An Affirming Flame

In which the world burns around us.

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

— W.H. Auden

It is Erev Shabbat, October 13, 2023. Just last month, my oldest daughter asked if we could start celebrating Shabbat, the way my parents did all through my childhood. She is craving ritual and tradition, connection to her roots, calm in the storm that is both life at 14 and life in our current Age of Chaos.

It may have been the easiest yes I have ever said as a parent.

And then, on October 7th, those roots we were just beginning to connect to were set on fire, irradiating the whole world with an ugly, vicious light.

In the aftermath, I try to tamp down the need, born from horror, to read the news endlessly, doom-scrolling in the late hours and the dawn hours and all the hours of the day.

I try to avoid any dark rabbit holes, absolutism, people planting bloody flags on the perceived moral high ground. I tell my half-Jewish, half-Egyptian daughters that the killing and targeting and torture of innocents is evil, full stop. That this evil has no native language, no single political affiliation, no one religion or nation or race. That “they started it” is only one sentence in a long and awful story. That we can condemn Hamas with every fiber of our being and still hold space for compassion for the children and innocent adults who are dying, who are losing what little they ever had, in Gaza and beyond. That this picture in the news, shorn of its caption, could be any Palestinian or Israeli father clutching his injured child and running for help.

Of course everything I say to them is carefully calibrated to make them aware of the world without letting grief sink them. After all, they are still so young. After all, we are still reeling from the shock of Ash piercing her own ear with a thumbtack two days after the attacks, because she felt “compelled,” because the bad thoughts wouldn’t subside until she pushed the unforgiving metal through her soft flesh. After all, the world is dark and getting darker and this is something that seeps into their awareness from every direction already, so how can I stand to make it worse?

Despite my shielding though, the grief and fear rise, and now my youngest cannot sleep. I lead her in a lovingkindness meditation: Breathe deeply and feel the breath filling you. Send yourself thoughts of love, and thoughts of kindness, Send yourself peace. Feel how that love, that kindness, that peace spread through your whole body…Now send love and kindness to your family. Send them peace. Imagine filling them with feelings of love and kindness and peace…Now send love and kindness and peace to your community - to your friends and your teachers and our neighbors. Imagine filling everyone with love and kindness and peace…And now breathe love and kindness to everyone in the whole world. Send them peace. Imagine all the children everywhere. Imagine sending them so much love. Imagine all of the adults. Imagine filling their hearts with peace…

By the end of the meditation, her breathing has slowed to sleep, and I am breathing easier too.

Negev Desert, Israel. Photographed by the author, 1993.

But then the morning comes and with it more terror and I am back into the heartbreak of it all. I reach out to friends I know are suffering. I offer comfort wherever I think it might be needed. I wonder why so many friends I reached out to during their own community and personal traumas have gone silent on me, thoughtlessly or intentionally turning their backs on my Jewish heart. I try not to dwell on that sadness, on top of all of the other sadnesses.

I call my dad. I try to figure out a way to keep him, fragile as he is, away from endless hours of filmed atrocities. I cannot think of any workable strategy. And so he sits in his wheelchair, hour after hour, absorbing all of the images, the videos, the helpless commentary. It is too much.

It is too much for me too, and yet I read and read and watch and read. I will bear witness. My partner sees the tears streaming, and holds me close. His heart is shredded too. At night, neither of us can sleep, so I lead a metta meditation: Breathe deeply and feel the breath filling you…

I try to work. The empathetic head of my division understands. The agency Administrator sends out an all-staff message of support. The kids’ school district does the same, and their principals, although for my oldest the messages of hope from her high school are undercut by two bomb threats in as many days (we do not know whether the threats are linked to the students filming themselves giving Nazi salutes behind the school a few weeks back). My ex-husband, whose own uncle was killed many years ago in a war with Israel, offers compassion and commitment to a shared message with our daughters. The week grinds on. The inferno rages.

And then it is Erev Shabbat. We bake challah, pour wine and grape juice, light candles, sing prayers. We go around the table, in a ritual we have added to the ancient ways. Tell one thing you want to remember or one thing you are proud of from the past. Send love and peace to some person or group suffering right now in the world. And set an intention for the future.

And so we send out love and peace, near and far.

And so we gather ourselves. We call on our strength and our hope. We try again and again to tamp down negation and despair. And together, knowing it is not enough but it is also something, we show an affirming flame.

Negev Desert, Israel. Photographed by the author, 1996.

Recommended reading I have found helpful. Please feel free to share your own links, provided they are not incendiary.

A Q&A with my childhood friend and human rights activist, Sari Bashi:
The Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza

Two heartbreaking essays in the New York Times:
I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy.
I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy

Incisive commentary (as always) from Slate:
Yes, You Can Be Pro-Palestine and Anti-Hamas
What Does It Mean to Stand With Israel?

And last but definitely not least, a beautiful reflection from my dear friend Aleta:
If Not Now, When?