The Mosquito's Sting: A Tale Of Boundaries Challenged

The Mosquito's Sting: A Tale of Boundaries Challenged

Once upon a time, in an enchanted kingdom, there was a mosquito that carried West Nile fever. This mosquito bit a wealthy man and a poor one, a Jew and an Arab, a white person and a black person, women and men, heterosexual cisgender and LGBTQ+ individuals. The story tells how people created protective barriers and divisions between themselves, but nature, in the form of the mosquito, pierced through these barriers and showed how easily something from each of them could seep into the other, revealing how arbitrary and temporary all these defenses and boundaries truly were.

The king of the kingdom ordered the mosquito to be locked in a golden cage and asked the wisest person in the kingdom, a little girl who understood the language of all animals, to talk to the mosquito. The girl listened to the mosquito's story and told the king the moral lesson that the mosquito had taught. Instead of punishing the mosquito, they made it an important minister in the kingdom. The royal physician healed the mosquito, and the kingdom's scientists transformed it into a beautiful prince.

The prince married the girl when she became old enough. She was the only one who saw the wisdom in the simple mosquito that had only come to sting. To everyone's surprise, as they did not know enough about science, it turned out that the mosquito was actually female. So, the wise girl ended up marrying a mosquito princess who loved to wear princes' clothes. The two of them lived happily ever after, a bit distanced from all other humans who were unwilling to give up the barriers and divisions that separated them.

When the people discovered that the mosquito was female and had married a woman, they wanted to punish her. However, the girl, who was once a wise child, ran away with the mosquito princess to the mountains. There, they lived happily, far from people's eyes and the fears that drove society. They listened to animals, studied life principles with them, trying to deeply understand their languages. Over the years, they published scientific papers that were meant to bring human society closer to their compassionate worldview, which looked broadly at life as one intertwined woven fabric.

Queer Jews Project Day 25 - Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer

Edie and Thea first met in 1963 on the dance floor of a Greenwich Village restaurant. Edie was a computer programer at IBM, and Thea was a clinical psychologist. They started dating in 1965, and got engaged in 1967. Thea proposed with a circle diamond brooch because a ring would have led to questions and possible outing. Over the next several decades, they lived happy but hidden lives.

But Thea’s health started to decline.

So Edie and Thea got married in 2007 – in Canada – because same-sex marriage wasn’t legal in the United States. Thea died in 2008. Edie found herself with a literal broken heart – and a massive, unjust tax bill.

The Defense of Marriage Act prevented Edie from claiming the spousal inheritance tax exemption that heterosexual couples received. So Edie sued the United States Government. The case eventually made it to the U.S. Supreme Court – and Edie won. DOMA was struck down in 2013, and that set the stage for same-sex marriage to be legalized across the United States two years later.

Queer Jews Project

-Rumi

A Plea for Peace: End the Romanticization of Victimhood

Give Israelis and Palestinians a Chance for Coexistence

Content Warning: Mentions of violence and historical atrocities

For too long, people from the outside have romanticized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a gladiatorial arena, a reality show, or a competition of values. By romanticizing victimhood and choosing sides, you allow governments and dictators to stay in power. Your inconsistent support, favoring one side's victimhood over the other, makes it impossible for those of us, both Jews and Arabs, who want to live in peace to actually achieve that goal.

The West and East have chosen politicians on both sides who oppress the weak, buy warfare from them, and lack empathy. Yet for centuries, Jews and Arabs lived together peacefully in many areas, and there are still those among us who have never stopped hoping for that reality, even in the face of atrocities like the Nakba, Sabra and Shatila and many other horrendous crimes to the one side and bus bombings, rape crimes, and the horrific events of October 7th, where Jewish Arab supporters were slaughtered and burned alive on the other. Brainwashed-hurting-people are hurting people. By dehumanizing each side for its barbaric acts you leave them lonely and hurting, which leads to more extremism.

We are all being brainwashed, and as time goes on, more Jews and Arabs are losing hope, allowing pain and hatred to consume us, and enabling the rise of fanatic politicians who further fuel this cycle. But we are all just people who want to live. If the East and West truly wanted us to find a solution, they would invest in mutual education and acknowledgment of each nation's pain, helping us learn about our shared Semitic Abrahamic roots, rather than selling both of us more weapons.

Many Arabs in Israel-Palestine are not just our cousins, but our sisters and brothers. Not all Jews fled when the Romans came; some of them became Christian and then Muslim. Some of them are the Palestinians of today! And the other part is our closest cousins. Our DNA is so similar; there are no closer ethnicities in the world. The world plays savior while pushing us to fight harder, funding narratives of hate and promoting xenophobia and antisemitism on both sides.

We are all children of the same God, the last remaining Semitic peoples. Please, world, support new leadership on both sides! Invest in peace, not war. Give the Jews and Arabs who want peace a chance to achieve it. Strengthen us, and give the next generations of Semites a chance to live with dignity, compassion, respect, and mutual love.

Since the British Mandate pitted us against each other, as they did in India and Pakistan and so many other places, where colonial empires left the people to fight each other - "proving" the "barbarity of the locals" in comparison to the supremacy of the colonials, the biggest world powers have used our conflict to prove their own strength, choosing a side as if we were gladiators in a ring. Please, stop this game of money, power, and manipulation. No one should have to die anymore. Life is already too short! Palestinians and Israelis should be free together, from this war, from these separative beliefs, from the hatred, to live and move freely, to marry each other freely. To have one shared government that represents us all equally with dignity - with no more brainwashing and separation. This is what I pray for. No occupation nor any slaughter or rape of any kind. We should not fall into traps; if all people open their eyes, politicians lose their power. With the help of decent, honest allies from the world, this is achievable, slowly but surely. This should be the reality. Where all kids know both languages in an Arab-Jewish state, celebrating together, growing and then aging together with the deepest respect for all the mutual and all the unique, beautiful differences. Looking into Arabs' eyes, I see the eyes of my family members. You are not that different. I want peace with you .