Fresh Paint and Ancient Blood

Today was absolutely exhausting - and I don't mean because I painted my bedroom alone for at least eight hours, climbing over my bed, lifting the chair to do the high parts over and over again...with 80s love songs blasting in the background.

I mean it was mentally taxing - as the way my day began, was reading a letter to Mamdani written by Sara Matathias, a woman I recently "met" online. (Read her letter here.) Her letter was an exquisite confrontation of New York's mayor spending his week calling for the arrest of Netanyahu - and listing every blood libel imaginable on how the Jewish state does not deserve to exist - and then turning around and posting a respectful Tweet/X post, wishing the Jewish people who observe Tisha B'Av a peaceful day as they mourn and reflect on the history and resiliency of the Jewish people. "You can't have it both ways," she began, and I read it in full and shared it while still in bed.

I then heard from my atheist new friend - who is not Jewish yet moved to Israel with his partner six months ago. A major Zionist, he is a wordsmith with an unmatched sense of humor and wit. He texted, "We had no idea about this holiday last night, so were totally blindsided. Everything was closed. How hateful!"

I think I knew that this was an overly exaggerated dramatic statement, like when he calls any trip to an Israeli bank "soul-destroying," which it absolutely is. It was his way of saying, jokingly, that nothing could be worse than inconveniencing him, and yet... For some reason - the word 'hateful' struck a cord in me, and even though I have never observed Tisha B'Av and didn't even know what this day was about when I made Aliyah the first time - all holidays - even the ones I didn't grow up with - take on an extremely serious meaning since October 7th - given the weight we have carried on our backs since - as it is a weight that saturates our grief and makes it unmanageable.

We had a terror attack that proportionately would have barbarically slain 35,000 in one day had it happened on US soil - AND - The world celebrated it and blamed us for it and continues to accuse us of all the things Hamas did and does - (and we do not do.)

These are daggers embedded so deeply into our souls, that they can't be easily talked about, or intellectualized...they evoke feelings that bring the most secular of us back thousands of years - because this day - Tisha B'Av - is the saddest day of the year for us - more so than Yom Kippur - as it remembers the destruction of the First and Second Temples and forces reflection on all of the persecution that has come upon us. On all the people we have lost, due to a hatred I thought I'd never see. Before October 7th - a day about the destruction of "The First and Second Temples," or a Passover Seder commemorating our journey to freedom were easily explained and happily attended - as we talked about things that happened in Biblical times - the plagues, the Pharaoh, sexy Charlton Heston parting the sea and sexier Yul Brynner standing shirtless and shouting orders. "Long ago...in a world we no longer live in...'these things happened.'" But now... But since.... "Hello? Is it me you're looking for?" And I taped the ceiling, and began the perimeter of wall number one with a small brush to not make a mess... Yet all I could hear was Rimon Buchshtab-Kirscht's testimony in my head, a woman taken hostage on October 7th for 50 days with her husband, who she defended while in Gaza, by hanging onto a fork and stabbing Hamas terrorists more than once to protect him. This woman from Kibbutz Nirim spoke on Channel 12 this week, and there wasn't one sentence that came out without physical and emotional agony screaming from every cell of her body. "They couldn't kill me - but anything else was permitted...burning me, crushing my face bones onto the floor, sexually assaulting me...this was all okay."

Rimon Buchshtab-Kirscht, after her release from Gaza, fighting for the return of her husband, Yagev Buchshtab. His murder was announced in July of 2024. Photo: SFChronicle.com

The interview showed pictures of her from before, married to her best friend from childhood for only a couple of years, a happy couple just starting their life together... And now, she has made his grave a shrine, as he did not return from Gaza alive...which was something she knew would happen and why she begged her Hamas captors to not release her, so she could stay there as long as needed to keep the love of her life alive. One of hundreds of hostages, a life destroyed, expected to recover from this complex trauma and extreme violence - compounded by all of the people she learned were murdered upon her release. Now, I have complex-PTSD, from multiple losses of a different kind - something that naturally led me to the darkest corner of this war...but there is no "diagnosis" that can capture the level of cruelty this woman endured, and what she is left to piece back together. How can one recover from things that can't be un-remembered? How can one stop hearing things that can't be un-said? How to put one foot in front of the other after events that leave you flattened, gushing blood and no longer yourself?

And I noticed that the spackle thrown onto a deep crack in my wall was done so in a half-assed manner...and this enraged me. I grabbed the tool and tried to scrape it off, but I then noticed that the crack someone had covered had..."re-cracked" I attempted to flatten this mess, as this was to be my special mint green accent wall...so since the tool kept giving me problems, I grabbed a handful of the sticky cement clay and began applying it lovingly to the cracks that had returned. Take my breath away...

And this made me think about my morning conversation again and what this day actually wants us to examine: How have we endured as long as we have?

and How do we accept that we are in an existential crisis now? We had slaves (hostages) for two Seders in a row...and if the world could destroy one country on the planet - it would be us. Not Iran, and not Russia... Israel. Because we are the "Zio-Nazi" baby killer rats who should "Go back to Poland." And for this hate to not be internalized - on top of the October 7th grief I have dived into - (on top of my own which will never go away) - is excruciating, and... exasperating. And with my hands covered in clay, I realized I could fix my antique that arrived broken from the US...my "Scarlett O-Hara" lingerie chest...so I carefully applied spackle to the parts of that which were missing paint, too... "I'm rebuilding," I thought - on a day about reflecting on our resilience - and remembering... ...all who are no longer here, and all who came before us... And I decided that this day and our history can't be intellectualized. That's a privilege we don't have - and maybe people who aren't us can understand it and sympathize with it...

But that's not the same as the "soul-destroying" reality we have been feeling for going on three years...it isn't a perpetual simmering anxiety bubbling over and a fear pushed down that the millions of human beings surrounding us want to get back into Israel and cut off our limbs and hammer nails into our genitalia...and if that were to happen - the West would cheer.

The backwardness of how things should be but how they are not constantly doing our heads in. The blind hate from ignorant minds that overwhelms us, even if we sometimes pretend it does not. Yet our carrying on with traditions like lighting candles on the anniversary...of getting together on Friday evenings...of eating an apple with honey on Rosh Hashana, regardless of how sour things have been...we continue to choose to remember the sweet when tradition requires it. This is the reason we are still here. And is that religious? Maybe, but I think it's just faith. And I climbed over the bed and stepped right into the paint, lost in so much thought that my mess didn't matter.

We are a people - and despite the "misunderstanding" that the world has, (or the genuine choice to believe) - that we started this war, and not a bloodthirsty group of terrorists (the same group who planned similar style attacks for multiple European cities just last year...) Despite all of the missiles pointed in our direction, we will carry on, day by day, pressing the clay into our walls, as our phones blow up, with dramatic "IRAN THREATENS RETALIATION" and "Shelters across the country open as full-scale war could begin this weekend..." I only ask that the war holds off a few more days to allow a friend's visit - and that my mint green accent wall gets completed, is as gorgeous as I anticipate...and calms my soul to a manageable simmer. Hey now...hey now...don't dream it's over... They come, they come...to build a wall between us... We know they won't win... Shabbat shalom from the south of Israel...where we shall endure. -- Melanie Preston is a Jewish writer who took herself to Israel immediately following October 7th. Her writing took her to the hurt Kibbutzim and recently led to her first film with a hostage family. "COMING HOME - A Family, a Friend and Learning the South" has been submitted to multiple film festivals around the world, but still needs post-production editing and promotion. To support her film, her writing and hard work rebuilding a life in Be'ersheva, please consider donating to her GoFundMe. All donations will go directly to ensuring these stories from our darkest day in modern history continue to be told.