I will never give up on myself

On Tuesday I shared an ice-cream with my father. Well, not him exactly, but his memory, his spirit, his energy. It was vanilla-flavoured made with jersey milk, purchased from a new fancy ice-creamery in town. Dad would’ve been happy with a drumstick from the supermarket, but if I was going to do ice-cream, I was going to do it in the finest fashion.

I sat by the river, the sun just commencing its descent, the golden light a kind autumn glow. Large white fluffy balls of cloud spotting the pale blue sky, in one particular cluster they resembled a portal opening up to the heavens.

Dad loved ice-cream and in my early years he passed that love on to me. Somewhere in the last two decades or so I stopped eating it, but he never did. The weekend before he died he’d just purchased a tub of vanilla, perhaps the inspiration for my choice.

Tuesday marked five months since his passing and I’ve taken to honouring each month with a ritual or gesture in his name. This month it was our ice-cream sunset. We sat in silence, a peaceful silence. My wet eyes a gift to him, a gift of gratitude. In some strange mystical post-death way, we were creating a new memory together.

These rituals are a high-note in what has otherwise been a testing period of lows for me. Since his passing I’ve learnt more and more about the taboo nature of death in our culture. No one really talks about it. We’re encouraged to move on, push forward, distract ourselves, rise above it, leave them in the past, get on with life.

And even more than that, why does no one talk about the indescribable sensations that come alongside it. Why does no one talk about what it feels like when one of the two people who brought you into this world no longer exist in it? I remember some years ago a guy I dated banging on his chest when he shared about the passing of his mother. His face contorting as he remarked, ‘How to explain the feeling here in my heart?’ This is the closest I ever got to being forewarned about the experience.

If not for a few good books and a great counsellor, I’d be lost in this wild sea. So I’m writing about it all. Mainly in my journals for now, scatterings here, in time to share more.

I’ve learnt that putting aside all the emotional aspects to it, at a pure biological and scientific level, post-death grief of a close loved one is a period of our brain and nervous system re-wiring itself. Our brain is all about connection and when someone who formed an important place in our world view leaves, we need to reconfigure the way we see the world.

It’s made me think about my grandfather, my dad’s father, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust. All of them, other than him, shot at gun-point in a field outside their home town and buried in a mass grave. His family gone in one fell swoop. How would his brain have re-wired to that? Would it have ever completely adapted? I doubt it.

I thought about Zada Leon (my grandfather), a lot this week, in particular as it’s been Holocaust Memorial Day, or as said in Hebrew, Yom Hashoah.

What would he be thinking about the current state of affairs in Australia? About the country he took his wife and his two small boys for a better life, a safer life, a safer Jewish life.

What would he be thinking about our current Prime Minister giving his preferences to — and potentially forming a government with — a party that is deadset on the annihilation of Israel, the only Jewish country in the world? The same party who condones 7 October, the largest attack on Jewish life since the Holocaust. The largest attack since the event that tore his family from him. The same party that has a tagline to Vote with Palestine this election, as if it is the most important issue for Australians.

This tagline and all that comes with it is the modern day version of anti-semitism, the exact same anti-semitism my grandfather faced in Poland less than a century ago, just under a new guise. I pull my hair out trying to grasp why no one other than the Jewish people (and a few other wise souls) can see the same playbook playing out. It starts with propaganda blaming Jews for all the wrong in the world; then boycotts of business, arts, academia and so on; the freedom fighters (once the Nazis, now the Free Palestine crew) believing they are fighting for social justice and humanity until the Jews are totally dehumanised, allowing it to end in the mass extermination of Jews because no one any longer sees us as humane. Yesterday I looked at comments in a post about an Israeli who was attacked by a shark this week and I was horrified at the way the de-humanisation was already occurring, statements such as ‘well the shark spat him out when he realised he was a Jew,’ (and that’s probably the least vile one) in an incident having nothing to do with the Middle East conflict at all.

What would he be thinking about the woman running for that same party in the place I live, who once told one of her kids that Hitler thought he was having fun when he killed 6 million Jews and then adding insult to injury when she added that she was pleased Shane Warne died the same day so media attention was diverted from her Hitler comment?

What would he be thinking about our security here in Australia? The children of his children who he bought here for a better life.

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions because when he was alive I was too young to have these type of conversations with him, or perhaps I never thought they’d be needed. I have to assume he’d be shocked. As would my other grandfather, who too came here from Poland with his own father, for a better post-war life. And who contributed so much to our wonderful ‘lucky’ country.

I think about them also when people say the Jews rule the world, control businesses, control economies, control the media. Ah, yes, all 15 million of us out of a global population of 8 billion. However, it’s right, we did start new sectors but that’s because old ones wouldn’t take us in. The Jews who went to America and started Hollywood and the financial services sector did it out of pure necessity. Each of my grandfathers working god damn hard to find a way to support their families in a new country with a new language and culture.

I wonder what he’d be thinking about the way my business has been impacted by the rabid rise in anti-semitism. The number of women who unfollowed me, unfriended me when they found out I was Jewish and supporting the only Jewish country in a world consisting of 195 countries. Women who I actually knew, who had been mentored by me, sat in circle with me, attended my events.

What I do know for 100% certainty is that both of my grandfathers would tell me to not give up, to stand tall and to keep going, just as they did. Resilience runs through my bloodline.

I’ve shed copious tears recently, the fine skin my under eyes now worn and turning greyish. Between my father’s passing and all the connected losses that have resurfaced from it and the hatred that surrounds me, there are days when I question this resilience. Yet today, the title of this Substack came to me in my meditation — I will never give up on myself.

And I won’t. That’s a public promise.

In that vein, I’m currently doing something I haven’t done since I was a young girl. I’m counting The Omer.

For those reading this who aren’t familiar with the term, The Omer is a seven-week period between two Jewish holidays, Passover and Shavout, which has numerous practical and more esoteric meanings. The one I like the most is the spiritual meaning, where The Omer represents a seven-week personal transformation and growth period, symbolising the time between the ancient Jews/Hebrews escaping ‘the chains’ of slavery in Egypt to the freedom that came with receiving the Ten Commandments and the Torah in the wilderness of the desert.

Day 11, which occurred this week, was about Netzach of Gevurah, which is translated to discipline in endurance. How do we find the confidence to face challenges, how do we keep a steady flame? This is not only relevant to me where I am now personally, but to my people over the millennia we’ve been in existence. In essence these words sum up the way we’ve kept our faith even when being persecuted.

So now as I face my own micro and macro challenges, it is soothing and strengthening to know there is something I can follow, an age-old way of being that kindles and nourishes my inner light.

I will never give up on myself is a statement that includes my ego and also my higher being. It feels like a partnership of selves. No matter what happens in life, this partnership is rock solid. Gevurah. Fire. Netzach. Steady. My own light cradling the darkness.