Stuck In The Middle With You - The Story of Tor Hyams
Stuck In The Middle With You - The Story of Tor Hyams
How Progressive Politics is Tearing My Jewish Family Apart
A guest post by a friend who’s family is being torn apart by progressive politics:
I like to say I am such a reformed Jew that I’m basically Christian. When I was a kid, I decided to ask my non-religious, Jewish mother to get bar-mitzvahed. I told her it was because I wanted to learn more about my Jewish identity, but, truly, I just wanted the money and I wasn’t about to allow my prepubescent Jewish brethren to keep all the dough for themselves. Nothing could have pleased my family more, especially my Aunt Esther, who, contrary to my hippie mother, was the most Jewish person in our family and the ever-loving matriarch. So I went through with it and I got my money. And I never practiced Judaism again, that is, until October 7th.
Tor Hyam’s Bar Mitvah - 1983
After seeing the heinous attacks on innocent Jews in Israel, I was immediately brought back to my childhood, back to Hebrew school in the early 1980’s when I was required to watch the movies about the holocaust. I can still remember the graphic footage of emaciated Jews being marched into the gas chambers and then those same Jews being thrown into a ditch by laughing Nazis. Those films and having to memorize my Haftarah portion in Hebrew constituted the entire precursor to my Bar mitzvah. Though I quickly forgot the sacred Hebrew, the images of those dead Jews must have been quietly idling in the back of my brain for the next forty years.
On October 7th, they all flooded back into my consciousness like the seas flooded the earth under Noah’s wooden ark. Though I would have rather not been subjected to watching Jews die every weekend for two years of Hebrew school, in a way I am glad to have those images embedded in my brain because it still serves me today as a ghastly reminder of what was and what could happen again. Of course, this all happened before the rise of progressive schools, which sired the ‘coddled generation’ of young people (progressive Jews included) that we are now seeing march in the streets for Palestine.
One large difference between this generation and mine, is young Jews today are only told about the Holocaust, not shown, presumably because progressive parents don’t believe their sensitive little minds should ever have to witness such atrocities, nor be forced to carry them through life. One has to wonder if these same delicate minds understand as they protest in front of Jewish owned businesses that they are provoking the meteoric 340% rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes, not to mention the proliferation of Jewish hate all over the world. Yes, some of these agitators are Jews. A few are even members of my own family.
For 40 years, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness before being led into the promised land by Joshua. And for 40 years, I wandered through life as a secular Jew. And then I was reborn, once again as a Jew, having my spiritual bar mitzvah just 40 years after the original. Now, having become a (Jewish) man, I lit Shabbos candles on Friday night, broke out my yarmulka, tallis and tefillin and, though I wasn’t quite sure what to do with any of it, I wanted to learn. And I was sure my family, especially my Aunt Esther, would rally around me. I wanted to call her and tell her of my newfound religion and how, for the first time in my life, I was looking forward to Passover. She would be so proud. But I waited. Out of respect, I waited to call her because I knew she must have felt those events at the deepest level. I waited because I knew she had friends in Israel and needed to attend to them in any way she could. And maybe, just maybe I waited because I was afraid to hear the strongest woman in our family be vulnerable at a time when I needed her to be strong and to tell me everything would be alright. But before I had a chance to call her, my entire family received an email from my cousin Jeremiah (I changed his name to protect the guilty).
He is a proud member of the neo-“progressive” generation, the coddled, meek child of DSA parents who vote on the “Working Families” line and who, for all of their ultra-liberal ideology of compassion and acceptance, only see the world as binary; Democrats are right and Republicans are wrong (good vs. evil). He is the Yale graduate who, presumably, was never told he was wrong about anything and whose belief system was enabled by the intellectual bubble of social justice, unresponsive to facts and devoid of critical thinking. In other words, he’s the kid who was always right. So why was I surprised when I received his mass email to our entire family (32 of us) just five days after THE day calling for us all to stand up for Palestine? Because he’s Jewish. That’s why. Because that’s not the response you would expect from your Jewish cousin after innocent Jewish children were decapitated and Jewish women were raped and, well, you know the rest. But I let that one go. Better to ignore than antagonize the situation any further. After all, the older generation was probably and justifiably much more upset than I could imagine. But what happened next could not be ignored.
On November 5th, just 30 days afterover 1200 innocent Jews were slaughtered (and worse), my cousin Jeremiah posted an Instagram story, donning his pride at having marched at a pro-Palestine rally in Washington D.C. where they sang that song and waved protest signs that read “Free Palestine,” “End The Genocide,” and “Ceasefire Now!” Though I had been very vocal in my recent social media posts and in-person confrontations during the weeks following October 7th, I had refrained from discussing any of this with my family, especially the DSA contingent. But this was too much for me to bare, and I had to stand up for my newfound beliefs, and more importantly my people. How could I say I’m calling out anti-semitism if I don’t call it out in my own family? So I responded in kind and ‘fixed’ his story to say what it really was; calling for violence against Jews.
Tor’s cousins instagram story
I was called reprehensible and disgusting by his sister. His parents were “outraged.” And then the real dagger hit me. My Aunt Esther told me what I did was wrong and that it’s time to “stop this madness.” The madness? I was doing exactly what I was taught to do as a Jew. Never again, right? And she went on to say “I thought you were of the mind that family is first whether or not you agree with each other.” Agree? This isn’t an argument, I thought. This is a threat to Jewish existence… by people in my own family. This was putting family first - My entire Jewish family all over the world. And with some sadness and a heavy heart, I texted her back and said “I was putting family first when I called out the Jewish hatred from my own family and I would do it again.” Then I heard the rest of my family also thought what I did was wrong (except my mother, who at 81 truly stands with us), the rest of my family who have been as silent as the rest of the world.
Tor Hyams - 2023
And after 40 years of defying my Jewish heritage and wandering through the virtual desert, I finally found my calling. I was finally ready to come home. To Israel. To Judaism. To myself. And for the first time in my life, I actually couldn’t wait to go to Passover. The only problem is now I’m not invited. These are complicated times for the Jewish community, especially for those who have family in Israel and members of our family that have been seduced by progressivism and the underlying Jew hatred that can be found just beneath its surface. But the one thing Jews shouldn’t be so confused about is if we should side with those who wish to see us dead. I may not be invited to Passover this year, but at least I can sleep at night knowing who my people are, and that I am not alone.
Am Yisrael Chai.