Ongoing Trauma, Ongoing Hope

This article, from a panel on “Memory, Trauma, and Hope,” explores the consequences of believing that in some cases trauma cannot be sequestered in the past because it is ongoing. I am a Jew. I live in New York, with an Irish first name and a German family name.This paper was presented during my sixth visit to Israel. The first two times I was a tourist. The second two times I came with my family to visit our best friends. The last two times I've come as a professional. I've had a wide range of feelings while in Israel. As a tourist, I was not very identified with the country. Visiting my close friends, I discovered my Judaism, exploring and developing a Jewish identity with great enthusiasm. I learned some Hebrew and read books on Jewish history. As a professional, I've felt alienated, on a political basis, and very much at home here. Sometimes I've felt ashamed that I feel so much at home here. I'm full of confusion.In preparing this paper, I watched Holocaust movies. (All nine and a half hours of Shoah, Sophie's Choice, The Counterfeiters, The Pawnbrokers. I'd already seen Schindler's List). My family was already in the U.S. by the turn of the 20th century. We had no one in Europe during the Holocaust, and I felt that if I'm to be on solid ground being critical of some of the actions of the Israeli government with respect to the Palestinians, I needed to immerse myself in the trauma that lurks in the background. After some time, I concluded that violence is sometimes not simply a matter of repetition with the tables turned; I came to appreciate that once one is aware of the evil of which human beings are capable,

it is hard to forget. And the world keeps reminding you.I tell you these things so you'll know something of who I am and where I'm coming from in what follows:

The theme of the Tel Aviv IARPP conference linked memory and trauma, alluding to contemporary work in trauma studies and psychoanalysis that connects trauma with the repetition of vi