As I sit in the quiet of my home, reflecting on my family’s past, these words haunt me: “If not now, when?”
My heritage is steeped in the stories of resilience and heartbreak—stories of my grandparents, my father, and his family who faced the unimaginable when they were uprooted from their Palestinian village in 1948. They endured the pain of displacement, the cruelty of being called names, and the suffocating poverty that followed them as they sought refuge, contemplating the treacherous route to Gaza, then finding a fragile safety in Jordan. Their survival was interwoven with grit and the unexpected kindness of strangers. Yet, the scars remain, passed down through generations, a heavy burden of unhealed wounds.
I think of Rachel Cerotti’s story of her grandmother’s journey through Europe during the Holocaust. While she was also met with kindnesses along the way, her wounds were deep. Tracing our grandmother’s stories has been part of both Rachel and my healing journeys. But now, in the face of this new pain broken open by the immeasurable suffering of Israelis beginning October 7 and a catastrophe of enormous magnitude for Gazans, I ask: If we do not act now, when will we?
When will we stop looking the other way when people are suffering? When will we go back to our pain and face it directly? How can we find a way to grieve together? To bear witness and hold one another. That time is now. If not now, when? It is time to heal—to confront the wounds of the past, to name the pain, and to release it, so all of us can finally be free and safe. We cannot afford to wait any longer; the time to act, to see one another, to face the pain and grieve together, and for one another, is now.
Aziza Hasan is the Executive Director of NewGround A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. www.mjnewground.org
For Every Jewel There is a Question:
How do you respond to the difficult truth of someone else’s story?
One Response
You listen. Just listen. Take in their reality as if it were your own.