On Power and Responsibility and Historical Conscience

 

My unique perspective

As an American Jew, I have never felt more uncomfortable in my own identity skin than I do in 2026. It has been over thirty years since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and both the U.S. and Israel are being led by militaristic would-be-authoritarians with little regard for the long-term consequences of their actions. The Middle East is awash in a war centered on Iran, and increased extremism seems to be the salt remaining in the test tube after the foment and tumult of violence finishes its daily reaction. Settlers are instigating pogroms against Bedouins in the West Bank. I don’t even know what is happening in Gaza.

Here in Atlanta, I have been working with a project called Ayeka to build art from a community effort to explore the social and emotional fallout from October 7, but I am stuck with my understanding that any reflection must take place in the midst of the violence and fear, not in the wake of its resolution. 

I have written here before about the pain of ongoing conflict, the cycle of violence that transfers itself from generation to generation, but my sense of responsibility and knowledge of injustice does not make me feel any more powerful to stop it. That’s, perhaps, the problem with democracy. It is possible to feel responsible for everything and yet empowered over nothing in particular. Collective power is diffuse and emergent in a society where personal expression has reached its technological maturity. Where do we go from here?

I am a body, in a room in Decatur, Georgia. I am breathing the cold spring air, listening to birdsong and the vibrations of delivery trucks. I am feeling the sunlight on my cheek. I am about to plunge myself into a week of even greater focused intensity on the here and now of my study of the past. I may take breaks to be with friends and celebrate our aliveness together. This is who and where I am. I may be a prism, but I am not a cloud. I am not the sun. I am a human animal, in this skin, in this time. That is all.