The Dust is Coming – A poem for Parsha Bechukotai

On Purim, re-reading Persia, we stand at the intersection of the past and this very moment. May we merit not merely a temporary cessation of war, but true peace — the ultimate end of all conflict.

When future generations tell your story and mine, which parts will look obvious in hindsight? What opportunities will we have leveraged — and decisions made — that define our legacy?

The nostalgia attached to the ’80s and ’90s often comes from a world where public hanging-out was built into daily life.

For over half a decade, I had seen how the slow drip of antisemitism, carefully enveloped in the language of social justice and human rights, had steadily poisoned people whom I had previously considered perfectly reasonable.

Today, amid rising global antisemitism and uncertainty in the Diaspora, many Anglos considering aliyah are searching not only for housing but for belonging.

Their assumptions about the attack on Iran are based on a belief in the resilience of an evil terrorist regime, coupled with a conviction that Trump’s belief in the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance is inherently wrong.

This moment calls for moral imagination. For solidarity with the Iranian people demanding dignity. For sustained support of those who seek a freer future.

Can you imagine what it’s like to read about a Persian prime minister seeking to destroy the Jews – as the Jewish army is finally fighting back with the American army against the Persian Jew-haters?

We write as current and former UC faculty, many of us in STEM fields and professional schools, in response to the release of When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California.

It turned out that this first round of sirens was a wake-up call, a warning that Israel and America were attacking – so we could expect a different day of rest than all of us had planned.