Do Not Lose Hope
I don’t think much of hope.
Things will be, or they won’t. What effect will hope have?
I didn’t hope the hostages would be released from the hell of Gaza. I believed they would be released. I prayed they would be released. I knew people were working to release them. But hope? What a flighty teenage feeling.
I was talking to a friend this week who left her home in Israel last October and never went back. The deaths of the hostages were too much to bear. “I lost all hope on Sunday,” she texted. “Part of me died, I think.”
What is hope? A held breath that all the mechanisms in a huge Rube-Goldberg machine of politics and decisions by thousands of players will function with the perfect, ever so delicate amount kinetic energy and the little ball will land in the hole? And what is it to lose hope? To shepherd the wind and lose the flock?
Judaism doesn’t really have satisfying answers for when bad things happen to good people. We answer with more prayers, charity, and a sideways thanks to God for making the decision, for whatever reason He made it. We show up more. We hold song circles. We join more WhatsApp groups and share articles and podcasts. We wrestle. Because the only thing a people with such a tragic history can do is try to make the future a little less tragic. Can we call that hope?
This feeling of “hope” was present at the vigil and march held on Mercer Island this past Monday, September 2nd. After a solemn commemoration of the lost lives of Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, Eden Yerushalmi, and Ori Danino, the group of around 400 marched partway across the I-90 bridge and back. Buoyed by messages of support for the remaining hostages and one another, including members of the Indian and Iranian communities, they waved flags and smiled and made new friends.
One person stood out in all this. His name is Sasha Matison, and he wouldn’t have stood out had he not been standing on the barricade between the I-90 bike lane and the rushing Westbound traffic waving an Israeli and an American flag.
Born and raised in Riga, Latvia, Sasha lost a branch of his family in the Holocaust, but never experienced much hostility to his Jewishness until after October 7th. Like a chemical that’s been activated, he joined early efforts to hang posters of the hostages and soon found himself leading the effort. He’s since helped lead rallies and has joined efforts with the local Hindu community to stand against radical Islamist attacks. I thought his story was interesting, so I am sharing our conversation here. After a hard week, it gave me…hope.
Hope may be a futility of futilities, but it evolves. Hope is lost for the six murdered hostages. But it gave way to another hope: that more hostages are probably alive. Hope for our community alliances is failing, but it’s giving way to hope for new alliances with underappreciated, newer immigrant communities. Hope isn’t ephemeral; it’s the impetus to action and prayer for a better future. It’s been taken from us so many times. It’s time to get it back.
“The best we can do is to keep raising awareness.”
The Cholent: You’ve been putting up hostage posters for nearly a year. How did that start?
Sasha: As October 7th happened, I immediately felt the gravity as I started seeing videos that had been posted. It brought me instantly very close to the memories of my family being annihilated in the concentration camps. All of the memories of persecution and the suicide bombings that that happened in Israel. I started looking for ways to engage with the community. At that point, I heard about the posters. I was trying to find the group, and I couldn't, because there was a lot of secrecy around it. I started doing posters myself; every single day I was printing out posters. Taking that poster and making that public statement the first time wasn't easy, but I pushed myself to do it. As I took that first poster and I put it on that pole, I felt so much relief. I felt instant connection with that person on a poster.
I started doing it over and over again, first around my neighborhood, in Wallingford, and I kept on looking for people to join me. I joined a global group, the ones that were responsible for distributing the posters. At some point I was able to finally connect with the Israeli community here in Seattle that was doing posters. Even though that community had 150 or so people, there weren't a lot of people that were putting up actual posters. I was surprised. We formed a group of four people that were active. We started putting up posters over and over again every single week. We did it when it was hot. We did it when it was cold. I remember putting up posters, and it was cold. I get very emotional about this. My fingers were shaking and couldn't hold the poster together. We continued doing it week over week and started facing that evil that's coming to us from those that started tearing down our posters. We started inventing all sorts of ways to put the posters higher up. We experimented with the glue, we experimented with tape. The Hamas crowd became really aggressive. When it became harder for them to tear the posters down, they started just using paint.
There was a gathering [at Temple De Hirsch Sinai]. I met the father of father of Nimrod [Cohen, taken from Nahal Oz]. He was in quite a bit of distress. He was kind of losing hope, because it's very hard. I talked to him face to face and I said, we're doing as much as we can to raise awareness. We are putting a poster of Nimrod. And he said, continue, continue to raise awareness as much as we can. We've been putting up a poster of Nimrod every week.
I remember ordering more posters of Hersh just literally like a week ago, before they murdered him. We take pictures of posters and we send it directly to the families. We have connections with the Bibas family. Basically, we are trying to raise awareness as much as we can.
A good friend and I have teamed up and been putting up posters in Seattle, but I can tell you, not a lot of people are still doing it. I just put up a call to action a couple of days ago and I said, look, with the murder of our six hostages, they're still alive. I put up a poster of somebody who is still alive there, an Israel-American citizen. And I said, “look, we got up. We gotta push. We gotta go put up posters, raise awareness, let's mobilize.”
Some responded, but not a lot. Maybe one reason is that it's hard on the community, because it’s been so long that they've some maybe lost hope that they can help them. Which just gives me an extra reason to keep pushing it. I have to put up the poster, because otherwise nobody else will.
You’ve faced off with people who tear down the posters and you’ve been to counter rallies. What do you think is motivating those people?
I spent a lot of time online really seeing the insanity plaguing social media. It's a disease of sickness, with people yelling “the rapes didn't happen.” I mean, I saw those videos, I saw them. I had people in my face telling me that it didn't happen. I yelled at them right into their face that I saw those videos. So don't tell me it didn't happen. It's a complete insanity. They blame the Jews for everything. They blame the Jews for the murder of Hersh. That definitely strengthened my resolve to continue to defend Israel.
Do you think that if people watched the videos that you and I have watched they would have a different opinion?
Absolutely not. There's just a group of people, they've been so brainwashed that if they see a video, they're going to say that it's fake or that it was made by Mossad. That the IDF flew in on the choppers and the tanks, and they killed everybody. They're saying it all the time online. They're so sick. I think it is just part of the population has that disease, to really cure it, it's just a matter of time. They just need to grow up as individuals and rethink their perspective fundamentally.
I've seen those that aren't Muslims at protests. I spoke with them face to face, and I asked them, you aren't a Muslim. What are you doing here? Why are you supporting a culture that fundamentally embraces Sharia law? It goes against completely the rights of women, and they are not aware. [One time,] I took a megaphone, and I started just giving them facts. One is that over two million Muslims live in Israel with equal rights. All of the street signs in Israel, they are written in Arabic and Hebrew. As I started giving them those facts, they started looking through their leader, like, what's going on? And then their leader said, well, it's more propaganda. Those regular people that haven't heard the actual truth about what's going on, that Israel is such a small country, which is a democracy and embraces the opinions of everyone, gives it equal rights, gives equal rights to the Muslims — they haven't heard those facts. They are all under the impression that Israel is this massive pariah state that wants to conquer the whole world.
Your activism has evolved, it's gotten a little bit broader. Now you’re helping to organize these rallies, and you work with StandWithUs and Run for Our Lives. What is the impact of these events, and do you have a plan to get more people involved?
As I became more active with organizing, I started proposing ideas, like let’s bring other communities together. Let's bring the Persian community. Then the genocide and Bangladesh happened, and then we said, let's bring the Hindu community together. And now for the September 8th rally, this Sunday, we became three communities united together. The first time ever, we are uniting three communities together for the common purpose of fighting the Islamic extremism, the Islamic fundamentalism that destroys people's lives. The community is becoming bigger, not just us as Jews, but it's unified with Hindus, it's with the Iranian people that experience persecution from the Islamic Republic. I think that is going to be the major catalyst to attract more people into this from each community and make it bigger, more meaningful, and make it a lasting effort that makes us as a Jewish community stronger.
I interviewed members of the Persian community last year, but I don’t know much about the Hindu community here.
I want to tell you about an amazing thing that just happened two days ago. I was with our Hindu brothers, and we decided to print the flyer for September 8th rally and then just go into the communities where a lot of Hindus are and distribute flyers. It was a fascinating experience, completely grassroots. We literally went into the park and stopped by saying namaste and explaining the situation and talking to people really face to face and seeing their reaction.
What was the reaction?
I would say most of it was positive, and we handed it off primarily to the members of the Hindu community. We also met members of the Spanish community. In maybe two, three cases it was fairly negative, and I wasn't sure why. I was very careful about listening and learning about things because there's also a lot of politics within the Hindu community. The Hindu brothers, they really understand the pain points of the Hindu community. Like for example, many of them may still be on a visa [and are afraid of jeopardizing their status], which is different for a citizen. So that's something very specific to the community, something to be aware of.
My hope is that over time, since there's a lot of interconnections within the community, as people see that we are coming together as three communities, they will become engaged more with each other. They will know each other more. So that's one of the primary goals for September 8th, which is really the people coming together, interacting, learning about each other, and becoming one larger community that gets involved with each other's rallies.
If you had one call to action, what would it be?
Our people are alive. They're held hostage in Gaza, in the dungeons, no light of day under the threat of death every single second. And it's critical for every single one of us to raise awareness, keep raising awareness every single day. It doesn't take a lot of time to put up a poster. The call to action is to keep doing it. Take that first step, go out there, go outside of your home to find a public pole and put that poster, maybe one or maybe two. And I guarantee you that it'll have an effect. It'll bring them close to the person on that poster. It'll create that special connection. And if they keep doing it over and over again, the people become almost like part of their family. They are alive. Many people will hope that they're not, they've been murdered. No, they are alive. They are alive. They're still there out there. And the best we can do is to keep raising awareness. The second thing is to defend Israel. That's my call to action. Israel right now needs all of the help it can get, and we must defend it.
Unite Against Terrorism, a Jewish-Hindu-Persian rally, takes place Sunday, September 8th at noon at Bellevue Downtown Park.
Community Announcements
Check out the Seattle Jewish community calendar.
Candlelighting in Seattle is at 7:20pm. The parasha is Shoftim.
Please join the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, the JCRC at the Jewish Federation and Temple De Hirsch Sinai in putting on Confronting Hate Together on Thursday 9/19. It is so important to show community support. Registration is at: https://templedehirschsinai.shulcloud.com/form/confronting-hate-together?blm_aid=0
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Shoutouts
Thank you to the rabbis and leaders of EB, SBH, OC, and BCMH for coming together in unity to memorialize this week's victims of terror. —Ty Alhadeff
Gratitude to the Community Security Service (CSS) volunteers who help keep our communities safe! —Dina Levitan
Many thanks and best wishes to Cassie Garvin as she moves on from eight years of great work at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. —Linda Clifton
The evangelical Christian community (which is the big source of possible allies) might like to stand with you, too, but scheduling a gathering right during the time when many of their church services are happening isn't helpful. I'm going to have to run out of my own service to get to your rally but I'll do my best to attend but next time, maybe try 1 or 2 pm? Just a thought.
It is great that someone is collaborating with Hindu and Persian communities. Chinese communities should be our allies because 20 million Chinese people were killed by the Japanese in World War II. Note that it is illegal in some cities, such as Redmond, to simply put up posters just anywhere. There are detailed ordinances. Some light poles are controlled by the city, some by the county. Also, there are people who vandalize and scrape the posters, and then it gets worse. Posters are fine if they are put up in a legal place and if the people who put them up are willing to maintain them. Social Media, such as Facebook Stories, gives you more control over what happens when you put a poster. Sign holding works if people are in a legal space. It is more productive for people to call the White House comment line and to call and write to Members of Congress, especially the Congressional delegation in our state, and to talk to local political leaders.