Soul Care: Part 2 - The Burden of Truth in The Year of Jubilee

I traveled to Italy this past October in honor of my 20th wedding anniversary. Although this trip was a celebration of our life together, for me, traveling is always a time of deep reflection. 

Who was I 20 years ago?  What did I believe about the world then? About myself?  About God? 

20 years ago, I visited the stolen lands of Palestine, the land now known as Israel. It pains me to think of it today, but at the time, I wanted to walk where Jesus walked. I wanted to experience the places I read about in Holy Scripture. I was familiar with the term Zionism, but it carried a much different meaning then. At the time, it meant a holy return of a displaced people. But I did not realize how much that perception was by design. How much the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment embedded in American culture worked in concert with my education to normalize the colonial project known as Israel. An education that constantly focused on the Holocaust as the absolute worst atrocity against humanity. An atrocity against human life, yes, but the absolute worst? Of all time? I must pose this question as a citizen of the Global Majority, a descendant of colonial violence, one of the many non-white bodies whose history is flung into the ether of imperial destruction.

So I must ask, in the United States of America, is it correct to focus solely on the suffering of Jews in Europe over and above anything our own government did to the Native peoples of this land? To the abducted and enslaved Africans and descendants of the trans-Atlantic slave trade? I do not wish to minimize anyone's suffering; instead, I highlight that this form of cruelty, the Holocaust, was chosen as THE ultimate injustice that we would collectively acknowledge in great detail. The one to be imprinted on our collective memories and psyches. This particular suffering was to be studied extensively through textbooks, memoirs, film, and museums throughout a child's education and constantly reinforced throughout their lives in America.

Why did we learn the terms "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" as they pertained to what the Germans did to European Jews in WWII, but not apply those same terms to what the US government did to Native tribes? Why did I learn about Auschwitz in Poland but not residential schools in the United States? We learned how European Jews were stripped of their rights and forced into ghettos, but not how the US government broke treaties and separated Indigenous tribes from their lands. We did not learn that segregation of African Americans still existed by way of redlining and racial covenants. Why? Why didn't they teach us that Black GIs who liberated concentration camps in Europe faced the threat of lynchings when they returned home to the Jim Crow South? In all of the many lessons on the Holocaust, I did not know until adulthood that Hitler used America as the blueprint for the Third Reich.

"Hitler had studied America from afar, both envying and admiring it...

He praised the country's near genocide of Native Americans and the exiling to reservations of those who had survived. He was pleased that the United States had "shot down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand...

The Nazis were impressed by the American custom of lynching its subordinate caste of African-Americans, having become aware of the ritual torture and mutilations that typically accompanied them...

Hitler especially marveled at the American' knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death."

— Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Chapter 8, p. 31

We learned the term "propaganda" as a tactic employed by an inhumane foreign government to manipulate the German people into believing that Jewish people were the source of all of their problems after WWI. We learned this with the everlasting assumption that this would never ever happen here, because we are the perpetual "good guys." Of course, the answer to all of my whys is that history is written by the victors and continues to be shaped by their emmisaries in life beyond the classroom.

My entire education was indoctrination into the US Empire. It obscured the reality that in 2005, I was traipsing over stolen land. Land from which the original stewards have been exiled. Land whose people can trace their entire bloodlines to the time of Jesus Christ, yet cannot go where I could by virtue of my US passport.

Shame is a paralyzing force, and as I've stated before, I cannot remain there. I mourn what I did not know, the pieces I did not put together in my 20s, but look back with sobering eyes as I continue to connect the dots. It is from this place that I write in the hopes that my reflections will give you the courage to uproot the hidden truths that hold you in bondage, no matter how messy and inconvenient it may be. May the truth be a lamp on the path to liberation.

Let's take a breath before we move forward.

A land without people for a people without land pairs well with the Thanksgiving tale and American mythology.

It is wildly conflicting to be the descendant of colonization while also a settler on stolen land. There was a time I would say "guest on stolen land," but as my beloved Eelam Tamil sister, Priyanka, always says, "You cannot be a guest on stolen land Akka." As I write these words, it is Thanksgiving Day, when a particular segment of the population will carry on about a fantastical feast between Native people and humble European pilgrims, undocumented immigrants in pursuit of religious freedom, welcomed to their new home by Native people. But on this holiday, we are not supposed to think about where the descendants of those Native people are today or why they are not prominently visible in our culture or society. We simply write our story over theirs and continue on.

Just as young children are told that the United States was founded upon the principles of liberty and self-governance which omits the part where we genocided and stole lands from Native tribes, many young Jewish children are taught a fairytale about a land without a people (Palestine) for a people without a land (Jewish people) which omits the horrors visited upon the Palestinians, an ancient semitic people, to make the state of Israel a reality. When these things are presented to you in such a way and normalized through culture and entertainment, you are, in essence, the fish that does not know it is in water.

The stories of both settler states first established an origin story full of virtue and a righteous purpose. Religion was attached to sanctify the cause and spiritualize the violent methods by which land was stolen from the Indigenous. Resistance by non-white bodies in this pursuit is given labels such as "savage, riots, terrorism," and "senseless violence" to make us question the actions of the marginalized rather than the ones wielding the power. I have thought about this a lot in the 786 days since October 7th, 2023.

Today is December 1st, Advent begins...

Unbeknownst to us, our 20th anniversary coincided with the Year of Jubilee, as recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. The origins, which date back to the Jewish tradition, Yovel (in Hebrew). 

"Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram's horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan. This fiftieth year will be a jubilee for you. During that year, you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own, and don't gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. It will be a jubilee year for you, and you must keep it holy. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own. In the Year of Jubilee, each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors." ‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭25‬‭:9‬-‭13‬ ‭

Each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors...

But what is the Year of Jubilee to the dispossessed people of Palestine? In the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth? What does Jubilee even mean in the wake of genocide? And why is Rome the epicenter of the faith when it ordered the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?

We decided to visit the Vatican, not as a rite of passage, but a pilgrimage of inquisition. My husband was baptized in the Catholic church, and my Paṭṭi (Paternal Grandmother) was a devout Catholic before marrying my Ṭāṭā (Paternal Grandfather), a Protestant. It felt important, and I wanted to see the place that administered the Papal Bulls sanctifying white European colonizers to go forth and seize our ancestral lands for the expansion of the Christian empire, which we know as the Doctrine of Discovery. 

We found ourselves amongst the throngs of Catholics from all over the world on pilgrimage. During Jubilee, the faithful will journey to Rome to pass through the "Holy doors." There are four major Holy Doors located in papal basilicas that remain sealed and are opened only during a Jubilee Year. Passing through a Holy Door during a Jubilee Year represents passing from sin to grace. It always seems wholesome at face value, doesn't it?

My day at the Vatican was filled with awe at the sheer scale and opulence of it all, followed immediately by intense grief and mounting rage as I watched scores of Black and Brown Catholics, mostly elderly, fight their way through the crowds. I couldn't help but wonder what it took for them to travel there, what they had survived, their stories, and their loyalty to the faith in spite of it all. What right does Rome have to claim authority over the forgiveness of their sins when the Vatican is a crime scene for the Global South? I did not sense God there. To me, it is the scaffolding of empire.

When we arrived in Rome, I was delighted to see the graffiti in solidarity with Palestine and the countless Palestinian flags hanging from balconies and piazzas. But inside the Vatican grounds, you saw no such thing. The same was true when we visited the Jewish Quarter in Rome. There we saw "FCK HMS" stickers and October 7th memorials among the historic markers. I couldn't help but notice the symmetries between the institution absolved of its duty to the birthplace of its "Lord and Savior", and a community holding constant vigil for what was done to their people, unwilling to recognize that same violence perpetuated in the name of their ancestors for three quarters of a century upon Palestinians.

Remember when I said that the truth has consequences?

I had a former friend reach out to me weeks into the genocide in Gaza. She accused me of being hateful for criticizing Israel. She told me that saying "from the river to the sea" is basically calling for her and her child to be exterminated. She said that I was "entrenched in propaganda" and didn't understand the "complex and nuanced" history, and that I should allow her to explain it to me. She used the terms terrorist and terrorism synonymously in place of Palestinians. She told me that "they," the Palestinians, chose this by supporting Hamas. I was struck by the audacity of a white woman who primarily moves through the world as a white woman, condescending to me in this way.

Whiteness obfuscated by marginalised identity, a dangerous form of exceptionalism. The likes of which we have witnessed throughout this country for 786 days. Empire has a way of using the bait-and-switch. When Germans with military might conscripted antisemitism into law in the 20th century, it is now Black and Brown people of the Global South, with no such power, who are accused of antisemitism for criticizing a powerful military force committing genocide against a civilian population.

I took a week to respond to her in a manner I felt was honoring of her feelings and our friendship. I shared with her a bit of my own history and what informs the lens through which I view the world, as I firmly rejected that criticism of Israel equated to antisemitism. She sent a very lengthy reply to my IG DM's, which I will not go into now. But what stayed with me from that exchange was how easily and quickly she minimized the story of my people. She explained that it paled in comparison to the perpetual suffering of her people, and that there is no way I could possibly understand. It occured to me then that although she is a white woman who grew up in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Illinois, in all her liberal ideologies and higher education, her lifetime of only studying her people's suffering did not widen her lens or deepen her perspective to see it in others.

Something broke open inside of me as I bore witness to the assault on Gaza...

Something ancestral was stoked with each cry from the people of Palestine. Truth came forth in a powerful way, and I am forever changed. It has been on my mind to talk about my trip to Israel. At first, it started as a confession, but as I allowed myself to go on this journey and invited every ancestral heartache to the surface, it has metabolized into clarity in my journey of love and liberation. On my path of decolonizing and deconstructing, I am reminded of a question my dear sister Tamice Spencer-Helms often asks:

"What are you taking with you from the rubble?"

When I consider this question in light of Advent, I take with me the Jesus who flipped tables. He was not apolitical; he did not choose false peace over justice, and shame on any clergy who think this is a righteous stance to take from the pulpit. I take with me the Son of God who was so moved by human grief that the Bible tells us, "Jesus wept." He did not spiritually gloss over that moment; instead, he partook in it. This is important to hold because when I remember my grandparents who cried out to God in the wilderness of Burma, fleeing bombs and war, it means that God was not neutral about their suffering.

I take with me the God who sees.

If you made it this far, I sincerely thank you for reading this and journeying with me into the fire.