahahahahaha” one person commented, under a death notice, with the hashtag #freepalestine.

“We will avenge her,” says a Jewish commenter, under another death notice “We will not forgive those animals.”

My breath stopped. Tears pricked my eyes.

I think a lot about words — the magic of them, the horror of them, the way they take you out of your body. Words are a powerful hallucinatory agent. Here, you are reading this somewhere and images dart across your mind. If I’ve done my job right, your body reacts — maybe your heart races or your breath quickens. Words make reality.

But we throw them away all the time, as though they don’t matter. Did the woman in my WhatsApp group of local Israeli moms think about her words as she typed that we should “flatten Gaza” and “spray them with bullets”? How about the commenter who responded to a video posted by a peace activist calling for a prisoner swap to save lives in Gaza, saying “Go back to your motherlands before you and your families came to live in the stolen and colonized lands and homes of Palestine”?

One commenter says that “the only one to blame here is the occupation leaders, all of them.”

Another calls for the wholesale destruction of Palestinians in the Gaza strip. “Forget innocents, not innocents, they’re all accomplices to the crime.”

Both commenters made their opinions known on the same video.

I wonder if they would consider themselves extremists? I wonder if they feel as wounded and hopeless as I do? Do they read Instagram comments and feel their hearts cracking open? The poison seeping in?

—

Two nights ago, our baby woke up around 11 p.m., as she tends to do. For the last few weeks she’s been going to sleep fine. Around 11, though, she wakes up in hysterics. She gasps for breath between cries, reaching her chubby hands out from between the bars of her crib. I’m not sure why this is happening. She has a world of pacifiers in there. And two bottles, one with formula and one with water. The room is dark. The house is calm.

I mean, the world seems to be burning down, but this specific room is quite cozy.

When she awoke on Monday night, it was my turn to go calm her. At first, I spoke to her in soothing tones, “Hey, metuka sheli, mama po1, you’re ok, my love,” I said, reassuring her that I was there. That wasn’t cutting it. I offered a pacifier, which she denounced, flinging it across the room. Somehow, she was now screaming louder.

So, I picked her up. Took her into our room, where I rocked her back and forth in my arms. I sang the little song I’d made up for her in the hospital, when she was born, “You’re ok, you’re ok, Mama v’Ima po2, you’re ok,” and the other song I made up a few months later, “Oy, oy, oy, Ay, ay, ay, at kimat chamuda midai3.”

Then I started to sob.

Images began flashing through my mind. Sounds. Somewhere, right now, the hysterical cries of Israeli toddlers in animal cages, reaching their chubby arms out through the bars and begging for their Ima, fall on hostile ears. Somewhere near them, the tiny hands of Gazan children poke out from under the rubble of their destroyed homes.

I can’t breathe. My baby is in my arms and I can’t breathe.

I lay down on the floor with her. She’s calmer now and I put one hand on her chubby belly. I pray to anyone who’s listening to save the children. The babies. Israeli toddlers left for dead in the desert, dusty Palestinian children with tearstained cheeks flash through my mind.

What the hell is wrong with this world?

—

Yesterday, attorney and writer Dylan Saba tweeted (X-ed?) “what is the ethical way to climb out of hell?”

I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to attempt to answer. After all, despite surviving the second Intifada (and many of my classmates did not survive) and living through the second Lebanon War as a soldier (and many of my generation did not live through) I have never lived in hell. I have never been showered with bombs in a place with no bomb shelters. I have never been used as a human shield by those who should be looking after my safety.

And there is no doubt Gazans have lived —and continue to live — in that exact hell. Or, maybe, I shouldn’t attempt to answer because it’s a riddle that cannot be solved.

I have some follow-up questions, though. Can one live through hell and retain one’s humanity? If one’s divine spark is lost, can it be regained?

I worry about this. I worry, because the pain now is so great and the wound is so open it can easily be infected. And then what? Where will we go from here?

On Yom Kippur, we said the ‘Confession’ prayer over and over, pounding our fists on our chests and proclaiming all the categories of wrongdoing we have committed. There are 44 categories, two for each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Of these, 11 have to do with sins of speech. One fourth.

Hateful speech, both overt and implied, have been poisoning the soil of my country for a long, long time. Soon, if we’re not careful, nothing will grow. 

Hate is unwieldy. 

Words matter. 

—

Postscript

Here is some hope you may have missed. After all, we should at least try to end on a bright note.

• On October 4, hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli women from the organizations Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun came together to march and demand an end to the animosity.

• According to the Israeli-Palestinian collaborative organization Standing Together, they have “begun to form groups of people in several cities in Israel, especially [desegregated] cities, to be ready to join initiatives aimed at strengthening the relationships between Jews and Arabs during these times. With 10 “solidarity watch” WhatsApp groups around the country, we have begun efforts to mobilize Jews and Arabs to go through this moment together.”

• Despite being controlled by a completely ineffectual government, Israeli citizens have mobilized in incredible ways. While the government fails to even agree on who gets to be a part of recovery efforts, citizens have crowdsourced food, accommodations, and all other necessities for evacuated, traumatized citizens from southern kibbutzim and towns. Therapists are donating time for mental health treatment. Artists are providing entertainment for children. Lists have been compiled and shared so families can find their loved ones. The protest movement, now even more fed up with Bibi, has refocused its efforts on mutual aid for those whose homes and lives were decimated in the attacks.

Unfortunately, that’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted if something hopeful pops up.

The first time I thought about body hair was in the fifth grade, and it wasn’t even my hair. My classmates were lining up to go to gym class, where we’d be running laps and playing dodgeball. Summer in Jerusalem meant bright, bright light that shone through the bars on the windows and a severe heat emanating off the blacktop. We were all wearing shorts and pale-blue tees with the school logo on the front, chattering and laughing and generally making a lot of noise. Our teacher yelled over our ruckus. 

“Did you see her legs?” a girl behind me half-whispered. She wasn’t talking to me, but I could see where she was pointing. The girl in front of me in line had a thin layer of black fur on her shins. I’d never noticed it before. “She’s so hairy!” the voice behind me exclaimed. She burst into a peal of giggles and whomever she was speaking with joined in. I don’t know if my classmate heard them. That’s when the gym teacher blew her whistle and we all took off, running outside. 

That day, waiting in line on the tile floor of my grade school, I began to learn a lesson: Women shouldn’t be hairy, so if you have body hair that means you’re less of a woman. The best way to overcome this shortcoming? Get it the hell off you. Shave it, wax it, bleach it, burn it off with chemicals. Whatever you have to do to be clean. Even if that means being less of who you actually are. 

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In our yard there are four pots of tomatoes. There’s also a smallish raised bed, cobbled together using leftover rocks and some plywood that will almost certainly rot by next year. In it, you’ll see too many plants crowded together — zucchini, sweet peas, eggplant, strawberries.

On the other side of the yard, flower beds. Unruly. Haphazard. Glorious. Wildflower seeds have erupted into a shock of green leaves punctuated by white and yellow dots. Lavender bushes send up arms of audacious purple as if crying, “Hallelujah!” to the blue, blue sky.

A chipmunk hippity-hops among the clover. So does a rabbit, stopping briefly to munch on some azalea leaves. Bon appetit.

A white butterfly (what Big Kid calls a “toilet-paper butterfly”) rests on a dandelion.

You will never convince me that dandelions and milkweed are weeds. Nothing that makes bumblebees and butterflies this happy could possibly be bad.

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I’ve been wishing this garden into existence for years. Actual years. As kids, my older sibling and I grew veggies in the backyard with our dad. He would take us to the plant store to pick out cherry tomato seedlings and cucumber vines, and we each got our little plot in the back-left corner of the yard. Near the wild strawberries.

We never achieved much of a bounty, but it didn’t matter. The pleasure of turning soil with my hands, the smell of soil in the sunlight, the flavor of something still warm off the vine. They never left me.

When we still lived in Brooklyn, we had a tiny little yard behind our apartment. Lucky us! And I made the best of it. Planted daffodils, and hyacinths, and irises. Brought in hostas, and dahlias, and even an ill-fated rose bush. I spent a week turning the soil with a trowel so I could plant clover.

(As an aside, you would not believe what I found buried out there. Yeesh.)

Making things grow is a kind of alchemy, isn’t it? Dump some tiny specks into some dirt, add water and sun and get… food? Flowers? Every flower on a pepper plant is a miracle. Every leaf. Honestly, sometimes I get so caught up in the magic of it all I don’t know how I get anything done.

The yard we have in Jersey is bigger and, objectively, much better. But the yard in Brooklyn was my first earth-love; it will always have a place in my heart.

I wrote this poem when Big Kid almost two years old. Reading the words now feels nostalgic, and sweet, and a little sad. My toddler is no longer, a Big Kid is there instead. A wonderfully wise and funny Big Kid who I love! But that soft toddler sweetness is no more. Makes me extra glad I was able to find time to write during those days.

Without further ado, here’s a little something I wrote back in 2021, when we were a family of three living in a much smaller Chaos Palace.

New leaves

outside my window hint that spring is here but

the air is crisp and cool.

Yesterday, I taught my toddler the glissando of a cardinal’s call. My baby repeated it after me, pointing tiny fingers at a flash of red on a branch above us.

We made our way around the garden and examined the new leaves on a rose bush, the new buds on a daffodil.

Back when my little one was nestled inside me like a bean, I made the rounds myself. I whispered to my belly and the secret person inside all about the new leaves and the call of the sparrows. “Look,” I said, “the hyacinths are coming up.”

Spring is a time of promise, but promise of what?

Last year, I learned the names and patterns of new blooms, the call of new birds. Our baby took first steps on a tiled floor, many miles from our hardwood one.

How can we parse the gifts from the price they cost? A silkthread ties us to them, them to us.

New leaves outside my window each morning, framed against the buildings, the birds, the stray cats. Peering upward at the mottled sky.

Welcome to the Chaos Palace is about coloring outside society's boring ol' lines.

More specifically, it's about ADHD, parenting, queerness, and Judaism. Subscribe to get new ideas (big and small) about how to expand the boundaries of societal rules. Paying subscribers get updates from my own Chaos Palace, as well as conversations with folks who are whistling their own quirky tune and reported essays — for just $5 a month (or $55 for the year)! The latest of these is an interview with Kristen Drozdowski about finding color in unexpected places.

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