Weeks have passed since the New York City primary, and I’m still trying to name what I feel.

While these past few years, being a Jew with a deep connection to the land and people of Israel has carried tremendous purpose, meaning, heartache, and love all at once, the recent June primary election cycle feels different.

Watching three Democratic Socialists become the Democratic nominees for Congress in the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, set against the rhetoric coming from our Republican president and vice president, I feel exhausted, despondent, and a new kind of scared. 

According to the Horseshoe theory, the far left and the far right, rather than sitting at opposite ends of a straight line, curve toward one another like the two tips of a horseshoe, converging in their authoritarian instincts, their taste for conspiracy, and, too often, their hostility toward Jews. Today, the horseshoe theory feels accurate and real. And it feels like the walls are closing in on me, on us. I know the theory is contested among political scientists. I know the two ends are not the same. But from where I stand, the distance between them has rarely felt so small, and here we are, stuck in the middle.

This is where I want to slow down, because I work in mental health, and I recognize what is happening in my own body.

When a person, or a people, perceives danger, the nervous system reaches for one of a handful of ancient strategies. We tend to know two of them by name. Fight: confront the threat. Flight: escape it. 

But there are two more that get far less attention and explain a great deal about Jewish life right now.

Freeze: go still, go numb, become unable to act. The exhaustion and despondency I described, the doomscroll that ends in paralysis rather than information. Or, the felt need to bury our heads in the sand & pretend all is fine so we aren’t overcome by anxiety. 

Fawn: appease the threat, make yourself smaller and more palatable. We perform the disclaimers (“As a Jew, I........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)