sonia | Happy Pride Month, day 8, Jewish

8. I'm proud to be Jewish. It's a bit of a flinchy pride, because of anti-semitism, and that narrow tippy line between acknowledging white privilege and acknowledging being white on sufferance, being white-passing. And yet, solidly proud when I check in with myself about it.

I wandered off to identify as pagan in my twenties, wandered back to identifying as Jewish when I stood out more in Portland, and somewhere along the way came to embrace the identity as part of my core. There are a lot more Jews in the Bay Area, one of the reasons I was glad to come back, and there are even more Jews than that in the Balkan community choir. As much as I say Balkan singing isn't in my heritage, maybe something about singing in groups is. Singing European music.

I picked this icon because my tag for it is "tikun olam" which is a very Jewish value of repair the world. Love the world. Care for the world. It's one of my bedrock values, and I remember realizing my values turned out to be Jewish values back in 2016.

(In case it needs saying, I am appalled by what the Israeli government is doing to Gaza. Not proud of that in any way.)