The Power of Words- and Dreams

Words can harm, or words can heal

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.

---

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

As kids, we used to chant: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It felt like good ammunition against neighborhood bullies, and it may have shut them up in the moment—but was it true? Lately, I’ve doubted it.

I thought about this old slogan last summer, when I came home to find a parcel on my doorstep. It contained a flyer with a swastika on it, alongside words (among others) that read: “Hitler was right.” I wasn’t the only one on my street to receive one, and I know that others reported the incident. But hate speech is largely protected by the First Amendment, and we had little recourse. I dropped the packet in the garbage the way I might dispose of an object that needs to be handled with gloves.

In October, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 3024, which seeks to prevent so-called “hate littering.” This new bill is certainly welcome, but it’s unclear what effect it will have on the prevalence of hate speech in our communities. Because antisemitic words and symbols are ubiquitous. [You never know when one will appear.]

I often check social media in the evening, as I’m winding down. One night, just as I was about to log off, an oversized swastika appeared on the screen. A friend had apparently decided to reclaim this “sacred symbol,” which had been “appropriated” by the Nazis. They described a “childhood trauma” in which a teacher had seen a swastika on their lunchbox. I was pretty sure they would never display a white supremacist hand sign, or let their child wear a Halloween costume that looked like a KKK hood. I wanted to ask if they cared about the harm this image might inflict in the here and now, and whether their own pride outweighed that potential injury.

I didn’t reply, though. I’m not sure if my courage failed me, or if I thought that it would be pointless—that they would retort with something like, “You don’t get to deny my trauma,” or “Don’t look at it if it bothers you so much.” I shut down my computer without responding, and told myself the swastika was only a symbol. It couldn’t hurt me. Right?

But I noticed my body shaking. It took an hour to dissipate. I stayed up late, hoping to ward off bad dreams.

It didn’t work: I had one anyway. In my nightmare, I went to the bathroom and discovered that I was bleeding internally. I went to my mother—a Holocaust survivor who is no longer alive—and asked her what to do.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she said. “It should heal by itself.”

At first, I felt reassured. Despite the profuse loss of blood, I would be okay. But then my adult brain kicked in, and I remembered that hemorrhaging can be fatal. If I wait for this to heal, I thought, I could very well die in the meantime. With that, I woke up.

My first thought was to check that I wasn’t bleeding. In the same instant, I remembered the swastika, and knew that that was what the dream was about. Its message was clear. Yes, we can heal from the hurt caused by symbols and words. And no, we can’t let words break us. But leaving a wound untreated isn’t the solution either. If we don’t want to bleed out, we have to respond.

---

Jude Berman is an author whose novels include The Die (metaphysical speculative fiction) and The Vow (historical fiction). She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked as a freelance editor and writer for more than three decades.

Instagram: @jude.berman

---

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.