We Cannot Afford The Tragedy

Content note: brief mentions of suicide, genocide, violence.

Tragedy is a story, a type of story. It is a narrative structured through fatalism and defined by its heartbreak. The story tells us there's no way out, no possibility for transformation. A tragedy is a story that we know the end of before we begin.

There are many types of stories and reasons for their creation. Stories can make us laugh or reflect, shudder or rage. Stories can warn us, cajole us, comfort us, spur us, aid us, change us, transform us. But some stories make us kill ourselves.

We find ourselves in a world of so much crisis that we can no longer afford tragedy.

I don't object to tragic stories because they are sad, but because they are hopeless. Those who know me will know that I'm uncomfortably close to being a free speech absolutist; lest my position on this topic be taken as a belief in banning media or censoring art, let me be clear that I'm speaking about the narratives that govern our lives, which expand or limit what we think is possible.

In America, where our tax dollars are used for the purposes of waging war and extracting resources from other peoples at the hands of our overfunded military, we deal in tragedy, revel and proliferate it. The shadow of Evangelical Christian apocalypse theology tells two acceptable American stories: total victory or total destruction. The former is the stuff of jingoistic patriotism; the latter is what passes for "truthful" examinations of the past and present—especially on the Left. But the hopelessness of the total destruction narrative is not only a falsehood but one that protects a privileged status-quo: if we do not believe that our own story contains joy, goodness, love, connection, holiness, and courage, then there's hardly any reason to fight.

"This is as good as it gets," says liberal whiteness. "All is already lost. At least I can still vote." We're not Calvinists—or by any measure, I don't think my readers are. Still, I watch myself and others embrace a worldview poisoned by hopelessness. But the stakes are too high to forfeit our narrative freedom to the fascism rising within American borders, or the violence that has long terrorized the rest of the planet. By giving in to it, who are we letting down every time each of us abdicates our unique and holy power?

How long will people on the other side of the world have to suffer because Americans choose "innocence" rather than responsibility? How much will Americans suffer because we have personally and politically believed the propaganda of tragedy?

A clear example: the widespread acceptance of climate catastrophe is in fact more terrifying than climate catastrophe itself. Only those who believe themselves to be insulated from this future can afford to believe it's already over. However, that insulation is an illusion: none of us can afford tragedy.

Whiteness constantly scrabbles to reinforce its own power by asserting that what is done by force is necessarily true. But people of all marginalized experience know that violence is not justice, and that what is enacted upon is does not define who we are. A person (or a people's) character is defined by the way they respond to their circumstances and retain their power and freedom in doing so. The ability to survive evil requires foundational stories that refuse tragedy—not grief, not sadness, not agony, yearning, or pain, but refuse tragedy, the pre-packaged acceptance that the end is already written and our efforts are futile on principle.

Despair is infectious. It snuffs everything around it, makes joy feel foolish, frivolous, naive. Our media culture of irony deals in despair. Why else would some of the largest protests in American history go completely unreported on by most mainstream outlets? Why is it that most protest movements generally are rarely reported on by anyone but Democracy Now? If the ruling class's goal is to protect their wealth and power, then platforming tragedy is an excellent tool: disempowering people from fighting back and instilling hopelessness alongside fear creates a very docile populace. Yes, despair is very infectious.

But so is joy.

What kind of joy am I describing? I'm talking about simcha, I'm talking about tova. In a culture of consumption, what passes for joy is the rush of buying a new product, premised on the despair of your own lack. But in a culture of holiness, joy is far more serious, legitimate, and powerful than tragedy.

I am reminded of the early Hasidic movement, which was filled with Rebbes and Hasidim whose cardinal teaching was to be b'simcha v'b'toiva, in joy and in goodness. It was an ecstatic movement, a movement that embraced madness and the upside-down nature of the world, embracing crying and laughter and the porous border between the two. Hasidim gathered together knowing that the gates of olam haboh, the world to come, open up for prayer, song, and tears. The Torah of Hasidus is one that was made as medicine for a whole swath of people living in abject poverty under the constant threat of government violence; Ashkenazi Jewry in the Pale of Settlement in the 17th-19th century needed a theology that told them that they mattered to G-d and needed no intermediary to experience holiness everywhere: which is to say, a reason to dance, a reason to sing, a reason to teach, learn, journey, raise tzedekah for those in crisis or bail for those by hostile government. A reason to take care of each other. Hasidic folklore is, at its core, about the idea that no Jew was too small or unlearned or poor or unimportant to matter. They are themselves stories that communicate how to live b'simcha u'btoiva. These stories teach we must treat ourselves and each other with great kavod, great respect, for all of us have a significant role to play in making redemption.

Now we enter an era where the future of G-d's world requires that we practice ahavat yisroel, love of fellow Jews, using another translation: love of all those who wrestle with G-d. As my friend Shlomo Yitzchak declares, "Everything runs on tefillah." Secularization has laid waste to the skill of praying for each other. We must rely on the prayers of people in whose tongues we do not speak, whose food and tables we pray to someday share. The prayers of the Tzaddikim, the righteous, are precious—what will you do to merit them? Better yet, what will you do to create them? Tzaddikim too must pray for Tzaddikim. A true story: When a tzaddik on Turtle Island who has raised a million dollars in tzedekah for people surviving genocide recieves the prayer of an tzaddik in Gaza who, as a 20 year old orphan, works tirelessly to provide for ten families around her, redemption draws nearer. Another true story: When a tzaddik shows up in a courtroom for another tzaddik and both recieve each others' prayers, redemption draws nearer. This is not tragedy: it is simcha v'tovah, joy and goodness itself.

Tzaddikim are everywhere, scattered among nations, praying and working in every language. Like a happier epilogue to the Tower of Babel, Google translate helps with that, restoring us to a world where we can understand each other in our multiplicity. Who is a tzaddik you know? What would it mean to pray for them, or to merit their prayer?

This is what is meant when we intone "Tzedakah, Tefillah, and Teshuva divert the decree" in the High Holidays liturgy—prayer is a speech act which makes real our responsibility towards one another, infusing it with holiness and revealing redemption in every realm of creation.

Being a transsexual in 5786, you would correctly imagine that many of my friends are suffering greatly under this regime. Things were bad before, they're worse now. Over my short lifetime, I have watched many loved ones walk the brink of the void. I've sat at hospital bedsides after attempts, brought soup and baked goods over during recoveries, and stayed up late on the phone, praying that this hour of presence will be a reason to choose life. If I have learned anything from the nightwatch, it's that my friends who have been in dire straits have needed me to refuse tragedy. In those moments, I am called to keep a candle burning for us both.

In a world of klipah, concealment, it is easy to forget just how lovely and excellent and beautiful and fantastic we are. We are messengers and prophets for one another. G-d asks me to hold the loving mirror, to tell others the truth of holiness I see in them, such that they can remember it for themselves. Sometimes this is best done quietly, just through presence alone, sitting with each other in the dark. The moments that someone else has firmly upheld and reflected my own holiness when I felt it least are the moments when I have experienced G-d the most. That is simcha, that is tova. We must refuse tragedy and hold faith for one another, especially when we cannot muster it ourselves. None of this can be done alone.

As Torah Studio teacher Liana Wertman warned me this week on our monthly call, "Jews were chosen to stick around. We can't go away, no one can get rid of us. So we've better stop pretending like the end of the world is coming and start building a world worth living in, because we're going to be there for whatever comes after that."

So too other peoples were chosen for other roles: in that shared future, we will not be alone among the nations (but g-d willing, there will be no more nation-states). We are alive at this crucial time, as the foundations of the earth shake, full of opportunity to build movements that can really bring olam haboh. Now more than ever we must refuse tragedy and make tefillah. Now is the time to pray for a Tzaddik and now is the time to become one: we cannot afford anything less.

There is no singular path, but tragedy is the only path there isn't. There will be a future—and we are obligated to face it, together.

May you reveal the simcha and tova in every moment you can. Shabbat shalom.

If you want to give tzedakah to tzaddikim ahead of Shabbes (or at any time in the week), here are two opportunities:

1) Lina is the sole survivor of her family in Gaza, working to build a new life for herself beyond the destruction. She embodies hiddur mitzvah, making the world more beautiful as she works to realize her dreams of fashion design. Support her evacuation and housing here.

2) Layla is a community organizer, single mother, and dear friend of a friend. She has worked tirelessly to fundraise and support people in her immediate community and across borders—now it's time she should receive that love and support back to her as she faces eviction threats. Support a legal fund for her and her kids here.