It felt critically important for me to have a visual sign to the outside world that I was Jewish. "This is who I am!" I proclaimed proudly, even when my Dad suggested that perhaps I was going somewhere where such a symbol might not be warmly welcomed.
The necklace was a part of me, in a similar way to my wedding ring today. A commitment. Part of me.
Sometime after 2009, when I made aliyah and started a life in Tel Aviv, I took off my necklace. My Jewishness was so obvious, it didn't need to be stated. The same way I didn't wear a sign reading "I breathe oxygen!" I didn't need my necklace. I lived in a place where the air was Jewish, the streets thrummed with anticipation every Friday afternoon, where the local convenience store had shabbat candles next to the cigarettes.
And then, in 2023, after That Day, we moved back to the US.
And today, July 1, 2026, I fished out my star from deep in my closet, and clasped it to my neck once again.
Once again, I feel a need to shout my identity.
This time, I'm not an angsty teenager, desperate to identify, but rather, a suburban working Mom in her 40s. Hardly the picture of revolution.
I love my necklace, and my people. But putting on this necklace feels...deeply sad. It's all of it, the last couple of years, and those before it.
It's losing my favorite podcast when the hosts embraced Hamas, with no words for our beloved redheads, or the others brutally murdered that day.
It's the idiots holding Palestinian flags and shouting in the middle of the only suburb with a sizable Jewish population, as that population heads to pray on Friday nights.
It's Scott Weiner being attacked, and Josh Shapiro's house being burned, and the Temple my grandparents founded in Toronto, and the one my best friend's grandparents founded in Detroit and the woman arrested by the FBI for sending crypto to terrorists yesterday.
It's every Jewish board meeting when we have to budget for security again, when we'd rather spend on popsicles or literally anything else. It's every single person who talks about "antisemitism and Islamophobia" in one breath, even though Jews are attacked 5x than any other religious group.
It's the absolutely cruel and moronic government of the state of Israel, tearing the reputation of my beautiful country to shreds.
This Jew is exhausted, but I am not afraid. I am proud, and I will not step down. And I will not take off my necklace.
