Black Lives Matter

As I sit here comfortably in my home in one of the more affluent regions of the planet, I nonetheless experience a combination of sadness, anger, disgust, and fear in response to what is happening in the world. Particularly, I feel overwhelming sadness for Black people in the United States, not just for the recent murder of George Floyd by the police, but for what his death represents: literally centuries of oppression, persecution, and murder of Black people in America. 

As I peer down at my hands, my fingers typing away, I am aware that the pigmentation in my skin would fit with the label of “white” or “Caucasian,” and I question if I should even be speaking on recent events. On the one hand, I’d rather boost the messages of leaders within the Black community (which I do whenever I see the opportunity) than add my own voice. On the other hand, I am bombarded with messages that say “silence is complicity,” and being a descendant of Holocaust survivors (only two generations removed), I feel the need to write in order to express something:

When I fully allow myself to contemplate the horror that is racism, that a human being could be reduced to an object of scorn because of the coding of their skin pigmentation by nothing more than genetic chance, and that this is the basis upon which they could be murdered, I am deeply horrified. I am at first filled with immense sadness, because although I am not a person of colour, I am a human being that can empathize with other human beings. I don’t know what it’s like to be the target of anti-Black racism, but I do know what it’s like to have hatred unfairly projected upon me and as a result be a target of violence. It’s a horrible, terrible, and potentially traumatic experience. What I don’t know is what it’s like to live with the threat of that sort of violence every single day because of my appearance. Not having that experience on a daily basis is part of what is meant by the term “white privilege.” And the fact that there are literally millions of people living society every single day with this experience fills me with despair.

 

After the sadness comes the anger. I am enraged that we live in a world in which we allow these events to happen. I say “we” because we truly are one species, one human race, and as such we bear a collective responsibility for our fates. The reality of our interconnectedness becomes clearer to me with each passing day. I am angry that those in positions of power do not put fixing this problem at the top of their list of priorities. Not only that, but in the year 2020, the president of the United States literally repeats the same phrases as those used by racist politicians and police chiefs in Jim Crow South in the 1960’s – and he doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with it. 

The anti-Black racists have not disappeared. The KKK has not disappeared. They are employed in government, the media, the military, and police departments. Instead of openly calling black people “n*ggers,” they call them “thugs” – this is the new codeword that they think they can get away with. It is not a priority for them to address the systemic issues that perpetuate racism because in order to do so they would have to own the darkness within them – the darkness that they have projected onto Black people. This darkness is what Carl Jung called “the shadow” – and for racists, it involves the rejection of feared (and possibly traumatized) aspects of their own humanity. This suppression results in their fear, rage, and disgust (which would be more appropriately directed at the racist parts of themselves) being ignorantly projected onto people of colour. 

 

---

"A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour."

-Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

---

After the sadness and anger, comes the disgust and the fear. I am disgusted when I see pictures and videos of white cops killing unarmed Black men with impunity while bystanders watch and film. I am afraid at the lack of political will and conviction among elected officials to draw a firm line in the sand and declare that these atrocities are not allowed to happen anymore. And I can’t help but feel helpless. 

How am I supposed to make a difference in all of this? Does sitting here typing out my thoughts and feelings and then posting it online actually do anything? Will anyone who needs to read this actually read this and if they do will it make even the tiniest bit of difference in addressing the enormity of the problem of anti-Black racism? The cynical side of me says, “probably not,” and the truth is I have no idea. Maybe this is just an attempt to help myself process what I am seeing and reading about online. Maybe it’s an attempt to address the assertion that “silence is complicity” and add my voice to the growing number of people who refuse to stay silent. Maybe it’s an attempt to heed the wisdom of calls to action from far greater people than myself. 

Regardless, I can think, I can feel, I can write – and so I write. When and where I see opportunities to speak out or to act, I will do so. To whatever extent possible, I will do my best to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Black Lives Matter. Taking a stand for the basic human rights of all human beings matters. Let’s all of us, please, take these turbulent days as opportunities to make this world better than it’s been thus far. 

An Open Letter to Professor Peterson from a Former Student

For context: http://thevarsity.ca/2016/11/21/the-explainer-timeline-of-the-jordan-peterson-controversy/

Dear Professor Peterson,

I am a former of student of yours – I took the “Personality and its Transformations” and “Maps of Meaning” courses that you taught at the University of Toronto during my undergraduate years, where I double majored in psychology and philosophy.

I am writing this letter to you directly, but also publishing it publicly in the hopes that it furthers the advancement of the current conversation/controversy that you are surrounded in at this time. I am doing this for three reasons: 

1. I hope to provide you with some thoughts for self-reflection about the issues at hand, not because I am sure that you need assistance in your process of self-reflection or because I am sure that reading this letter will benefit you, but because I genuinely want to be helpful;
2. I want to aid in my own process of reflection and to help contextualize my own thoughts and feelings on these matters (and I thank you for validating my proclivity for using the written word for such purposes during my time as your student); and
3. I hope to provide some food for thought for others who are currently following the recent controversy (especially those who seem to follow you unquestioningly with the passion of zealots).

I distinctly remember a moment during one of your Maps of Meaning lectures years ago wherein a student raised his hand and asked a question: “Why are you teaching us all of this?” Your answer rings loud and clear to me in my memory: “I want you to be free of ideological possession.” Your thesis has stuck with me to this day because I find it cogently and concisely sums up a major reason why seemingly rational and normal human beings can seem to become the embodiments of evil, something we have seen (and continue to see) far too often throughout the course of history. It helped me to make a little more sense out of the unfathomability of my own ancestry: my grandparents were survivors of Nazi concentration camps. It has helped me to more clearly recognize and appreciate the strength with which underlying assumptions about the world – call them ideologies, schemas, or unconscious beliefs – shape the realities of individuals, families, communities, and societies as a whole. I say all of this because I want to be clear that I value and largely agree with your cautions about the dangers of being “ideologically possessed”; I hold you in high regard as one of the more insightful and thought-provoking professors I had during my undergraduate years at U of T.

I appreciate the extent to which you acknowledge the fallibility of human beings, particularly their blind-spots: their biases, their emotional reasoning, and their logical fallacies. It was a point you made again at the debate this past Saturday morning as you were pitted against (what seemed to be) two interlocutors who did not share your fears and concerns about the insidious motives lurking behind bill C-16 and the “social justice warrior” agenda to silence those whose views do not conform with theirs. To some who have been following this unfolding drama, you have been painted as a hate-monger, an ignorant bigot, and the prototypical “privileged white male professor sitting in his ivory tower.” To others, you are seen as a courageous martyr, a warrior for truth and freedom, and a brilliant psychologist/professor who is being fundamentally misunderstood by a naïve world. I would argue that those who view you at either end of such an extreme spectrum are, to borrow your phrase, ideologically possessed by polarized, overly simplified perspectives, the origins of which and the reasons for I will not begin to speculate here.

As for myself, in accordance with my own humanistic beliefs, I view you as a man who is striving to stand up for what he believes is right. I see a man who earnestly believes that there is danger lurking in the shadows and is trying his best to shine light on it in order to prevent its influence and reach from growing. And I see a man who feels that he has his back against the wall, who is afraid of what is happening in the world around him, and even more afraid of what may be coming down the road. 

As I think back at all of the knowledge I gleaned from you in your lectures and writing, all of the insights and perspectives you shared with myself and my fellow class-mates, I also recall certain off-hand comments you made to us at times. Some that I can still hear echoing in my memory include: “If you believe that, then you’re an idiot!” and “If you think that, then you’re just plain wrong.” I recall these comments now not simply for their (perhaps?) inadvertent crassness and their (unintentionally?) entertaining shock-value. I recall them because within the tone and the very nature of the content of these statements, I can’t help but find an inherent arrogance – a definitive, dismissive quality of cocksureness that is, I think, unbecoming of a man who claims to recognize the uncertainty, fallibility, and tenuous nature of the human mind’s grasp on reality. I recall these statements because I have seen/heard them again in some of your recent statements, lectures, and debates regarding the issues surrounding Bill C-16. I point them out to you now because I think they may be symptomatic of one of the reasons that you find yourself in the position that you’re currently in.

Rather than make psychoanalytic assumptions about you, I would like to pose you a series of questions – ones that I have been wondering in light of recent events:

Is it possible for any human being, including yourself, to be fully free of biases, mental blind-spots, and underlying assumptions that may be erroneous? Is it possible for any human being, including yourself, to be completely “free of ideological possession” of one sort or another? Is there such a thing as a “completely analyzed analyst,” one who can view certain phenomena which such a degree of objectivity that he/she/they/[insert preferred gender pronoun here] are free of the grips of the unconscious? Can anyone truly see so clearly that they have broken free of the inherently subjective nature of human consciousness itself? If I had to venture a guess, I imagine that your answer to these questions would be: “probably not.”

I implore you then, Dr. Peterson, to ask yourself how you can justify presenting yourself as being so sure as to the rightness of the stance you have taken recently regarding Bill C-16 and the issue of transgender rights? Is it not possible that the decades you have spent researching totalitarian regimes and their ideological underpinnings, your own education and theoretical orientations as a psychologist, your own personal upbringing, history, and life experiences have led you to see things in a certain way? Is it not possible that given your own beliefs, your own findings based on your extensive study of various texts and academic research, that you have nurtured in yourself a bias to assimilate your perceptions of events and personal experiences to fit a particular worldview? Is it not possible that in your attempts to make sense of what seems to be an often dangerous and unpredictable world composed largely of irrational and idiotic human beings, you have oversimplified your views on the nature of good and evil, right and wrong, freedom and oppression?

I ask you these questions not because I am sure that you’re wrong about what you believe to be the truth in these matters. I ask, rather, in the hopes that you will not take your sense of rightness as proof that you are, in fact, right – no matter how logical, rational, intuitive, or well-informed your arguments seem to be. I remember you cautioning myself and my fellow students against putting too much stock the in veracity of rationalization – the most valid of arguments does not guarantee its soundness. The human faculty of reason can justify just about any position, provided that certain premises remain beyond the reach of scrutiny and thorough questioning.

For what it’s worth, here are some of my brief reflections on recent events:

            I think that you’ve made some harmful overgeneralizations about the people who are advocating for the rights of transgendered people. In labelling the entire cause of transgender rights as a front for “PC authoritarians,” “Marxists,” and the “radical/fringe left,” you have also (perhaps inadvertently) called into question the validity of the cause itself. This sort of “guilt by association” reasoning, which you may or may not actually espouse, is communicated to those who look up to you: students who listen to your lectures, watch your videos, and hang on to your every word. I do not doubt the existence of the “radical leftist” people of whom you speak (I encountered my fair share of them during my undergraduate years), and I agree when you say that they are likely not representative of the trans-rights movement as a whole. However, by focusing so exclusively on them and what you imagine their motives and influence to be regarding bill C-16, you have framed the issue of transgender rights in a very particular way – one that I believe suits your own motives, beliefs, and worldviews much more than the actual spirit and letter of the law itself. 

You, yourself, have been accused of fostering intolerance and fomenting aggression towards transgendered people on campus, largely because certain ill-informed, neo-Nazi types seem to gravitate toward your messages and use them as fuel for their own intolerance. Would it be fair to say that because such people have been drawn to your rallies, people who wave the banner of “free speech” over their heads as justification for their own transphobia and hatred, that your motives must secretly be steeped in neo-Nazi ideologies? Of course not. But when you frame issues a certain way based on your own preconceptions about the world (which we all inherently do), you are likely to start mistaking shadows for actual monsters. 

            

            There is much more I could write, but I realize that this letter has already become quite lengthy and that both time and attention are precious, limited resources in our world. I would like to end with one final point: I don’t believe that there is such a thing as absolute freedom. The freedom of speech that we enjoy must be tempered by our own sense of responsibility for what we say. As a psychologist sworn to a code of ethics which includes a responsibility to society at large and as a professor at a prominent academic institution, this responsibility is amplified for you. If the way in which you frame your arguments and exercise your right to free speech does, in fact, lead to ostracism from your colleagues, anger from minority communities, and the increased boldness of racists, misogynists, and bigots, then you have a duty to very seriously examine the impact of your words and actions. 

I would be happy to discuss these matters further with you, if that is something you would like to do.

Best wishes,

Daniel Farb

On the Recent Events in Paris

Jerome Delay—AP

What happened yesterday in Paris is a tragedy. The loss of human life is always a tragedy. The murdering of innocent people is an unqualifiedly terrible thing. 

Many people's instant reaction will be anger - this is normal and justified. However, if we react and form judgments solely from that anger, we are bound to perpetuate a global cycle of violence that has plagued humankind since time immemorial. We need to take the time to calm ourselves, to regulate our emotions, and then to think and make choices that will transform the landscape of how we respond to such terrible acts.

When something awful happens that doesn't fit our current worldview, our minds demand an explanation. Such gruesome acts of human-on-human violence, especially when they happen in a modern, “Western,” urban centre like Paris, do not fit most people's view of how the world is supposed to be. It shakes the foundational beliefs that we operate with in order to function in the world – beliefs regarding our safety, the progress of human civilization, and justice. Because of this discomfort, this anxiety-producing cognitive dissonance, we need demand quick answers. We need quick, simple, understandable explanations to contain the anomaly of human carnage that we have just witnessed or read about. And to this demand, we all too often rely on others – the media, our friends and family, etc. – to offer us easily digestible accounts of what happened.

This is where language serves a vital function for us. We rely on words: terrorism, evil, Islamic fundamentalism, psychopaths, radicals, etc. These words are powerful because they denote and contain within them an entire range of complicated human problems. Most vitally for us, they act as containers for our anger, our rage, and our disbelief at the cruelty we are capable of as human beings.

When we resort to these labels, we form conclusions that allow us to distance ourselves from the anxiety and difficult questions that we may otherwise have to face when we learn of such horrendous events. We other the individuals responsible for these heinous acts: terrorists, savages, madmen, barbarians, etc. In essence, we contain the anomaly within subgroups of people – other people – that we insist we do not and could never belong to. This becomes even more destructive when we overgeneralize based on these labels: Islamic fundamentalism becomes “the Muslim world,” “Arabs,” “Muslims,” “Islam,” etc. Some of us become racists and bigots who feel justified in our reasoning. We become as rigidly attached to our own fundamentalist beliefs as those who belong to the target groups that we dehumanize and demonize (if you really want a sampling of the kind of ignorance and racism I’m referring to, just read the comment sections of news articles and YouTube videos covering these incidents on the internet. Also, bring a barf bag).

By relying on these mental heuristics, these labels and stereotypes, we don’t need to fully confront our own difficult emotions that have been stirred up by the news. We don’t need to think and ask important questions about these events (e.g. why do these things keep on happening over and over again in our world?). We already have our answers. The problem is them, and we are not one of them, so the solution is simple: continue to try to fight and kill them before they kill us so that the rest of us can go on with our merry lives. Look at the example of America’s response to 9/11. Nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the World Trade Centre attacks. The response: all-out war against those who were perceived to represent the reason for this attack. The results? To date, approximately 6,800 American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, most of them civilians (actual numbers vary widely depending on reporting sources).

But let’s interrupt that process for a moment. Let’s take the time to calm ourselves before we form our conclusions; to sit back, think, and ask ourselves the important questions. Most importantly, why does this kind of shit keep happening? I don’t claim to have all the answers for this question, but if you’re willing to actually do some research, there are many who have written about possible causes.

For a brief review of terrorist incidents in France, here’s a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_France

Note that, like the history of most places on this planet, incidents of human terror against other humans is not limited to recent times. You’ll also note that many of the incidents that have happened in recent decades are attributes to “Islamists,” “Jihadists,” or “Fundamentalists” of one kind or another.

Here are just a few perspectives on how Muslim people in general have been received in France:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32053906

http://www.globalresearch.ca/french-ghettos-police-violence-and-racism/1214

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038158/Muslims-caught-praying-streets-Paris-face-arrest-tough-new-law.html

http://time.com/3659241/paris-terror-attack-muslim-islam/

https://www.rt.com/news/234019-france-racism-jews-muslims/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/british-muslim-school-children-suffering-a-backlash-of-abuse-following-paris-attacks-9999393.html

http://www.meforum.org/338/islam-in-france-the-french-have-themselves-to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_France#Discrimination

http://socialistworker.org/2015/01/12/the-anti-muslim-backlash-in-france

http://time.com/3659241/paris-terror-attack-muslim-islam/

Here’s a Wikipedia article about the history of racism in France:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_France

AP/Laurent Cipriani

The point of these examples is not to “blame the victims” of yesterday’s events. The purpose of this writing is not to blame France for its own racism or history of Colonialism. These mass murders cannot be justified. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be explained and understood.

France is just one country representative of problems that have been replicated on a global scale over and over again by different people and nations over history. Localized events like this are microcosms for global events. The global history and climate of oppression, of imperialism and colonialism, of exploitation, inequity, and state-funded terror against entire countries is part of this problem. The Paris attacks are a symptom of a divided world based on a history of broken foreign policies.

There are many in this world seething with anger and rage against the “Western world” and all that it represents. We are the other that is responsible for the death, destruction, and despair faced by millions of people in the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the globe. In the eyes of those who we brand as terrorists, we are the terrorists. And if you look simply at casualty rates, maybe we are, as many will label us, “the real terrorists.”

Andy Singer

So where does this leave us? How can we all respond differently to these events so as to not perpetuate the same cycles of violence, death, and despair that continually plague the human race? 

I can only share with you my own reaction and process to hearing the news.

When I read the first headlines, I was alarmed, but not surprised. My worldview is one in which I think that such events are commonplace and I’ve come to consider them as horrendous but expected occurrences given the type of world we live in. I got angry. I thought of all those people who were out living their lives and were murdered while innocently doing so. But the anger quickly left me – I let it go. And that’s when I felt the core emotion underneath my anger: sadness. I feel deeply saddened by the recent events in Paris. I am sad that we do this to one another over and over again. I am sad because I believe that in the grand scheme of things, the world’s reactions to these attacks likely won’t result in anything changing for the better.

As much as I am upset and saddened by the actions of the people who carried out these attacks, as much as I want to hate them and demonize them for their cruelty, I refuse to. I refuse to other the people that did this. As I’ve mentioned, I think that this “othering” process is a core part of the problem in how we treat each other as human beings. But on a more fundamental, personal level, I cannot other these people because I acknowledge that given the wrong set of circumstances, I could have been one of them. Had any one of us been born into the environment that these people were born into, been exposed to whatever experiences, horrors, and ideologies these people were exposed to, we could have been them.

We all have the capacity to be monsters. We all also have the capacity to be more than that. Those of us who are privileged enough to have the relative peace, safety, security, and time to reflect have the opportunity to consciously choose how we want to be in the world. We need to exercise our responsibility to choose.

So today, despite my anger and sadness and fear, I choose not to hate. I choose not to demonize the people who carried out these attacks. I choose to strive to understand rather than to contain and separate myself from the horror. I choose to write these words to help me process my own experience, and hopefully make a difference in how you process yours.

What do you choose?

Christopher Mulligan/CBC News

Eulogy for Zaidy John

            John Sauber was always known to us grandchildren as Zaidy John. Zaidy John was a bit of a superhero to my brothers and me growing up. I remember being in awe of his physical fitness, nutritional expertise (thanks in large part to my Bubbie Blemah), and his strength – I have distinct memories of him lifting up my brother Jesse and I, one on each arm, and each of us clinging on to his rock-hard biceps. I remember many birthday cards and letters to overnight summer-camp written in his perfect, almost computer-like penmanship – evidence of the fact that he would have made a fine surgeon. Going over to Bubbie and Zaidy’s was always an exciting time – sharing in his love of cooking and baking, eating special but healthy foods, playing games, going swimming, sweating in the dry sauna, and playing with the weightlifting equipment in the gym in their building. Zaidy had a way of cupping the water in his hands in the swimming pool and squirting it up like a fountain. I also remember his trick of seemingly removing his thumb and putting it back on – even when I found out how he did it, I could never do it quite as well as he did. I remember once after going swimming with Zaidy and showering to get the chlorine smell off in the change-room, I realized that I had forgotten my dry change of clothes up in his condo; he showed me how to wrap my towel around myself so that we could walk back upstairs together without me having to put my wet bathing suit back on. It was the small, caring gestures like this, the little, consistent kindnesses that embody the warmth, love, and good humour that Zaidy John provided for us as grandchildren. There was warmth in his eyes and excitement in his voice whenever he greeted us, a feeling of playfulness and safety when he was around. He was a source of nurturance, reassurance, and a role-model for us in our younger years, a symbol of both strength and compassion, of both joyful living and responsibility. Through his levity, wit, and kindness, he conveyed a feeling of unconditional positive regard, giving us an example of who we might aspire to be in the world.

My Zaidy John didn’t have an easy life. In his late teens, he and his family were among the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews who fell victim to the Nazis in World War II. As my brothers and I grew older, Zaidy shared some of the horror stories of his past with us on several occasions. Over the years, I wrote poems inspired by what he told us, some of which I’ve included here:

…after the war,/after being liberated from hell on earth,/Zaidy told me how he waited,/how every day he checked the lists,/hoping, yearning, anticipating/the reunion with his family.//But that day never came.//I can only imagine the depression,/the despair and the loneliness/upon realizing that they were gone,/not knowing if, how, when, or where they died,/the uncertainty of whether or how/to move on, to start again,/to live./

But somehow Zaidy John did live on. He survived, and he did much more than that. He immigrated to Canada, started a business, a family, and created a new life for himself. Our biological grandfather on our father’s side passed away before we were born, and so we never got a chance to know him. Through John’s marriage to our Bubbie Blemah later in his life, however, we were given the gift of having a paternal grandfather. By simply being who he was, Zaidy John taught us that family need not be determined by flesh and blood alone; he taught us that family is something we can choose to create through our word and our commitment, through our love and generosity. 

He recalled to us on more than one occasion the warmth, love, and innocence of his childhood with his mother, father, and sister, and the subsequent tragedy of losing many of them in the Holocaust. Through being a part of our family, however, John also provided us with a vivid example of transcendence, the ability of the human spirit to turn towards love despite great reasons to fall into sorrow.

My brother Jesse fondly recalls a road trip that he and John took to Pennsylvania one year for his grandchildren Daniel and Kyla’s bar and bat mitzvahs. As he recalls, Zaidy insisted on driving the whole way, and they even ended up in a pub late one night and eating junk food after a long day's drive. Jesse remembers this as a special trip and experience with John, and it holds a warm place in his heart.

Some of the fondest memories I have of my time with Zaidy are the fishing trips we went on together. I remember standing on a dock with Zaidy, going through various lures and baits in our tackle boxes, and casting out into the water together on a warm summer day. Neither of us caught anything off that dock, but it didn’t matter; I was utterly content to just be there, to be with him – fishing together with my Zaidy. Another time we were out on the lake together in a small boat and it started pouring rain – we got soaked on the way back in, but, again – it didn’t matter. We laughed about it and made the best of it. 

“Sometimes the past still comes up,”/he told me on our last fishing trip together./“It’s a part of me that will never go away.”//I’m grateful/that my Zaidy was courageous enough/to tell me what he went through.//I’m grateful that he was a survivor,/that he not only survived/but lived on after his real-life nightmare.//I’m grateful that he didn’t use going through hell/as an excuse not to try to create his own version of heaven on earth.//And I’m grateful that despite all the love he lost,/despite the pain of losing his entire family,/the memories, the dreams,/the questions without answers,/I’m grateful that he still loved,/that he still gave of himself,/that he refused to let his past/shape who he was in this world/and who he still is to me.

John’s resilient spirit persisted even as the challenges of illness and old age fell upon him. When my Bubbie Blemah began to develop Alzheimer’s dementia, my Zaidy was faced with another immense challenge in his life – he had to watch his partner and best friend slowly slip away, helpless at the mercy of an insidious disease. But even in his last several years, as his own health declined and my Bubbie’s mind deteriorated, he still loved and cared for her. Moments of genuine tenderness and affection were evident when we visited him; his love and devotion shone through all of the difficulties he was facing. His patience and compassion were more gifts that my Zaidy gave to the world.

Over the past several years, I didn’t see Zaidy as much as I would have liked to. In my last visit with him at his home, I expressed my regret to him; I told him that I wished I had kept in better contact and been there for him more. He just looked at me and said: “the past is the past.” He told me that he understood that I was busy and living my life, which I know is what he wanted for me. Despite this, I still feel some regret. I think that I should have made more of an effort to make time for him, to call and visit more often, to repay him for the love and kindness that he showed me growing up. But I also realize now that Zaidy never placed those expectations on me. He always only wanted what was best for me and never asked me for anything in return. In some of the darkest and most difficult times in my life, he offered me support and encouragement; he let me know I was loved, that I would get through what I was going through, and he affirmed the strength that he saw in me. 

Today I am saddened not only because I’ve lost my Zaidy, a tremendous man and a source of unconditional love in my life, but also because I’ve lost the last living Holocaust survivor that I knew personally. I’ve lost one of my heroes. I feel a responsibility to carry his memory with me, both the legacy of family, kindness, and generosity that he instilled in me, and the history of adversity and hardship that he was forced to live through for the simple fact that he was born a Jew. John’s life reinforced in me the belief that discrimination and prejudice against our fellow human beings is fundamentally wrong and destructive, regardless of the basis upon which we discriminate. He was a living testament to the  virtues of acceptance, tolerance, kindness, and the freedom that we all have to choose how we will face the adversities that life inevitably presents us. I’m grateful to have known my Zaidy John, and I will never forget.

I want to close with a poem that I wrote for Zaidy several years ago. It’s called, “Change”:

I never understood/why your life was so hard/nor how you could go on/after all the pain you endured.//You lived through the Holocaust of World War II/and now you live through the holocaust/of your wife’s faltering mind.//You know, more than most,/how drastic change can be.//I don’t know why/someone as wonderful as you/should have so much hardship in his life,/but I’d be damned/if I didn’t know why/you are here today.//I remember/when you told my brothers and I/about living in the concentration camps./I remember a story you told us/about a father and son/who fought over the equal splitting/of a piece of bread/and I remember you telling us/that they did not survive.//I remember/and I listened/and I listen still/to every word you say.//Because, Zaidy,/you are one of the few people/in this world/that I can truly call/my hero.//I don’t know how/you found the strength/to move on after the war;/to change your mentality/from despair to determination.//I don’t know how/you find the patience and perseverance/to deal with Bubbie’s condition/day in and day out,/but I know that you do/and that is real courage.//I don’t care what blood/we do or do not share./you are my Zaidy,/I am your grandson,/and that will never change.//I thank God for knowing you/and I thank you for all you are,/all you do,/and all the love you share.//But most of all, I thank you for/finding the strength to live/and for being a beacon of light/in this seemingly darkening,/always changing world.//In the times that your light dims,/when you feel drained,/scared or uncertain,/I will be here for you.//Together/we will share our bread/and we will survive,/together.//I love you, Zaidy John,/and that will never change.

70 Years Later...How Should I Feel?

Today marks 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces in World War II. As a third-generation survivor of the Holocaust, today I wonder: how am I supposed to feel?

I inherited the history of my grandparents' survival. From a young age, I heard the horror-stories second-hand through my mother's words. As I grew, I became increasingly obsessed with the topic, this word, this Holocaust, and I read and learned as much as I could, trying to make sense of it all. I eventually heard the unfathomable tales distilled down to individual stories told to me by my grandparents; stories of unloading rotting corpses from cattle cars, sweeping up ashes of the dead from large crematoriums. Tales of being chased, persecuted, lied to, beaten and starved, of eating out of trash cans to survive and working through malnourishment and exhaustion to avoid being murdered. In the devastating poignancy and matter-of-factness of my grandparents' telling, I came to the only rational conclusion I could about the Holocaust: that there is no making sense of it. That human beings are capable of literally creating the nightmares that they imagine is not up for debate. History has proven too many times that people are capable of terrible things - and history continues to prove its point, over and over again.

I came to another conclusion about the profound impact that my heritage had on me in my life: I'm alive because my grandparents survived. Had they not managed to beat the odds and survive the camps, if they hadn't then chosen to continue living their lives and create life despite the fact that the world had robbed them of them of the only lives they knew, then myself, my parents, my aunts and uncles, brothers and cousins, my nephews, and who knows how many countless generations to come would never have existed. We're alive because they survived.

So today, knowing what I know about what happened, knowing that what happened seems to have made little difference in altering the course of history and preventing modern genocides from recurring, fearing that the only living survivor I personally know is nearing the end of his life and that within the next few decades there will be no first-generation Holocaust survivors left - how am I supposed to feel?

I feel sadness and trepidation. I feel optimism and hope. I feel a bottomless despair and an insatiable yearning to make the world a better place in any way that I can.

I don't think I'll ever fully come to peace or make sense of the existence of a place like Auschwitz. I don't think that what I write at this moment will offer me any relief, nor do I think I will necessarily provide any sense of life-affirming contextualization or resolution for the reader. But I guess it's better to feel something than to feel nothing - to care enough to read or write or simply remember than not to. It's worth feeling the pain of the millions of unlived lives for even just a moment if it makes us more grateful to live the lives we live today, if it makes us better parents, lovers and friends, or if it makes us think twice about how we treat the strangers we meet on the paths we traverse in our lives.

Here's a song I wrote about the Holocaust at the age of 15:

Being OK with Not Being OK - Part 1 – Identifying What Is

There is a prevalent and almost ubiquitous social conversation around solving problems and “getting results” in our society. Since our earliest education in the school system we are given problems and instructed as to how to solve them. Our intelligence is judged largely by our aptitude to problem solve, to think critically, to come up with solutions. My university education essentially trained me to think analytically, to form logical arguments and back them up with evidence – to find solutions and make sure they were well fortified. This type of thinking, this analytical thought process, is useful for many tasks in this world; some of humanity’s highest achievements have come as a result of using these problem solving faculties of ours. When it comes to dealing with matters of spiritual growth and development, however, analytical thought can be a great detriment.

            If there’s any lesson I've learned from my own experience in facing personal demons and overcoming obstacles within myself it’s this: growth can be very painful. When dealing with matters of the soul, especially when compounded with mental health issues (of which I am no stranger), the terrain can often be treacherous and the path uncertain. The experience of going through personal transformation can be confusing and downright terrifying, and it almost never happens overnight. The reality is that there is often a great deal of pain and suffering that goes with this thing we call being human, whether it’s an undercurrent to our daily lives or it sticks out right in our faces. And for those who are in the midst of acute suffering for which there is no easily identifiable cause, no amount of immediate, pragmatic, goal-oriented problem solving is going to make much of a difference.

            There is no formula for spiritual growth and no guarantee when it comes to transformation. There are many systems and schools of thought as to how the process of human growth and development occur in one’s life, and there is much common wisdom to be found in the various philosophies, religions, and cultures of the world. Each human being, however, is unique. As much as we have in common with each other as a species and as similar as some of us may appear to be, we all have a unique set of circumstances that make us who and how we are. From our genetic codes to our upbringings to our beliefs and convictions, no two people are exactly identical. We don’t go through things in exactly the same ways, at precisely the same times, or for an identical set of reasons. For this reason, while we may find solace in certain ideas presented by others and compassion, understanding, and even empathy from those we encounter, it is close to impossible for two people to ever fully be in the world and experience reality in exactly the same way.

            At the end of the day, when we are experiencing the pains of our particular human existences, there will always be some degree to which we are alone. This is not to say that there can’t be great comfort in sharing our thoughts and feelings with others and connecting with other people – great relief and joy can be derived from human interaction, especially in times of emotional turmoil. My point is that there’s some part of our experience that will always remain so inherently subjective that no amount of conversation, analysis, or investigation will reveal it fully to the mind of an observer. This is why it is so important for us as human beings to learn to be in tune with ourselves as we truly are, in ways that only we can know ourselves.

             So brings us to the most important and greatest challenge of being human: to be OK with those parts of ourselves that nobody else can truly know. It is possible, although not realistically feasible, to acquire evidence from the external world as to the goodness, validity, or “OK-ness” of almost every aspect of ourselves. Others can tell us that we are good people, that we are worthwhile, or make a list of our traits for us, but no external description or account can fully encompass all that we truly are. The parts of ourselves that only we can know intimately, provided we are thoroughly honest with ourselves and that we have the sufficient insight into our own psyches, are beyond the purview of anyone but ourselves. If we are to have a significant and lasting respite from suffering, or even a chance at true fulfilment in life, we must learn ways to be OK with our deepest depths – the secret parts of us that nobody else can see.

            The first step in the process of learning to be OK with ourselves is to identify that which is the cause of our pain; we need to know what it is that we are not OK with. It could be depression, anxiety, or some form of mental illness, or some kind of compulsive behaviour, insecurity, or fear that we carry around and are unable to get rid of. Regardless of what it is, the experiences or feelings that are causing us to suffer must be identified and characterized in some way that makes sense to us. For lack of a better term, the syndrome that we possess within us that is the source of distress needs to be distinguished and named. We need to be able to identify it as something that is, at least for the moment, intrinsically linked to ourselves, but at the same time is something that is not us. A person with depression, for example, must be able to distinguish themselves from their depression. It may be something that encroaches on every aspect of their experience of life and has real, tangible consequences, but nonetheless the person in their entirety cannot be said to be the same as their depression. Said another way, the person must acknowledge that they have depression, that the depression is linked to them, but they as a person are nonetheless distinct from their depression.

            It can be quite difficult to distinguish oneself from the syndrome being experienced, especially when we are talking about matters of the mind. When lost in the whirlwind of thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and the like which make up our conscious experience, especially when the totality of such experiences are intense, confusing, or painful, it can be very hard to maintain a distinct sense of selfhood. Perhaps the greatest danger is to identify too much with one particular thought, feeling, internal voice, thought-pattern, or aspect of experience such that it becomes indecipherable from one’s true self. It should also be noted that the purpose of distinction of oneself from one’s experiences is not to cut off or completely compartmentalize one’s experiences. In the same way an arm or leg is part of us, our thoughts and feelings are part of us. It would be strange, however, if one were to say, “I am my leg” in an indefinite sense. The totality of what makes a person who they are cannot be restricted to one particular experience or syndrome. It is when a person completely identifies with one’s suffering as who they are or wholly indistinct from themselves that the suffering becomes unbearable. Conversely, if one perceives one’s experience of suffering as completely outside their control, as if their syndrome has all the power to continually inflict itself upon the sufferer, that hopelessness and despair may also become a reality.