Скачать или смотреть BEHIND THE POEM: “tfw you are called both hitler & a kike in the same day” by Caroline Rothstein

“tfw you are called both hitler and a kike in the same day”
Written & performed by Caroline Rothstein

Episode 11. I wrote this poem a year & a half ago. I recorded this video on Wednesday. It took me well over an hour & 18 takes. At one point, I had to take a break to lay down on my couch & read. Yesterday, I read it to my therapist in therapy. I burst out sobbing at the end. I had a breakthrough. I realized what this poem is about at its core.

I wrote this poem in directly response to a specific series of Internet assaults & incidents I experienced. The poem also references other Internet harassement I’ve experienced throughout my career. And also, I realized yesterday in therapy that perhaps at its core, this poem is about my many experiences throughout life as a scapegoat, as a middle-person target for abuse, as a Jew.

Here’s how antisemitism works: throughout history, Jews have been positioned to be a buffer people between those in power & those without systemic & structural power. Centuries—even millennia—of antisemtic tropes are built firmly on that foundation.

This is why in 2021 as a White person in the United States who is also a Jew, I can be called both Hitler & a kike—one of the most egregious slurs & epithets for a Jew—in the same day. This is how White supremacy works.

So what I realized yesterday in therapy is that I am continually put in this position as a buffer for abuse. Sometimes personally. Sometimes professionally. Rather than working through their grievances directly with one other, oppositional parties & groups often attack me instead.

In this way, I am perpetually being cast in a lifetime role as “the Jew.”

But this is not the role for which I have signed up. Yes, I am a Jew. But I am tired of this maladaptive form. I cannot continue to live like this. I am moving out of the way to make space for these grievances to properly air.

Be gentle with each other & yourselves. Shabbat Shalom.

Video description: Caroline Rothstein performs a poem wearing a burgundy Donkey Kong T-shirt.

#behindthepoem

All rights reserved by Caroline Rothstein, 2021.