My Two-Eyed Prayer for Peace

This blog post reflects my ongoing prayer for peace, and my attempts to advocate for it. First, I want to explain (for all those who live south of the colonial border that divides Turtle Island/North America) some concepts about Truth and Reconciliation that are less well-known in the United States. Then I am sharing a letter that I wrote, which reflects the rabbinic tradition best known to the world through Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s call to advocacy, when he called on Jews to “pray with their feet”. I pray for a peace to every colonial war, but in particular, I am calling out for a ceasefire in Gaza, horrified that this war is being waged in my name, and in the name of Judaism, as I have sought to explain elsewhere in this blog.

Introduction and Background

I live in beautiful unceded Unama’ki in what is colonially known as Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. My existence here is possible based upon a series of treaties that were signed by Britain and are reaffirmed by Canada in its constitution. For those who don’t live here, you may not realize that it has become best practice for every educational session or conference or worship service to begin with a land acknowledgment. To learn more about these, please click here to read an article that I wrote about why these matter so much.

Land acknowledgments are one part of a much larger process of restorative justice that Canada recently undertook, beginning with apologies and also a commitment to Truth and Reconciliation. There is deep work that must be done for this country to decolonize itself and begin to make amends to the Indigenous peoples who have experienced genocide and profound intergenerational harm. The profession of social work has publicly apologized for its role in the residential schools and Sixties Scoop, and central to my (paid) work every day is the operationalization of what this means for the future profession of social work.

In the sacred decolonizing work that I get to witness, I see the seeds of true healing begin to be planted and sometimes blossom. It is not enough, but it has helped me to understand what can be possible. The work of Truth and Reconciliation is the exact work of “teshuvah” which I believe is best translated as restorative justice. I am advocating for a new approach to Judaism that I am calling Restorative Judaism: one where we recognize the ways in which our faith has been weaponized against others/ourselves, and work to heal ourselves/others using restorative practices.

My Letter

Here is my letter that I wrote to the attendees of the ceasefire at which I had previously spoken, and which included MLAs and MPs and others… I share it because I am praying that more people understand that there is another way forward:

Dear friends, 

I am devastated and don’t know what to do so I am reaching out to you who were at the ceasefire event our friend organized last week, at which I was blessed to speak. 

I trust that you, like myself, have been deeply impacted by Aaron Bushnell’s tragic and courageous act of martyrdom yesterday. It inspired me to reach out and also to write yet another petition and to join even more Jewish groups crying out trying to stop the genocide being conducted in our names. Hundreds of rabbis have been advocating for a ceasefire but our voices keep being silenced. I am part of the Independent Jewish Voices of Canada, and the Jewish Voices for Peace and the Rabbis for Ceasefire and so many other organizations protesting the high-jacking of our ancestral faith to seek to condone war and genocide.

I am writing this from beautiful Unama’ki in the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people, where my Indigenous siblings believe that healing will begin,  as indeed it is starting to do in our neurodecolonizing two-eyed efforts to heal intergenerational trauma. As I have learned from them, we were amongst the earliest point of contact for settlers on Turtle Island. I believe/pray that, together, we can become a tidal wave of liberation and decolonization.

Canada has begun its Truth and Reconciliation efforts in small ways. I believe this its chance to play a leading role and lead the world in decolonizing itself. But right now, my tax dollars are still funding colonial wars and genocide and systems that are not yet trauma-informed and decolonized. I believe that I should be given the option to conscientiously object to the use of my tax dollars to fund the oppression of my intersectional siblings and the genocidal colonial wars, the most horrific of which, right now, is in Gaza.

I believe that the answer to terror and trauma must be restorative justice and healing. War can not lead to true and lasting peace, especially not a war such as this one. At our last ceasefire rally, I shared my dream for what a land acknowledgement in “the Holy Land” might look like… The Middle East was colonized by Britain and France, but there is not yet an understanding of what Truth and Reconciliation could look like in the Middle East. As a result, we remain locked in old and violent ways of resolving intergenerational conflict. We know what it is like to watch our friends and neighbors awaken to the horrors of residential schools created by Britain’s colonial legacy, and to realize that Canada has engaged in genocide against the First Nations of Turtle Island. That is why I am reaching out to you. Because the rest of the world must take this opportunity to awaken to its own colonial legacies too. 

I am a second-generation Holocaust survivor who refuses to stay silent while my religion is weaponized to justify genocide and my Canadian tax dollars fund it. While my heart breaks for the hopelessness reflected in his actions, I resonate with Aaron Bushnell’s brave words of Truth. I believe that every tax payer is complicit with these war crimes. I am a trauma-informed social worker who understands the power of restorative justice to heal intergenerational trauma. I am therefore turning to you to help amplify my call for another way forward. War cannot lead to a lasting peace.

I can’t not see Israel’s actions in Gaza through this lens: the survivors of the Holocaust and the survivors the Naqba, along with their traumatized/traumatizing offspring, are all fighting each other while the rich get richer and the earth is drenched in blood and tears and the seeds of future intergenerational trauma. Each blames the other. And because America is the colonizing force that has adopted Israel as its proxy, the impact of this genocide is global. And because Lockheed Martin and other countries that are profiting from this war are connected to so many people’s stock options and retirement funds, there is a collective silence that terrifies me. At this very minute, war is being waged in my name and I cannot stay silent.

We, in unceded Mi’kma’ki, know that there is a better way. We must ask Trudeau to step into his courageous heart and speak out. Canada must lead the way, in partnership with those other countries that have begun a Truth and Reconciliation process. The time is now. Never again is now. Never again must be never again for everyone. Dr. Gabor Mate, trauma expert and physician, also Canadian and also impacted personally by the Holocaust, has said it better than me. We must stop this madness. This is intergenerational conflict and war can never heal the intergenerational trauma that is fueling this violence.

Please help me honour Aaron Bushnell’s tragic and courageous act of martyrdom. I am reaching out to those who were part of the organizing of the ceasefire rally I spoke at last week because I am praying that you can help to amplify this new decolonizing trauma-informed narrative that must transform the existing colonial “us vs them” rhetoric that is everywhere and that keeps us locked in a traumatized/traumatizing binary. There is only one side: the side of human life.

In my grief I started a petition and if you were inclined to sign it/share it, I would be grateful. I am scared about how Aaron’s decision is already being reframed as “mental illness”, like he needed treatment so he could become compliant and a good soldier. I believe it is unethical to medicate what ought to be collective horror at the colonial genocides that masquerade as patriotism. We must speak out at this logical inconsistency: How is it acceptable for Aaron to die while “fighting for his country” (murdering others), but somehow “pathological” for him to die while trying to raise awareness about nonviolence and stop genocide unfolding?!

Here is the petition that I wrote:

https://www.change.org/p/defund-colonial-wars-we-will-not-be-complicit

Please join me in prayer/solidarity with the people of Gaza as Netanyahu prepares to amplify his destruction onto the innocent civilians of Rafah. Rafah in Hebrew means healing: collectively, I pray, may we turn that place of pain into a place of healing. 

Judaism’s sacred texts teach pikuach nefesh (saving lives) is our most sacred duty. In theory, every religion does. Yet most religions are silent or picking sides which amplifies the binary and reflects the ways that colonization has coopted all our religious voices. As a result of the lateral/fraternal violence that ensures, the rich get richer by manipulating the colonial narrative for their continued profit, while the rest of us are silenced/silent. If ever it was time to topple the tables of money lending in the religious institutions of our day, now is it. 

I cannot be silent to colonial wars funded by my tax dollars anymore. Aaron’s  courageous act of martyrdom must not be in vain. The deaths of the innocent in our “Holy Land” must not be in vain. The Mi’kmaq understand that land cannot be owned. This is the colonial lie that is responsible for genocides everywhere. Killing living beings for a flag is idolatry. We must speak out.

I am reaching out in anguish and hope and a refusal to accept the status quo. There is only one side: it is the side of Life. 

If you are open to signing my petition and sharing, I would be grateful. If not, then simply know that I am grateful for you and for the growing decolonizing healing Wisdom to which I get to bear witness. As I learn Mi’kmak’i’s Sacred land-based values, that as a treaty partner, I seek to support, I recognize in them my ancestral Jewish teachings. I have personally been healed from the neurodecolonization teachings that I learned from Dr. Michael Yellow Bird and that we are trying to cultivate together here in Sacred Unama’ki…. May the world soon awaken to the understanding that there is another path forward… 

I often speak about the vav-conversive (grammatical wisdom) of the Hebrew language which can help us see both sides of things, while Elder Albert Marshall speaks about Etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing). This is the nonbinary both/and approach that we share. This is exactly what my Jewish ancestral teachers said: “elu v’elu” (these and these are BOTH words of the Living G!d) = which is exactly the meaning of the Mi’kmaq Msit No’kmaq (All Living Beings are Sacred). Love your neighbour as yourself. This is what we agree on. All the rest is commentary. Trauma has caused us to mistranslate. We are the verb-based language peoples (=fluid) oppressed by the noun-based (objectifying) languages (English),  but together I believe/pray that we can become a tidal wave of healing liberation…  I pray that we stop being distracted by these colonial wars and focus on saving our planet from extinction and working for the healing of all of Creation.

Thank you for reading my two-eyed prayer for a ceasefire that can lead to a trauma-informed two-eyed approach to intergenerational healing and restorative justice… and thank you for all that you have done to give me hope that another way is possible 

We are all related. 

May Salaam/Shalom come soon.