Staying quiet right now might be the bravest thing you’re doing

This morning I was thinking about my grandparents (pictured above).

They left Iraq in 1948 with nothing and built a life from scratch in Israel. They lit the candles, they prayed, they made T’bit (the Iraqi Jewish version of cholent), and passed everything worth keeping to the next generation at the kitchen table.

They never once asked themselves if they were doing enough for the Jewish people. They just kept being Jewish. Fully, unapologetically Jewish.

Seventy-eight years later, I hear so often from Jewish women in the diaspora how guilty they feel. Guilt for not being Jewish enough. Guilt for not speaking up about antisemitism at work. Guilt for scrolling past and saying nothing. For doing the mental calculation — is this room safe enough for me to mention I’m Jewish? — and deciding it isn’t.

They think they’re failing their people.

They’re not… and I want to talk about why.

The science bit

Epigenetics researchers at Mount Sinai found that trauma reshapes how genes express across generations. The vigilance you carry in your body — the hyperawareness, the threat-scanning, the quiet calculation of whether a room is safe — has roots far deeper than this news cycle.

Your great-grandmother’s survival instincts are literally running in your system right now.

Your body is doing exactly what it was shaped to do – the question is what you do with all that aliveness.

NOBODY APPOINTED YOU SPOKESPERSON

Hen Mazzig wrote something this week that every Jewish woman needs to read.

“You don’t owe anyone a tweet.”

Or a comment reply, or a confrontation in the office, or a fight with your cousin at dinner. None of it is owed. The fact that Jewish women have been made to feel otherwise is itself the problem.

Going to work. Making Shabbat dinner. Calling your mom. Showing up to your synagogue or not. Lighting Shabbat candles or ordering DoorDash instead. Living your Jewish life, fully and without apology, in whatever way is yours — that is the work.

The Jewish people have outlasted every single force that tried to erase them — not because every woman was a warrior, but because ordinary Jewish women just kept showing up. That’s always been enough.

You don’t have to speak for all of us. You just have to keep being one of us.

You’re allowed to protect yourself first

Speak up when you feel ready, and when the moment is right for you – in a way that feels right for you.

Stay quiet when the cost of speaking is something you cannot carry right now.

A Jewish woman who holds onto her life — her work, her relationships, her place in the world — is doing something that matters deeply, even when it feels like it’s not enough.

The guilt that you’re sitting with? It belongs to the people who built a world where this calculation even has to happen. You can put it down now.

Joy is the most ancient Jewish act of defiance

My grandparents left Iraq in 1948 with nothing. They didn’t have a following or a megaphone. They had each other, their faith, and the absolute refusal to stop being Jewish.

And that’s what you’re doing right now. Maybe it looks like Shabbat dinner. Maybe it looks like getting through the week. Maybe it looks like reading this and feeling a little less alone.

All of it counts. All of it is your ancestors smiling.

You are already the answer to everything they prayed for

Your ancestors didn’t survive millennia of persecution by being Instagram activists. They survived by loving each other, building their communities, lighting the candles, and refusing to disappear.

That’s what you’re doing.

You don’t have to earn your place in Jewish history. You’re already in it. Just by being here, being Jewish, and choosing to live your life with joy — you are the continuation of everything they fought to preserve.

The guilt was never yours. Put it down.