The personal is political

One of the only conditions I was presented with when asked to be a student blogger for the JC was to not use the pieces as a ‘personal political platform’. Priding myself on being an opinionated and politically charged but considerate individual I figured this wouldn’t be too much of a challenge. Especially realising a few weeks into my time at Durham that, as universities go, it made it surprisingly easy to be Jewish and not be challenged on Israel or religion or, actually, anything.

Yet, every time I sit down to write these blogs I always feel like I’m reigning myself in, scared of crossing the imaginary line of ‘political’. I gradually realised that to a huge extent the soul of personal writing comes from ideologically, politically and thus emotionally charged, thought and opinion. And so I've aimed to (and succeeded, apparently, as I haven’t been fired yet) write as close to this line as I can - crossing it only, perhaps, in implications.

Over the past two weeks it has been difficult to not be political. As is the mantra of one of my lecturers “The personal is the political”, the Jewish is the political. Even if I wanted to disengage from conversation about the protests in Gaza and the accompanying shootings by the IDF, its impossible to ignore the arguments flooding social media  - tsunami-ing seems even more appropriate a description of the sheer volume and ferocity of the online conflict. On top of that, family and friends of mine hold and act upon strong opinions at both ‘sides’ of the issue (though that such a binary condemnation of opinions lacks nuance is, in itself, another opinion). Moreover, and perhaps the most important internal battle for me, I can't choose to engage with the complexity of Judaism and Israel when it is easy and then disengage when it is hard.

I've come to see being Jewish (in the UK at least) as not only a religious identity, but also a political one. And as a result to write of Judaism is, in many ways, to write of politics - a very hard thing to do without turning platforms into personal political ones.