We have so much to offer.

I've been thinking a lot about what happens when Jews are rejected from Western society.

There are countries like Australia, where Jews are hiding their Judaism in order to receive medical care because they fear sabotage or intentional injury.

On American college campuses, students and professors can be doxxed simply for identifying as Zionists.

There are cities in the Western world where wearing a kippah, a headscarf, a Magen David necklace, or tzitzit has become a calculation rather than a simple act of getting dressed in the morning.

In my own professional world, "Zionist" has become one of the dirtiest words you can say in social work. In certain places and networks, therapists are harassed, pushed out of associations, ostracized by colleagues, and lose clients simply for believing that Israel should exist.

And then there is my writerly world.

This week, there was a tremendous uproar after an organization devoted to free expression published an article documenting the growing discrimination against Israeli and Jewish writers, difficulty finding agents, publishers reluctant to acquire Jewish or Israeli books, coordinated review bombing, and the organization's president ultimately resigned after people argued that acknowledging discrimination against Jewish writers somehow came at the expense of Palestinians.

So here I sit finishing an unapologetically Jewish novel, scratching my head and wondering what exactly I'm supposed to do with it.

And yet what fascinates me isn't simply the rejection. It's what comes after.

I'm not going to not finish it!

Overall, Jewish and Israeli society is producing extraordinary things.

Groundbreaking medical research.

Technological innovation.

Agricultural advances.

Art.

Music.

Books.

Scientific discoveries.

We are not a people who have ever stopped creating and thinking simply because we are being rejected.

So I keep wondering what happens if the doors continue to close.

We have spent thousands of years creating through exile, persecution, expulsion, and exclusion.

Creation has never really been the question.

The question is where that creativity flows.

For centuries, Jews poured an enormous amount of creative energy into the societies around us.

What happens if we begin pouring more of that energy into one another?

Do we become shtetlized?

Does Jewish creativity more concentrated?

More confident?

More distinctly Jewish?

Do we share less with the outside world? Close ourselves off to stay safe?

I honestly don't know.

But I'm wondering.

Because when doors close, we need to open new ones.

And where there isn't a door, we need to bust a hole in the wall and make one.

We have so much to offer.

Thoughts?