Turning Against Family
On the cost of betraying oneself
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Matthew 10:34-37
We all receive beliefs from the people who raise us. About the world, about others, about who we are and who we are allowed to become. These beliefs are passed down by the people we love, who received them from the people they loved. They are often not questioned because they are experienced as absolute reality.
Father, mother, son, daughter are not only family, they represent attachment to inherited beliefs and the roles we perform to maintain them, and include our spouse, our community, and even the parts of ourselves that resist change because the old identity feels safer than the unknown.
When someone no longer matches the role they performed, the structures of belonging built on those beliefs, the household, do not question themselves, they make that person the enemy.
And those who choose the comfort of attachment over truth will never experience the love that exists beyond the safety of what is familiar.
The beliefs I carried told me who was worthy of love and who was not. Whose land was whose and why. What loyalty required and what it cost to deviate. That the real me was not safe to be seen. I held these types of beliefs for nearly thirty years, and letting go of them was messy. They were not just ideas I held, they were the foundation of all of my relationships.
For years I carried the truths about my beliefs silently, performing the roles, protecting the image, knowing that something fundamental had shifted underneath while not yet willing to pay the cost of saying so.
When I finally shared my truth about Zionism and about choosing to love a non-Jewish woman, I was called a traitor, a Kapo, a Nazi, a deviant. I was told that my daughters should not be with me, that I had gone too far, that I “burned the house down”, that I was fanning hatred and endangering my own people.
But I could no longer hold the beliefs I had inherited, and I could no longer pretend that I did.
Not all relationships survive when the masks fall away. When I stopped performing, not everyone could receive what was underneath. I still sit with the grief of that. That pain doesn’t just disappear.
I love my family and friends deeply. They taught me courage, conviction, sacrifice, and the willingness to stand for what I believe in no matter the cost. The same values they gave me are the ones that brought me here. The foundation I stand on, even when I stand apart from them, is one they built.
Following truth shatters connections built on performance, but it opens the door to real love, connection, and intimacy. The sword in the family is not the end, it is the beginning. It is the only way back to one another, and to peace, because until we are willing to be seen for who we actually are and what we believe, no relationship is real.
געגוע
شوق
Thank you. I hope you and your family are okay. Here’s what I said when I reposted:
Another beautiful post. It’s the task of all adults to live with integrity. All of us are called to this: no exceptions.
You are not alone in your discovery that Zionism is based on lies about Jewish supremacy that has caused the death, displacement, starvation, and debasement of Palestinians from before Israel was created. And you are not alone in your pain that comes from rejection of the new and enlightened you by family and friends who consider your newfound courage and integrity to be a betrayal of all that you were conditioned to believe. But it is important for you to reflect on the journey you took to that point and recognize that there are many others - what I would call “closet anti-Zionist Jews” - who are not ready to pay the price that you are paying to “come out” in public. And there are others who have not reached that stage, but might do so with some patient effort on your part. In fact, some of those who most viciously oppose you now may be somewhere along the spectrum of awareness that you passed through. I encourage you to leave books, pamphlets, online links, and other materials for your family and friends to peruse in private – books like Peter Beinart’s "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning" or links like Jon Stewart’s interview of Peter Beinart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5kXCdzt_us.
Be patient and perseverant, Daniel. Just as you were inspired by others, you can be an inspiration to family and friends. I wish you well in that endeavor.