Issue link: https://trevordayschool.uberflip.com/i/1518706
2024 MIOW Day Workshops • Black Representation in Media • But They Were Wrong!: A Practical History & Analysis of "Detransitioners" • Community Organizing: How to Change the World with a Group of Friends • Consequences of the Urban vs. Rural Divide in America • Conversations in Crisis: Muslim American Experiences, Jewish American Experiences & the Impact of the Israel-Palestine Conflict in Our Communities • DEI & Cognitive Dissonance • DEI in Music: Kendrick Lamar's Identity & Evolution • Dembow to Reggaeton: The Evolution of Current Popular Latino Music • History of Make-up • "I'm so OCD, She's so Bipolar:" The Usage of Mental Illnesses as an Adjective & Why It's Damaging • Indigenous Native American Stories & Activism • Influence and Effects of Fast Fashion • Men's Mental Health • Modern Day Antisemitism • Planet + People • Racism in Sports • Realities of Celebrity Lifestyles: Perfectionism & Effects on Mental Health • Secrets to an Ethereal Harmony (Earthly Mysteries) • The Effect of Social Media on Teens • The Negative Effects of Aesthetics on Modern Individuals • Toxic Masculinity & Feminism • Where Do Jews Belong? Sami's Palestinian teacher, Mohammad, says that in his music class, my son's assertion of his Jewish-Muslim identity gives him hope. At this time of crisis, when Mohammad's world has been shaken to its core, he recently sat with our children, teaching them the lyrics to "Jingle Bell Rock." A Jewish-Muslim boy singing a Christmas song with his Palestinian teacher is a lesson of unity in its own, and one of the few things that warms my heart during these dark days. The war is not physically in our home, but we cannot keep it away from us. It is in the news, on our tongues, in our hearts. "Who is killing who?" Sami asks. "Are Israelis killing Palestinians? Are Palestinians killing Israelis? Are Palestinians Muslims? Are Israelis Jews?" When we explain the complexity of it all, he sighs. Recently, Sami has begun to draw warriors in combat, one made of fire, the other of water, fighting over and destroying the land that they share. Sometimes, he draws children as small figures without faces hovering in the background that "see everything." When I ask him to describe the scene he has laid out on the page, he says, "All of the warriors are the bad guys. The children are the sad guys." He pauses. "And me, I'm on the side of the children." Like my beautiful son, I too am on the side of the children. I am scared for them and with them, bereft at the photographs of kidnapped toddlers from kibbutzim, and Palestinian children buried under the rubble of collapsed homes. I am an academic and an author, but first and foremost, I am a mother. "Hope is made of peace," Sami recently told me. "And peace is made of hope." Today, I look back to that New York City summer so many years ago, when my husband and I joked about our future peace babies. We were naïve, maybe, but we had also not yet been hardened by life. We believed that love could transcend the boundaries we were told should divide us. And so, we looked that lie in the face. In fact, we knocked it down, building a life and raising two children who prove otherwise every single day. I knew back then, and I still know now, that we can only find a safe place in the world by holding onto and uplifting one another. This truth lives in our daughter and son. It beats in their hearts. Knowing this allows me to face, but not drown, in the quicksand of immeasurable loss. n TREVOR DAY SCHOOL / 33 INSIDE TREVOR TREVOR TRANSLATES FEATURE AR TICLES ALUMNI