To Kol Israel
They’re [human beings] everything you say, but so much more.” - Wonder Woman, as played by Gal Gadot, 2017
To Kol Israel,
The Star of David, perhaps the most ubiquitous symbol of your nation is also the symbol for the heart chakra in Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and other Vedic eastern traditions. Known in these traditions as “Anahata,” the heart chakra symbolizes “unstruck sound,” or an energy that is calm, serene, integrated, and balanced. This energy is the energy of wholeness, one that is “ unhurt and unbeaten” — the very opposite state I am sure many, if not most of you have felt since the harrowing hours of October 7th.
For the past five months I’ve been training with a vocal coach whose practice is steeped in these Vedic traditions. I’ve also been engaged in a deep study of the psycho-social-spiritual dynamics of the human condition which has included: an eight-year stint in Israel advocacy, an eight-year study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, five years of Vipassna mindfulness meditation practice, five years of extensive body work and five years of building a company designed to address bigotry and hatred. All of this has prompted me to write you this memorandum.
It has been a long time, my dear friends and I have missed you very much.
First, my deepest condolences to you on the loss of your family and friends.
What Hamas has done is utterly unconscionable. Its brutal murder of innocent men, women, and children, its systematic use of rape and sexual assault against Israeli women, the overall silence and worse, justification, by many the world over of these actions have filled me with feelings of deep sorrow, anger, loneliness, and rage.
I have no doubt you have felt this too.
It is high time that everyone unequivocally condemned this and did all they could to ensure it would never happen again.
But many simply cannot do this because they have been infected by a disease called Witch Hunt-19.
Witch Hunt-19 is not antisemitism though antisemitism is a symptom of the disease. All human beings, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Jew and non-Jew are susceptible to catching it.
There have been outbreaks that have popped up in various times across human history that indicate the presence of this disease, including the witch-hunts of Western Europe from 1450 to 1750; the witch-hunts of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692; and the expulsion of Southeast Asians in Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972 (in which Southeast Asians were effectively branded as witches worthy of expulsion).
Witch hunts occur whenever groups of people experience profound levels of psychological insecurity and have no healthy, safe, or contained way to discharge those feelings. In Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s, a beleaguered minority who’d just escaped persecution at the hands of the Church of England and Catholic authorities in Europe found themselves in the remote and heavily forested backlands of North America. Parents regularly lost their children to disease, accidents, and raids by native American tribes. Superstition was the law of the land. Already a deeply insecure people, the Puritans discharged their pain and anxieties by turning on each other and accusing members of their own community of being witches and thus worthy of death.
Similarly, in 1972 Idi Amin under the guise of “returning Uganda to indigenous Ugandans,” expelled 50,000 Indians, treating them as the “witches” responsible for the disproportionate access they had to trade, banking, and other professions that came with upward social mobility. Indians had this access because of British colonialism which had enshrined racism into Ugandan law. While Amin perceived Indians as witches, the British perceived them as amulets to ward off the influence of the indigenous people of Uganda. Both of these deliberate attempts to transform human beings into symbols of power and powerlessness were acts of dehumanization. In the aftermath, it was Idi Amin's government — not the people of Uganda — who seized thousands of acres of farmland, homes, cars, and other properties for themselves.
Uganda’s economy then plummeted as there were not enough skilled laborers to run the industries left behind. In this manifestation of Witch Hunt-19, Amin took a beleaguered people, namely ordinary Ugandans, and exploited their pain and suffering by encouraging them to discharge it onto Indians. Indians, in other words, were a scapegoat in service of Amin’s maddening hunger for power.
It’s critical you know how Witch Hunt-19 operates so you can notice it when it arises and so you can take antibodies that treat the whole disease, not merely the symptoms. Painful insecurities coupled with no holistic ways to deal with the pain leads to folks projecting and discharging that pain onto another human being or an entire group of people.
James Baldwin put it more succinctly when he said,
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
Witch Hunt-19 is a universal dis-ease all humans are susceptible to, because all humans experience pain.
We have all, myself included, experienced the feeling that we are not worthy, that we are inferior, that we are unloved and unwanted. Given the seemingly global calls to eradicate the nation of Israel from the face of the earth, I am sure these are feelings you are feeling right now. So how might you develop some antibodies?
Well, first, it is important that you know that you are loved.
Please read that again.
You are loved.
If you do not internalize this knowing, practice reciting this knowing, chant it in the morning, ensure your friends and family members of this, write it on your mirror, and believe it with every fiber of your being, you will begin to experience symptoms that all people who are coming down with Witch Hunt-19 are coming down with and you will take your pain and your grief and you will discharge it onto another human being, or onto another group of people.
You will do this not because you are evil or wicked or monstrous or any of the other names those infected by the disease have called you.
You will do this because you are human.
And this is what humans do.
But humans also have choice. Which brings me to another important way of gaining antibodies to Witch Hunt-19.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr described a very potent prescription to this disease in his famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail.’ He was being pressured by clergyman who were annoyed by his nonviolent protests to stop.
King replied by saying,
“ The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent." But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.”
This conscious act of re-channeling or re-directing pent up frustrations, emotions, pain points, and grief is the signature practice that fueled the Civil Rights Movement, the greatest protest movement in United States history. (And I am especially fond of it since my ancestors participated.)
Here was a persecuted people who trained on a daily basis to heed the warnings against the Pharoah of ancient Egypt, and keep their hearts open instead of hardening them.
In doing so, they embodied the principle of Anahata. (Fun fact: Dr. King famously studied Eastern mysticism and nominated famed Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel peace prize.) In doing so, at least symbolically, they wore the star of David around their necks.
You may remember them for marching and advocating for equality under the law but the thing that underpinned all of this was a belief in unconditional, undivided, unbeaten, love for all mankind. Ultimately this is the cure for WitchHunt - 19, of which antisemitism is but a symptom.
Below are two Witch Hunt-19 symptoms and the doses of Anahata that Civil Rights leaders took to ward off the disease:
Symptom #1: Witch Hunt-19 causes people who feel pain to cope with it by discharging it onto others.
Dose #1: Though they were being lynched, firebombed, and brutally assaulted, civil rights leaders refused to identify as victims. If you cease to identify primarily or exclusively as a victim of your circumstances, you can avoid this symptom.
Modern Practicum: Enter into a regular practice where you journal, speak about, paint or in some other way ex-press (meaning, “to press outward”) what you are feeling right now on a regular basis. Do this ideally in a community of trust and hold each other accountable to doing the practice regularly.
This will allow you to bring consciousness to your feelings, which will make the feeling have less power over you. Try to be specific when describing your feelings. Track when you are feeling superior, defensive, or anxious. Note the difference between those feelings and when you're feeling expansive, in flow, or euphoric.
The more consistently you track them, the less your feelings will unconsciously consume you. (PS. Social media is not the place to do this as it is an incubator of Witch Hunt -19.)
Symptom #2: Witch Hunt-19 causes people to feel bitterness, hatred, and resentment against those who have wronged them.
Dose #2: These are all normal, human feelings. It is natural to want to react to others who have harmed us. But we want to learn how to respond, not react, which is just a re-enactment of what was done unto us. Bring these feelings to consciousness in ways described in Dose #1 and take up a movement practice. One of the tenets of the civil rights movement was to strive to be in good physical health.
Modern Practicum: This is not merely an intellectual assignment. A heardened heart means you have stuck energy. Whether it’s Krav Maga, yoga, dance, Capoiera (my personal fave), or something else, take up a movement practice.
When you feel defensive and insecure, your anatomical nervous system signals higher cortisol (stress) levels, a more active sympathetic system (which activates your fight-or-flight brain), and labored breathing. All of these combine so that your mind (because it's receiving less oxygen) actively produces thoughts of ruminating anxiety on how to defend yourself. This is a pain point in search of discharge.
Witch Hunt-19 alert!
Take up a movement practice, learn how to control your stress and move through pain. Flowing, moving water purifies itself. Your namesake means “to wrestle.” Take that seriously and start wrestling.
This is the end of the memorandum. I hope you have gotten something out of it.
In order to become integrated and open-hearted, to achieve the equanimity represented symbolically by the star of David, we must engage a dynamic set of practices that activate our mind, body, and spirit in a way that restores us to balance, again, and again, and again until the practice becomes permanent.
Wrestle with man and with God, and prevail. This is what your name means so become it.
And remember, always remember, dear Kol Israel, that you are loved.