Intergenerational Jewish Moping

 This will be a short review, because this recent book was a real dud.

I just finished "Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma" by Tirzah Firestone. I have become interested in learning about intergenerational Jewish trauma but the author just spends more or less the entire book waxing about liberal zionism, so it really ruined what was a promising premise for the book. 

I want to learn about how descendants of Holocaust survivors might carry trauma in their bodies and lives, but this book spends most of its time talking about how the Israeli occupation is bad, but on the other hand, what are we supposed to do, surrender to terrorists? She literally says the separation wall is ugly, but in some places it is aesthetic. THANK YOU, NEXT.

Anyway, Jews are clearly a pretty traumatized people, but it definitely does not justify the horrific crimes of Zionism.

I do like to think about what Jewish life and Jewish communal life would be like in the present were it not for the Holocaust. And also all the secular Jewish culture that was destroyed, as well as the slaughter of communists and Jewish communists. It would be a world where your options for Jewish life would be greater than: boring services at shul and Zionism. That would be quite nice.

Firestone cites Rachel Yehuda as someone who has done a lot of research on intergenerational Jewish trauma. Maybe I will look her up. I doubt I will dodge Zionism entirely while researching this topic, but at least I could find sources that are not like: Three moms in Tel Aviv lose their IDF soldier children to incomprehensible and senseless terrorist violence, but they got into Yoga and now they are healed ...