A prayer, a protest, a promise.

Anyone else have this primal scream sitting at the base of their throat?

I don’t let it out; I swallow it many times a day.

I feel it straining when I scroll through the news, when I look at the comments on Jewish profiles on social media.

When I see people posting casual h*tred, tossed like confetti- fueled by engagement of agreement.

When I see the headlines of things that never should have happened, when the stories are all twisted and read upside down, or backwards, blame on the victims, the victims cast as the source of ill in this world.

So many times a day, my fingers itch to write a response, but I realize that I could lose my sanity if I went chasing down every antisemite with a keyboard, every biased reporter, every narrative edited to fit an agenda that aims to target my people.

Too often, I end up reverting to silence, saving my voice for when it matters, my energy for when I can do good, offer something loving, healing, whole.

It’s like facing an avalanche of lava with an umbrella; a volcanic eruption as you are trying to climb the mountain. I know I’ll get swept away by the endlessness of it all.

It's too loud. It’s too hot. It’s everywhere and overwhelming.

I can’t spend all my energy explaining to a world that won’t listen that we aren’t horned devils but human beings who want to live in peace.

I would rather build something that lasts than burn myself out feeding off of other people’s prejudice.

But that scream still sits there.

It hums like static at the edges of my day, threatening to spill out; and yet I still go food shopping, cook dinner, and wash the dishes. I sit at my computer and write something beautiful or capture a moment with my camera.

But I often feel that I am holding back.

I wonder if holding it in is strength or surrender.

If choosing silence to preserve my sanity is wisdom, or just exhaustion disguised as choice.

Because the truth is, I don’t want to live clenched and quiet forever.

I don’t want to bathe in other people’s torqued sense of injustice, sleep in the filter they place on reality, live as the villain in their refracted narratives.

I want to turn that scream into a song- something that builds, into words that teach, hands that create, harmonious voices.

And maybe that’s the point.

We don’t silence the scream because it doesn’t matter; we silence it because we are choosing to live in a way that outlasts the noise.

To keep choosing creation over destruction, connection over collapse.

Maybe it’s proof that we’re still alive, still human, still unwilling to give up on this world.

Maybe it's not meant to be swallowed or shouted, but assembled into something enduring-

A prayer, a protest, a promise to shape it all into something holy.