I sit and watch my people’s flame:
We light a candle, knowing our beliefs are not all the same.
We bring in the Sabbath together,
And thank god that this time, the week was a storm we could weather.
Fox News: Pittsburgh: eleven dead.
The Tree of Life synagogue, hatred comes to a head.
The most deadly antisemitic attack in American history,
But we all know good and well that his intentions were no mystery.
CNN: Tennessee: graphic novel on the Holocaust banned in a school district.
You don’t want your kids to know my people’s history? Wow, just fantastic!
I look around me at the pain of my Jewish friends and family.
Antisemitism is mounting, still my government isn’t concerned.
BBC News: Worldwide: Antisemitism is on the rise.
To me and my people, this is no surprise.
My friends and family are being exiled and shot,
My non-Jewish friends are shocked.
To that, I feel surprised, how couldn’t they know?
Maybe this is all performative—is this all a show?
Do you think we control the banks, or maybe big business or the media?
Are these the excuses in your brain that you use to fuel your xenophobia?
Antisemitic hate crimes are up 1180 percent,
And I just can’t keep my anger pent.
I don’t want to say it, though I know it’s true—
The only reason they hate me is because I am a Jew.
I was six years old and on my way to my very first march.
I was just a first grader, and the issue to me was not yet large.
“What’s a swastika?” I asked my mother on the drive there.
I learned that it was a Nazi symbol that killed my Jewish sisters and brothers.
Nine years later, I’m still marching.
I’m doing as Rabbi Heschel said, praying with my feet,
But the soles of my shoes are worn, and my legs and arms are weak.
My people deserve their lives, peace, and safety—
It’s seemed like a privilege, not a right, as of lately.
Constantly, my people are being killed systematically.
Name any year, I’ll give you a catastrophe,
My people are being killed every century, every decade—
Name a crime: murder, kidnap, assault or rape;
It happens to us every month, every damn day.
Sexual violence against Jewish women? It’s just another crusade.
I don’t look like a monster, and I don’t feel like one either!
Horns, Christian children: I have neither.
I look to my left and right, and I see no allies.
Is this the end or the beginning? It’s up to us.
I would think the other communities would rally, but instead they leave us in the dust.
I sit in school, surrounded by friends, yet I feel so alone everywhere I go.
There is nowhere I can find peace, this I now know.
I’ve spent my life learning Jewish stories,
Hearing the generational trauma and my ancestors’ worries.
I can safely say that I used to not get it, but now I understand:
When it all falls down, can you really say you would hold my hand?
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