I’m a Sephardic Jew
and this is my story.

unwanted, no more

Up until four years ago, I didn’t feel Jewish at all. In fact, I never wanted to think about my Jewish identity, let alone understand how important Israel is as a symbol of Jewish survival and resilience. 

I felt completely disconnected from my religious and cultural heritage, from my roots.

I was born to Sephardic Jewish parents in Istanbul. As a family, we were “culturally Jewish.” This meant that we enjoyed coming together and having big meals as a family every time there was a religious holiday or celebration.

I didn’t learn any Hebrew growing up, and I was never interested in learning about the Holocaust or how Israel got established. My parents didn’t seem particularly interested in these subjects either. 

During religious holidays, prayers were read in Hebrew and sometimes in Spanish. I especially loved the song-like, melodic prayers that we could sing together. To me, this was what religion was about: Family, food, and occasional music. 

In every other way, religion was a source of confusion. I never understood the prayers and no one ever tried to explain them to me. For me, these rituals were confusing at best and completely lifeless at worst - except for the moments when we sang together. 

No matter how I felt about the way we did religion, I was always happy to be with my extended family. I loved seeing cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. 

unwanted

About four years ago, in the middle of a romantic relationship crisis, I discovered “unwanted.”

I was feeling unwanted very often no matter what my romantic partner did. At one point, I knew I had to look into this deeply. I was either going to heal or lose my partner altogether. I decided to heal. 

I began to investigate how “unwanted” felt in my being, directly in my body, inside my tissues. Sometimes “unwanted” felt like heaviness, sometimes it felt like survival panic, and sometimes debilitating shame and unworthiness. Whatever this “unwanted” was, it was big and very painful to look at. 

The more I looked, the more I saw: “Unwanted” lived in me, lived as me, for as long as I’d been alive. “Unwanted” was much bigger than me and my life. “Unwanted” felt ancient.

When I felt unwanted in my relationship, I would shut down, go numb, get lost in my head, become emotionally unavailable - paralyzed. I would become reactive, hurtful with my words and tone of voice. I would feel scared and get hardened. 

“Unwanted” really confused me. I knew I had to deal with this feeling one way or another if I wanted to have my sanity back.

the holocaust

The more I stayed with this feeling and explored it from the inside, letting my attention sink into where in my body I was feeling “unwanted,” the more I discovered old pain.

This pain was a mixture of having been rejected in the past by women I was attracted to along with rejection by a group of friends I’d had when I was a teenager. The more I stayed with this pain and digested both the anger in it as well as the hurt, another pain, a pain that wasn’t really mine, became obvious. 

“Unwanted,” were the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. They were “the outsiders,” they were “the other,” who didn’t matter, who could be sacrificed, who were sent to their deaths like cattle!

I felt the “unwanted” that is still alive within the Turkish government towards minorities. I felt the injustice, the profound pain and justified anger of millions of people across the world who are in the same exact position. 

I cried for their pain, for the insults they suffer everyday in the hands of governments that they often elect themselves and have to support because there is no alternative. 

By this time I had done over twenty silent 10-day meditation courses as a student and had worked as a volunteer in just as many. This time I knew I didn’t need any guidance or structure. I wanted to immerse myself in the natural rhythms of my own being. 

A few days into the retreat, one afternoon, I began to feel very agitated. I was panicking. Some deep fears were coming to the surface. I began to feel overwhelmed. I left my room and began to walk in the garden while consciously recognizing there were no immediate dangers around me. 

I began to spontaneously cry whenever I thought about the Holocaust. I was getting in touch with my Jewish-ness for the first time in my life through this profound pain. “Unwanted” was not about my romantic relationship after all. It was actually about my Jewish identity! 

my family, my government

In the span of a few months, I turned a corner in my relationship. I was no longer shutting down or getting reactive even when “unwanted” was triggered by the behaviours of my partner. 

Around this time, I began to talk more often with my grandmother on my father’s side. She is the only one among my grandparents who is still alive. I’ve always known about what had happened to her father (my father’s grandfather) around the year 1942. He was sent to a labor camp by the Turkish government at a time when a “head tax” was being imposed on non-muslims. He had refused to pay. 

He witnessed his friend die in the cold winter at the camp. After a while, seeing that the situation is hopeless, the family sold assets to get him out of the camp. According to my grandmother, her father had aged decades in the span of less than a year in the camp. He had left with black hair, but had come back all white. 

His name was Vitali.

Vitali died two short years later from a brain aneurysm. My grandmother was 13 years old. The more I learned about this story, the more I was able to make sense of my own anger about unfairness and injustice. It’s as if I was carrying the unexpressed emotional baggage of my entire family line!

I lit candles for Vitali. I spoke to him as if he was in front of me. I prayed for him that he finds peace. I felt his pain in me as if it was my own. 

I felt the pain of being betrayed by your own country, being subjected to the stripping of your hard-earned resources, being oppressed, being treated like a second class citizen even though you’ve been an inhabitant of the same land for over 500 years. 

survival panic

When I was traveling in Sri Lanka, I knew I had to find a retreat center to spend some alone time in complete silence. 

I kept repeating, “There’s no danger here right now” as I continued to take deep breaths. I let my body register the absence of threats in my immediate surroundings. This allowed me to see through the deceptions of fear. I was perfectly fine yet I didn’t feel fine at all!

I suddenly recognized what I was feeling as survival panic, as a fear that wasn’t only mine. My mind became flooded with the fears of some of my family members. This was my grandmother’s fear and my mother’s. This was the survival panic of millions of Jews who were sent to their deaths. 

I was, once again, digesting intergenerational wounding. This time in the form of very real fear of death. This fear said, “We’re not safe!”

I kept breathing deeply as layers of fear passed through me (or me through them). I cried tears that belonged to my ancestors, to my cultural and religious heritage. Shortly after, I began to feel that I was weeping for all of us, for the immense suffering we keep inflicting on each other, across the globe, everywhere. 

Twenty minutes later, I was deeply at peace. My body had softened, my heart opened, my mind had become profoundly tranquil. I felt powerfully awake. 

About 24 hours later, I knew I was done. I left the retreat center and headed for the train. I was on my way to a small beach town where I ended up spending the last days of my trip, immersed in the beauty of nature. 

peace

I used to feel rootless, ungrounded very often in my life. Since I’ve been healing from intergenerational wounding, I no longer feel this way. And I no longer feel “unwanted” in my closest relationships. 

What I was seeking the most (feeling at peace) I found within my deepest pain. Healing gave me sanity, a sense of self-worth and dignity, a feeling of belonging to community and land. 

I am a child of this Earth and so are you. We are literally one big family of all kinds of life even when we don’t get along so well. We are utterly interdependent, whether or not we are open to seeing this. 

Healing gave me ground, reestablished my connection with my roots, allowed me to connect with my religious and cultural heritage. I feel more Jewish today than I’ve ever felt. I also feel much more like a world citizen than ever before.

Like you, I have many identities - each beautiful, precious, and worth fully honouring. 

being chosen
and choosing

The meaning of “the chosen people” is very different to me now than before. In the past, this belief Jews have about themselves had made me reject religion altogether. As a teeanger, I had found this belief completely absurd. 

Now, I see the power of oppressed people. It is only those who have been hurt that can help heal this wretched species. Jewish people are chosen, yes, but not because we are special.

Along with many groups of oppressed people, we have a capacity, a responsibility - whether or not we take this on.

Those who have been pierced by life, those who have experienced atrocities, and suffered in the hands of tyrants and oppressors of all kinds, these are the ones who can bring a deeper sanity, a more beautiful world into being. 

In this way, yes we have been chosen, just like blacks are chosen, just like indigenous peoples are chosen. We have the eyes to see, the heart to feel, and the courage to speak up

… for as long as we choose

… to heal.