Until October 2023, I was Rebekah, a feminist, Jewish New Yorker. I felt like a complex, multifaceted person. After October 2023, I became Rebekah the Jew. And now, over two years later, I am still her. I am not her because I decided to view the world through one lens. I am her because she is who people see. She is who I am when people ask me if I am a Jewess (yes, this happened). Who I am when people interrogate me at weddings and in bars and over dinner about my feelings about, and implied responsibility for, a conflict I have nothing to do with and that has nothing to do with me. She is who I am when I walk into businesses with signs screaming “ZIONISTS NOT WELCOME.” She is who I am when my presence is questioned at marches and rallies, events that I no longer feel safe at. She is who I am when I have to pass litmus test after litmus test to determine whether or not I am a ‘good’ one.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: there are no ‘good’ ones to a Jew hater. There are no ‘good’ ones to people who have willingly or unwillingly gobbled down carefully curated propaganda, propaganda that rests on hundreds of years of fear and blame — historically successful propaganda repackaged for the digital landscape. There are no ‘good’ ones when the rules are constantly changing. You might pass the test today but tomorrow, or maybe next week, next month, or next year you will fail. It is as inevitable as the setting sun.
I have spent the past two years trying to say “it is still me! I am still the same person you’ve always known!” But that’s a lie. As much as I want that to be true, it isn’t. It isn’t true because so many of you see me as Rebekah the Jew before you see me as Rebekah. And it isn’t true because I don’t see a lot of you the same way, either. Some of you have put conditions on your care without realizing you’re doing it. Some of you have stopped talking to me all together. I can’t take the blame for it but I am being punished. Because you are still out there, living the same lives you’ve always lived. And I am home, writing this, wondering why the lessons we claimed to have learned about trusting marginalized voices doesn’t apply to your friend.
This past Saturday, I was alerted to the fact that sometime the day before someone had taken a can of black spray paint and scrawled the words “F**k Jews” on the sidewalk a few blocks from my apartment. Sadly, it was a long-anticipated truth telling that I have been expecting. It felt like a punch in the gut, but a punch I saw coming. And, in some weird way, it provided me a certain amount of relief. At least that person had the balls to wear their bigotry plainly, rather than hiding behind the platitudes and bullshit that has caused me to feel uncomfortable in basically every room I walk into. At least they said what they meant. At least I finally had the proof I needed to say to people, “see? Do you see now? Do you understand what it’s like?” But of course, people still don’t see. They don’t understand what it’s like. I still feel like I’m screaming into the wind.
franklyrebekah 
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