Playwright Amy Rosenthal tries not to succumb to despair, articulating her belief in the ‘fierce discipline’ of hope
In the scheme of things, I realise this is a first-world problem; but I don’t know what to do with my cat photos. In normal times, I have a steady online presence and a small audience for my two photogenic felines. But since the unspeakable terrorist pogroms in Israel, I’ve avoided social media. I suddenly don’t want to engage with it, this vapid virtual world in which grown adults spend more time than the real one, and express themselves, for the most part, with so much less nuance. A world in which it is normal, even obligatory, to respond to the massacre of innocents with a crying emoji; react to the volcanic rumble of global antisemitism by clicking a broken heart. Most of all, I can’t bear the pressure to Instagram my colours to the mast; the inference that if I choose not to post my personal feelings on one of these facile platforms, I’m somehow letting down the side. So I’m largely offline, and my phone is consequently clogged with unposted photos, snapped in the night when only feline antics stop me from scrolling the hell-site formerly known as Twitter.
In these wakeful hours, I try to conjure up my dad [the late playwright Jack Rosenthal], and hear his low warm voice, telling me, as he always did, that everything will be all right. Ridiculously, it’s only occurred to me now, aged forty-nine, that he might not have really believed it. Maybe he was just trying to make me feel better. I’ve always had him down as a melancholy optimist; a worrier, sure, but he had faith in the fundamental goodness of most people, a sense that most stories eventually resolve themselves with hope. In recent years, I’ve worked hard to foster that optimism in myself. But now I wonder; was he just being a loving dad, putting on a show to make his jumpy daughter feel safe? Because I can’t see how even Jolly Jack would say that this will be all right. Not for the hostages, even if they’re freed, nor the families of those grotesquely butchered by Hamas, nor the desperate Palestinian civilians fleeing under siege, nor the Jewish diaspora living yet again in fear. Yet still, I find myself conjuring his voice, striving to make his reassurance central to my inner dialogue.
Because hope is a fierce discipline, and in times of collective grief, it’s tempting to let it slide. To submit to a paralysing bleakness because we’re dizzy with rolling news, sick with empathy for strangers and burgeoning fear for our communities. At the best of times, I’m not madly keen on leaving my flat, and it only takes the whisper of a 1353% rise in UK antisemitism to make me want to never go outdoors again. But I also recognise, for myself, the importance of fighting the appropriation of tragedy, even when it resonates in my bones. Not permitting it to subdue my spirit or stifle my self-expression, either online or through my craft; even, indeed, stop me posting photos of my cats. In the magnificent words of Toni Morrison: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilisations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.”
By Amy Rosenthal
Amy Rosenthal is an acclaimed British Jewish playwright, whose awards include the Sunday Times Drama Award and a shortlisting for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.