The Map of Israel is Tattooed all over My Face
I’m afraid to write this essay.
But then, I’m afraid of everything, so what the hell? Even if I don’t write it, I’ll still be afraid. Just not of this. Of something else. Of accidentally dropping the toaster in the sink while I’m washing dishes. I mean, I don’t have a toaster, but that’s not the point.
I’m afraid of what people will think about me after I write this essay. I’m afraid of that total lack of control that comes, as a necessary arrangement, after hitting “Publish.”
I’m afraid of what anti-Semites will say. I’m afraid, maybe more, of what Jews will say. I’m afraid of what total strangers will say. I’m afraid of what people I know and love will say. I’m (very) afraid of my mother. That’s a VJT (Very Jewish Thing), to be afraid of one’s own mother. But I think it’s only Jewish sons, if we’re rolling with this particular stereotype, who feel that very specific fear. I don’t think my sister is very afraid of my mother, but it doesn’t really matter since I’m not allowed to write about her.
“Gabriel, you need to stop writing about the family,” she said to me once, maybe twenty years ago. I haven’t exactly acquiesced, but I’m always afraid.
And that’s, I think, what is at the core of, at least my own, Jewish identity in America: