Burning everything in the name of love.
Added 2025-12-15 00:18:26 +0000 UTCHello loves.
Happy first night of Chanukah.
Fuck.
Ash lit the candles. I made a post earlier today about the shooting in Sydney.
The comments that I got about sending love to the community in Australia without specifying the Jewish community spoke volumes. People were appalled that I didn’t specify the Jewish commonly.
So I wrote, and added to the IG and FB post text:
“To the the comments, and to say more: of course the hope goes deep right now to the Jewish community in Oz. It’s horror upon horror right now. I’ve lived in and run this little corner of the internet for 25+ years. I write free and fast. When I say the community, I intend it for everybody it may reach who’s affected by this senseless hatred and violence. The ripple of suffering is massive, and i imagine the epicenter of the Jewish community in Sydney needs extra love. So we send it. And to everybody else there who is in the wake of a jagged shock jitting the whole city. Same with Providence and Brown. Keep your hearts open and compassion aimed at everything and everyone that shatters when hate crimes hit. Radical compassion for the whole ecosystem of humanity is still a hill I will die on.”
It still amazes me that I - that we? - stumble so hard every day to get this right. I said to my friend Sabrina on the ride home today; there are seventeen layers of wrong to every right. And there is no right. And there is no wrong.
There are all these humans and all this suffering and at the end of the day all I can relate is the answer I gave to Ash to hint at the dinner table when he asked me “What’s the Meaning of Existence?”
And I said “To try to find a way to love everybody more than hate everybody.”
The end.
Xxx
Comments
You're a beautiful human, but more than that: you're a beautiful MOTHER ❤️❤️❤️ I really hope when Ash reaches adulthood, he truly & deeply knows in every CELL of his body how incalculably LUCKY he is to have Amanda-as-Mom ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Pedro B. Gorman
2025-12-18 20:56:54 +0000 UTCBeautiful See you soon xo
Rebecca Ryan
2025-12-16 12:18:45 +0000 UTCTensions are so high everywhere, about so many issues... Want that we could all put aside our biases for a second and grieve for the loss of life, in the absolute most general sense. The people who died were innocent victims, with families and loved ones... can we not all relate to losing those we love? I'm Jewish and my heart is heavy with hurt. It hurts for us all. Let this year end. I hope the love I'm sending out from NY reaches those close to home as well as those on the opposite side of the world.
Bradleigh Miller
2025-12-16 02:02:51 +0000 UTCZionism is not Judaism.
Alex Pugh
2025-12-15 15:07:18 +0000 UTCAnti-Zionism=Anti-Israel=Anti-Semitism=Anti-Judaism=Anti-Jews=Anti-Israelites=Anti-Covenant=Anti-YHVH=Atheism/Idolatry. Call it what you want, but if you take any link in this chain, everything collapses. That's what the Maccabees were fighting for. NEVER FORGET THIS!🕎✡️🕍
Michael Murphy
2025-12-15 14:19:07 +0000 UTCI know that Ash is half-Jewish, Wolfie... There's poetry in your post, too. Shalom.
Dea
2025-12-15 06:52:35 +0000 UTCI’m Jewish. The Muslim hero who stopped the gunman brings me to tears…there’s poetry in that for my heart and I hope all other Jews can take that in. Muslims and Jews are ancient Semitic cousins. May there be collective liberation for us all, together, and may the memory of those murdered today somehow transform into a blessing. It’s hard to offer that usual blessing when the death is from such tragic violence. I’m achingly tired of being human sometimes. I’m achingly tired of how many of my cultural holidays claim “ they tried to kill us but we fought back and won . “ I’m researching the older underpinnings of these holidays, the lights in the dark nights for the Hebrew people. Solstice preceded the maccabees. I’m so curious about that. But I have to ask… why does Amanda light a menorah? Does she have Jewish ancestry or is it some kind of solidarity? I wonder what the candles mean for her and her family.
Wolfie
2025-12-15 05:24:15 +0000 UTCMay we, who strive to love everyone more than hate them, hold one another with arms big enough to keep inviting more in.
Amanda WouldGo
2025-12-15 03:09:17 +0000 UTCIt surprises me that you needed to further explain yourself; to me the first part seems clear enough. Like everything isn't already terrible and complicated…
Lucas
2025-12-15 02:02:20 +0000 UTCWe all know atrocities like the terror attack on Bondi Beach happen every single day, worldwide. But such horrors are not common in Australia. They just aren't. So we are reeling, here. In free-fall. Australia feels forever changed by this savagery. I have no words, other than to say to Jewish folk here, as elsewhere: we are beyond sorry. This. Is. NOT. Australia. What IS Australia: Ahmed El-Ahmed, who disarmed one of the shooters, at such enormous risk to himself (and who in fact WAS subsequently shot, but is happily in stable condition). Not everyone needs to be a hero, no, of course not; but this man, presumedly Muslim, didn't consider supposed "ideology" or religious or cultural differences when he leapt in to defend his fellow people. He saw two terrorists, shooting innocent bystanders, and wasn't having a bar of it. Of him we can be so, so proud, even as we are shamed by the horror the two attackers wrought on this country.
Dea
2025-12-15 00:45:39 +0000 UTC🕎
Jessica Demcsak
2025-12-15 00:41:27 +0000 UTCTL'DR: Right to left
Jesse Lewis
2025-12-15 00:31:48 +0000 UTChttps://rabbiaronson.com/2020/12/10/lessons-from-a-classic-debate-about-how-to-light-the-hanukkah-candles/
Jesse Lewis
2025-12-15 00:30:55 +0000 UTC
