Words of the Week: Sarah Einstein on “Writing as an Act of Teshuvah”
The essay I’m currently working on covers a time in my twenties when I was decidedly, and based on flimsy reasoning, anti-Zionist….During that time, I said many stupid things, informed by fringe sources and a little in love with my own sense of being “one of the good ones” in my group of radical lefty friends. In playing this role, I helped to enable the antisemitic rhetoric of the left and gave cover to those who espoused the worst of it. And while very few (but not none) of my lefty friends went on to become people who set policy or hold much sway, it still contributed to the current climate in which Jews find themselves unwelcome in some of the politically progressive movements we helped to found.
[….]
I’m intentionally working on this essay during these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when we are called on to do the necessary acts to right the wrongs we have done, because I want the writing to be inflected with the need to publicly own the harm and for the essay itself to fulfill Maimonides’ steps of teshuvah:
Please read Sarah Einstein’s full essay, “Writing as an Act of Teshuvah,” on Substack.
