Steven Phillips

For those of you starting here, I’ve spent the past 52 days, trying desperately to answer the question “how are you feeling?”. [Part 1] [Part 2]

I’ve been asked this question hundreds of times in the last 52 days, and I’ll be honest – most of the times I’ve lied;

“OK Thanks, it’s tough” or “Alright, it’s all I can be”… and on more than one occasion I’ve called in the infamous response of my late grandmother z”l: “with my hands mainly!”. But the truth is, since the 7th October, I’ve been feeling… different. Something within me has changed.

I’m confident that I can speak on behalf of almost the entire Jewish people and tell you that the last 52 days have been EXHAUSTING. They have been filled with a deep sadness, a mourning and a grief and yet also intermingled with tiny flecks of light.

I don’t think I can ever recall a time when the Jewish community has better come together as one – Religious, secular, Israel, Diaspora, it doesn’t matter where you are from or what your background is, we’re all in this together.

For the past 52 days, I’ve barely listened to ‘English’ music, and I know I’m not alone. (My Spotify unwrapped this year is going to be confused!) If you’d told me 6 months ago that I’d end the year listening to Avenu Shebashamayim (Prayer for the State of Israel) on repeat, or obsessing over a song in which, for days the only phrase I really knew was ‘There’s a million trains racing to Australia’, I’ve have said you were out of your mind… and yet here we are.

I’ve picked up the guitar a number of times, I’ve tried to play other things and yet all I can play is Achenu – a prayer for protecting and bringing home hostages.

Last Friday, I was distracted from work. Fixated on the cruel game of real life ‘Big Brother’ being played out whereby via what seems like random selection, hostages were released from the Gaza Strip by Hamas. I cried all Friday afternoon at my desk at home.

By the time the hostages had been released, and I found out that 3 of them were the family of a friend, I could do nothing but sob. Sob that some people were finally free, sob that one of my friend’s family still remained in Gaza, sob that the reactions on the internet were, and still are absolutely abhorrent, and most of all, sob for humanity and the cruel reality we’re living in.

Saturday night, again, I watched and I sobbed.

Sunday, However was different. On Sunday, I went to London with 105,000 other people – Jewish and not, and marched through the streets in protest at the rising level of antisemitism.

For the first time in 52 days, with the exception, perhaps of spending a few hours seeing Shulem, Alby Chait and Avromi Freilich in concert, I felt a sweet feeling of release, of calm, of warmth and of understanding.

I know I’m not alone feeling this – many have said the same thing. The march itself was quite a spectacle. The speeches, went on for FAR too long, but standing together at the end, singing Hatikvah, and God Save the King (still feels weird!) gave me tears, goosebumps and a feeling of the duality of my identity uniting as one.

At the end, we sang our hearts out – “Salaam Aleynu v’akol Haolam Saalam Shalom” – ‘Upon us and upon the world Peace, Peace’ – a song in both Hebrew and Arabic, before in an incredibly impromptu manner, dancing the Hora, in the middle of the road in Parliament Square.

The event ended and I felt elated, yet the minute I stepped outside of the barriers and headed to find my parents at the car, I felt an urgency to hide my Jewishness. Flags were folded and stuffed into pockets, Star of David necklace quickly placed inside my shirt, and banners/placards folded to be inconspicuous as I walked back through the streets of my city.

The walk back was short, though it felt incredibly long. I was second guessing every person, assessing every move, wondering about every motion. While totally uneventful, mentally the journey to the car alone was draining.

It made me think more than ever about my identity, about what it means to be a “British Jew” and for what it means to live as a real and unquestionable minority in a world full of many many others. Many others who are not like me.

Perhaps we’ve been too good as a people at assimilating. Perhaps, I imagine it’s why we often struggle with being accused of being both oppressor and oppressed – a subject David Baddiel covers in depth in the incredible ‘Jews Don’t Count’.

We’ve done great things, blended into spaces, done our best to try to fit in, and be “local”. We’re told we must respect the law of the land, and perhaps… just perhaps, we do it too well.

Maybe we’ve forgotten the warnings of our past. The warnings that no matter how assimilated we are, however much we try to ‘not be Jewish’ or ‘not look Jewish’, those who seek to kill us don’t care.
From the outside, even the potential for you to be Jewish, is enough to consider you a target – look no further than at the number of Thai nationals working on Kibbutzim who were killed or taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th.

As I slipped back into “British Life” on Monday, outside the warm, fuzzy, family like togetherness of Sunday’s march, I felt different. Conscious of my difference more than normal. Conscious of the fact that just the day before, I had been on the street in a protest to highlight the racism toward me, the ‘othering’ that has seen an exponential increase in the past 52 days, protesting my right as a BRITISH JEW to live harmoniously in this country that has been my family’s home for the past 3-4 generations.

I was protesting my right, to peace in the UK. I was protesting my right, to be Jewish. I was feeling angry. Angry that this is what we have had to do

But as the anger subsided, and the rational brain started to file away some of those short term, angsty feelings we all feel from time to time… something became clear.

I understood how was I feeling. I know how am I feeling now. The answer is simple:

Jewish.

The perpetual question that has bugged me for 52 days, has been answered.

And yet, I’m not sure why it took me so long to answer this question. Reading back, I answered it way back on October 15th:

“In the words of Vicki Baum: To be a Jew, is a destiny.“

#BringThemHomeNow

It’s said there are 5 stages of grief:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

They don’t have to come in order… and some of them don’t need to come at all… and yet, I am pretty confident in speaking for the vast majority of Jews in saying that over the past 23 days, we continue to cycle through all the stages.

I’m starting to wonder if denial ever went away. For years we’ve denied that things could be this bad, denied that we weren’t worried, denied that the mass slaughter of Jews could ever happen again.

It happened again only 23 days ago, and yet it feels like the next time, is due round any day.

At the weekend we watched thousands march through London. Holding worthless, ironic banners such as “Queers for Palestine” or “Ceasefire now”…

Yesterday we watched as a plane was ambushed on the runway, the terminal over run with hate, and Jewish people attacked as they got off the plane.

Then today I watched, as my phone lit up: “Ashkelon”, “Jerusalem”, “Gush Etzion”, “Rishon L’tzion”, “Nes Tziona”. I text my friends an empty message of hope “Stay Safe”, knowing they have no real choice in the hand they are dealt by the fall of an unguided rocket seeking to kill them.

I watched today the news of Shani Louk being pronounced dead following the identification of skull fragments. Once she was abducted, she was paraded around, and recorded while people spat on her and cheered.

…and then I watched the amazing news of Ori Megidish being rescued by the IDF and returned home. I watched her be reunited with her Grandma, and showered with sweets in a moment of pure joy, and then remembered there’s another 200+ still missing; A distant ex-colleague, a friend’s family, another friend’s family… Each Jew, everywhere in the world right now, feels like we have a finger, a toe, and arm or a leg missing, and it will will stay missing until each hostage comes home.

The video of Ori and her grandma hit me harder than expected. Because as a PEOPLE, the Jews have some strange traditions that have transcended geographies. One of my earliest memories is going to Synagogue with my grandma… and throwing sweets over the side of the gallery, downstairs onto the poor Bar Mitzvah boy who’d finished his reading.

As I watched the celebration, and the sweets and felt warm and fuzzy for a moment, I felt it quickly turn into a cold chill. I was only here watching that video thanks to the actions of Ori and those like her, who rushed TOWARD danger not knowing the peril ahead. Not knowing what would happen, what was lurking round the corner and if they would survive.

Without Ori and countless others, or if the dice had been rolled unfavourably for me that day, I too could have been woken up by machine gun fire instead of rocket interceptions. I too could have been taken hostage, I too could have been dead.

I’m someone who has been pro-ceasefire each and every time before, who has been angry each and every time before. I’ve bargained with my beliefs about the way to peace each and every time before, been depressed and I’ve accepted the fate of things each and every time before… But this time, I simply cannot and will not deny the fact that there is now NO SUCH THING as a ceasefire.

If there was such thing then we wouldn’t be here… because when I went to sleep in Tel Aviv on October 6th, there WAS a ceasefire.

If there was such thing, then there wouldn’t be 200+ hostages. There wouldn’t be 1400+, Maimed, raped, beheaded, cremated, killed.

The problem is not a ‘Ceasefire’ and an ‘End to the war’… because I don’t know a single Jew who WANTS war. The problem is deep rooted fundamental antisemitism, and a desire to KILL JEWS.

I’ve spoken to a number of Jewish or in their own words “Sort of Jew…ish” friends, acquaintances, work contacts, etc. who have all told me “I never realised how much of a link to my Jewishness I had and I am really feeling it now” or “I am shocked at how the events in Israel have made me feel, I didn’t think I had ANY connection and yet here I am worried about my own life”… We are ALL going through the 5 stages of grief. Each and every Jewish person, everywhere in the world.

Some say there are actually 7 stages of Grief, the last two are “reconstruction/working through” & “acceptance/hope;

Over 3,000 years, we’ve continually been reconstructing and working through. As a people, we’ve been persecuted continually throughout our history. From Biblical times because we wouldn’t worship idols, through the Roman destruction of the Jewish state… We were persecuted in the middle ages, the 14th and 16th century… We survived pogrom after pogrom, and then suffered the Holocaust (I note, there was no suggestion of asking Hitler for a Ceasefire from the Allies….?)
We miraculously survived the Holocaust and managed to start our own state, and from the moment, in fact from the moment BEFORE we declared our own state, the persecution continued.

I don’t think it would be unfair to suggest that in taking a macro view, the only persistent stage of grief we’ve seen as a people is acceptance/hope; but in the micro, right now, today, 23 days after the largest massacre of Jews since the holocaust, I know why I’m struggling to tell you how I feel… because my feelings of acceptance and hope are totally and utterly depleted.

So… how am I feeling?

Scared, worried, concerned, continually upset, emotionally overwhelmed, unsure what the future holds? Absolutely.

Not only am I sad right now that I’m lacking in hope… but I’m sad that I know now that nearly EVERY Jewish person has ‘run out’ of denial that things are ok.
I’m sad it took such horrors, but I guess, the unity in our lack of denial of the problem, is the way we’ll find our hope again… Because in the words of Golda Meir; “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”

Given the number of times those words have presented themselves to me since arriving home in the early hours of Saturday morning, you’d think I might have an answer. Truth is, I don’t really know.

The last few days… and in fact the days since the 7^th October feel surreal. Many times in the last week and a bit, I’ve felt like I’ve been having out of body experiences. I would find myself in the middle of doing something, something mundane like standing in a supermarket looking at empty shelves, and wondering if I was actually there.
To take Israeli slang a little literally in translation, there have been a number of times I have felt as if I have been living Chai B’seret (life in movie).

In an incredibly British moment this morning, a friend asked me how I was and without skipping a beat I replied “I’m okay”… and as the words left my mouth a feeling of dread came over me. A feeling stronger than the usual feeling of “I’m ok when I’m not”. Within a second, I doubled down on my Britishness with “Well, you know, as okay as I can be”.

I know I’m not alone. Every Jewish person I speak to feels the same. “I’ve not slept”, “I’ve not eaten”, “I can’t concentrate”. We’re all doing things to find short moments of light in the day, before rapidly realizing the horror and sadness from last week is still hanging over us.

There’s no easy way to comprehend the events of the last week; The largest loss of Jewish life since the holocaust. Jews still missing the the abyss of Gaza. Graphic photographs of those murdered in their homes or at a festival. Endless news, media and social media coverage of events and the sense of impending doom as friends and loved ones get called up to military service, knowing that with each war comes even more loss.

And as if this wasn’t enough, scenes of celebration and hatred around the world; ‘From the River to the Sea’ and ‘Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud’ being screamed on the streets. “Free Palestine” being daubed in Jewish areas and in the centre of cities. Jewish buildings and apartments where Jews live daubed with a Star of David, scenes reminiscent of the yellow stars of Nazi Germany.

It’s been a week and a day, and yet it feels like each and every day, the world is becoming a darker place to be a Jew.

As I left Charring Cross Station this afternoon and walked down Whitehall to attend a vigil for those missing and those we lost last week I noticed something different; Whitehall was different.

Whitehall, a reminder of the greatness of this country, large monuments to the sacrifices this country made for our freedom – in some cases, freedom for the UK, others for the world and for WW2, freedom for me as a Jew.

Greeting me at the end of Whitehall, as ever was Charles 1st on his horse. Only today, he was wearing a headscarf and holding a Palestinian flag.

As we continued along Whitehall, we passed a protest/vigil for Ukraine outside Downing Street. There, outside the residence of the UK’s Prime Minister and daubed along the wall; “Free Palestine”.

The girls in front of us stopped to take a selfie, smiling, two fingers up, “Victory”, as I walked on, scared, Israeli flag buried deep in my pocket.

Once on Parliament square inside the large police presence, a sense of relief washed over me… a little cry… followed by listening to the hallowing stories, the prayer for peace, and singing along with the songs of peace trying my best not to get choked up. I found friends I knew but hadn’t yet met and I just tried my best to make sense of what was going on because the truth is… it’s insanity.

For during that hour on the square, I once again felt like I was in a movie. The whole feeling was surreal, that in London, in 2023, I had to attend a vigil because over 1,000 Jews had been killed and another 200 kidnapped.

As the event finished we sang Hatikvah, not just the national anthem of Israel but literally ‘The Hope’… and yet the one thing it was clear that we were all struggling to find, was hope.

At first, I got choked up… the singing was quiet, everyone emotional struggling the same way, but as we sang the second line; “Nefesh Yehudi Ho’miya – The Jewish soul sings” – that’s exactly what happened.
We sang, we sang loud and proud. We sang the powerful words of Hatikvah; Our hope is not yet lost, It’s two thousand years old, to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.

As the event finished, I found distant family members I met for the first time earlier in the year, and we stood talking, before we packed away our flags and headed off.

Walking back to Charring Cross, we found those same words, daubed onto the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office itself. “Free Palestine”. On the other side of the road, we saw one Israeli flag wearer surrounded by police while a group of people some with Palestinian flags looked to be ambushing them…. A reminder of the fragility of being a Jew.

These scenes and walking back past Charles 1st, unearthed a feeling of deep anger inside. Angry that in this day and age, of supposed enlightenment, we as humanity are not only celebrating mass murder, rape, dismemberment but allowing to be celebrated. The police should have removed the flag, the graffiti should have been removed and a single man with a flag shouldn’t need police protection.

The anger bubbled within me all the way home… until I remembered two things. Both the words of Hatikvah, and a quote I saw earlier this year: At the very start of ‘The Museum of the Jewish People’ in Tel Aviv;

To be a Jew, is a destiny.

Vicky Baum

A destiny. Everything happening for a reason. For us, as Jews, that reason just may well be a 2000 year old hope. A hope for safety and a hope for freedom.

So, to answer…. How do I feel? Angry, upset, guilty, tired, sad, anxious… all of the above? I don’t know. But what I do know is that these feelings won’t go away.

They may fade, they may bring us waves of sadness and upset (I’ve cried three times just writing this)… As Jews we have ALL been forever changed by the events of last Saturday…

We mourn together, we worry together, we cry, we sing we hope… and I guess, in one way or another, this is just another part of our destiny, to be Jews.