Am I still Jewish after all this?
This is a bit self-indulgent but since I can't help being the character of my world I think it's ok to think about how atrocities impact identity. But of course, the main characters during an atrocity are the people who the atrocities are being committed against, not those undergoing identity shifts. It's good to keep your eye on the prize.
In the first moments of the war, Russians bombed Kharkiv, the hometown of my mum and grandparents. My reaction was horror, shock that Putin's plans were even worse than I - a Putin cynic - thought (a running theme for the 2020s). And relief that my grandparents weren't alive to see this. But the unexpected feeling was disgust at Russian-ness.
All that conservative pants-shitting about "woke franchises" retrospectively ruining people's childhoods actually came true for me. I was the pants-shitter, feeling that Putin had ruined my childhood and retroactively destroyed any affinity I might have had for Russian culture. While Russian Jews have a complicated relationship with Russianness, much of the outside world might see us as Russian, and to an extent it felt true. But not since. I wouldn't have wanted to be heard speaking Russian on (say) the street. Not because I was worried that people might think I'm supportive of the war, but I was just embarrassed.
In the first months of the war, there were thinkpieces galore about how "cancelling Tchaikovsky is not the answer". But Russian society's overwhelming support of the war had implicated Russian culture itself. To me, it showed that all those ideas of Russian culture having always had the imperialist, racist, colonialist rot, were true and then some. From that perspective, I understood how people might not be into hearing Tchaikovsky right now, and that it wasn't "Russophobia".
Over 2 years have passed and I don't have that same mortification. Maybe I've become desensitised to the horrors of Russia's genocide; maybe I gained perspective. Maybe I want to reclaim the language. It's probably also to do with this: most Russian speakers live outside of Russia; there are whole nationalities who are involved with Russian culture due to its imperialist history (true for me as well). We have a common point because of that. And I don't think shirking away from that makes sense.
Little did I know that all these reactions were a dress rehearsal for Israel's genocide.
The extent to which Israel's response to October 7th exceeded even my worst predictions obviously made me question things. Not about what I want to do (since I don't really do that much "Jewish stuff"), but about whether I want to "be" Jewish or whether I am. Like with Russia, I thought the degree of worldwide Jewish communal support for the genocide had implicated Jewishness itself (especially since Jewish supporters of Israel love to tie it to their Jewishness - you break it you bought it). It's probably even worse for the case of Israel: I don't think Russia's genocide has nearly as much support from the international Russian diaspora.
Then there's the fact that so many Jews now explicitly consider anti-semites to be de-facto Jews (as long as they support Israel) but also explicitly consider Jews against the genocide to not be Jews. This could be an extinction burst but whatever it is, many are doubling down in trying to redefine a huge percentage of Jews as not Jewish. Then there's the slurs, harrassment, death threats and so on (experienced by others, not me). So maybe it's Jewishness that's left me rather than I it?
Again, no but this time it's a different reason.
I might identify as Jewish for rational reasons, for example identifying with Jews have kept their moral ground and admiring them. But I am Jewish more out of stubbornness than choice. And I think I'm in good company, since most Jews aren't Jews by choice. I can't ask them but a decent number of Jews through the ages must have remained so through sheer stubbornness. Which I don't see as pejorative.
So I'm a Jew BECAUSE we Jews are a stubborn people. And because stubbornness and steadfastness can be two sides of the same coin, this might be one of the many, many things we have in common with the Palestinian people. And if more Jews could understand the commonality, things would be different.