Living under a constant security threat creates a significant stress on our nervous system shutting us down for social engagement, creating alienation and impacting our social resilience. It leaves us sometimes in fight or flight when we believe we can successfully act to get to safety; freeze when we haven’t yet been noticed or the threat is too great to move; or in more severe circumstances of immediate or prolonged life threat, the body goes into a deep shut down. Prolonged life threat converts the powerfully present, flexible human into a disconnected fragment of the self functionally fractured. Often the disconnected parts are the more authentic and hold the curiosity, compassion, and a healthy, robust sense of personal identity within the collective.

We are in sore need of reorienting in relationship to our Jewish identity and the junction seems to have been catapulted from Gamla straight into our guts. The opportunity to come and build Israel as our home gave us the freedom to create a new Jew. Within the shadows of serious traumas and relocations, and the longings of great minds, we built this magnificent country. And somehow managed to banish the innovating, adaptive, clever critical thinking, questioning, passionate Jew who knew his heritage and valued it. 

I believe that if we are to affect change in our national identity and  our Jewish identity, we have to help people know how to reclaim their lost and exiled parts, heir personal empathy, their curiosity and their very own truths. This requires knowing thy self. Serious and truthful inquiry into self requires skills.

When fear is present, we retreat to our natural ways of being in the world. Some more rational, some more intuitive, some auditory, visual, verbal and observing. The more stress, anxiety and fear, the more we retreat to our own way of learning and communicating and the less adaptive we are to the style of the other. The less we are less able to respond to moments of connection and commonality between us.

The more we perceive threat, whether it is there or not, the less able we are to access curiosity or empathy or kindness.  This is the brilliance of the nervous system that is always working in the best interest of our survival. Kindness is generally not good for survival when life threat is present. Thus the Israeli harsh society that batters the nice and mocks the friar and tells you have to have thick skin and be aggressive to get what you want here. When threat is up, the social engagement system of the more evolved vagus nerve is turned down. Empathy is turned off in the brain and is not accessible.

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