Surviving the Unthinkable
Surviving the Unthinkable
My Jewish faith has helped me through trauma and grief
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
I’m a survivalist, in every sense of the word. Horror has knocked on my door many times. At 12, I lost my mom. The one person I trusted and depended on—who knew my life by heart, could read my thoughts—was gone in an instant. It was the year of my bat mitzvah, and when I tell you that I made it through the ceremony without crying, what I mean to say is that a 12-year-old’s brain is not fully developed. Just thinking about it now makes my eyes well up. I could not have survived without my Jewish blood.
My mom—who loved being a Jew, who had a bat mitzvah as an adult—could not see me become an adult in the Jewish tradition. I worked so hard to become closer to her, closer to G-d, closer to myself. What was my truth? Did it lie within Judaism? I learned all seven of my Torah portions and haftarah, blessings and prayers, and I wrote a speech for the first time. My rabbi—one of the best writers I will ever know—said in his speech that I was “dedicated, smart and sensitive.” I was, and I am. I survived June 3, 2000 — the day I became a bat mitzvah and found G-d on my own.
Upon graduating from my Jewish high school, I visited the Auschwitz concentration camps and bore witness to the tiny baby handprints melted into the gas chambers. The parents told their kids they were going to have a shower. They were going to die. I feel this in my soul and the pain is so all-consuming, I cannot speak. Not 80 years ago, this was our fate as the Jewish people. Gas chambers. Handprints. Suffocation. Because we love being Jewish, because the Bible is our story. Because we choose life. Because we are strong. Because we have faith. It makes no sense and I am glad I don’t understand it — if we truly comprehend, we become the darkness ourselves. Just five years after my bat mitzvah, I had survived again, this time in Poland. At the end of the trip, we went to Israel to celebrate our liberation.
My college experience was, thankfully, free of antisemitism—so different from what our Jewish students face today. My life was centered on ZBT and the community we built, hosting holidays at our homes and keeping our traditions alive. Searching for truth, I majored in Journalism—only to graduate into an economic crash.
But now I see that Hashem protected me from entering antisemitic newsrooms, which have fanned the flames of hate since October 7 and, with each backwards headline, made Jews a little less safe. Instead of joining a newspaper, I wrote a book about my mom. I went down a path of healing, but I didn’t consider the generational trauma of being Jewish, of sitting in a gas chamber, of hearing the stories I do not like to repeat.
I think of our tour guide at Auschwitz, gesturing to the small building where Dr. Mengele tortured our pregnant ancestors. The wall where a Nazi shot her father’s best friend, just like our hostages were executed last month. The tour guide’s parents entered the camps with three kids, who all perished, then found each other after liberation and birthed her. Our people go back to these places, again and again. We tell the world about the horrors of the Nova Festival. We smile each day.
I experienced life-threatening medical problems and survived, against the odds. My Jewish faith gave me strength each time I underwent anesthesia, reciting the Hashkiveinu. These trials strengthened my belief in truth. Politicians don’t matter, I realized; their policies do. Bylines don’t matter; facts do. Suppressing the truth is censorship. Distorting the truth is criminal. Journalists have stopped going to “the scene” to cover stories. Many sit in an ivory tower, thinking that social media is all the education they need. This past year has been a study in the disappearance of faith in the West. The average American puts their faith in causes, celebrities or politicians. Screaming that it’s right. Arguing and “protesting” their way through the streets. Because they have no faith. Their faith stops at those idols. The golden calves of our society cannot be broken down fast enough.
This Rosh Hashanah, I went to synagogue and came back to myself. I had the honor of chanting the Torah blessings before the reading of the first portion. The only way I can sing in public, with a steady voice, is in Hebrew. In the melodies and songs of Shabbat and High Holidays, I hear my ancestors crying and persevering. With the Shofar blasts, we are called to be our highest selves. This Rosh Hashanah, I survived.
The Jewish people have survived for over a year since October 7. It’s a war between survivalists and the brainwashed. We can take a deep breath. We have lived, against all of the odds. Against countless biases, here we are. Here I am. Hineni. The same word that Abraham and Moses answered G-d with. Hineni. Here I am. Here I will stay.
Jessica Barraco began writing professionally in 2007 with her first piece published in The Denver Post. She continued to write self-reflective pieces for newspapers, magazines and online outlets such as ModernLoss, TheDailyMeal, The Daily Camera and Elite Daily striving to share personal stories and experiences, much akin to what is asked of the students during the tedious college admissions process. Her memoir was published in 2015 — The Butterfly Groove: A Mother’s Mystery, A Daughter’s Journey — her vision to put her journalism degree to real-life use by investigating the secrets surrounding her late mother’s youth. Uncovering facts from rumors, she tells the story of her mother’s life intertwined with her own, following a back-and-forth repertoire of chapters that reveal both of their interpretations of life at different stages.
She has spent her career working at high-profile companies such as HarperCollins Publishers, Princess Cruises, global PR firms and Group SJR, where she helped Fortune 500 companies tell their brand-centric stories through digital content creation. She then transitioned from the corporate world into serving as a college essay and planning specialist. A proud Buff, she graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder’s journalism school.
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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