On losing the plot

“You have lost the plot” is the perfect colloquialism for this time of an infinite bombardment of fictional and nonfictional plots. It is impossible to find a coherent through line when we are tethered to tiny movable screens flashing an endless succession of competing, fleeting narratives.

The plot of Jewish identity reads like a thriller. Every Jew I know is the descendant of someone paranoid and lucky enough to get out before they were killed. This generation of Jews is a distillation of the most anxious and most powerful Jews in history.

Look in our medicine cabinets if you want to catalogue that inheritance.

When my grandmother was a child we couldn’t attend the Ivy League colleges where we now chair the boards. Whens she was a child she would be killed for setting foot in the country where I drank champagne on my honeymoon, and the one where I ate pasta by a lake while pregnant with the great grandson she never met.

The plot is exhausted by our repeated genocide and it becomes murky when our soldiers are the ones bombing the hospitals. We explained it as best we could. Act One: “It was Hamas rockets!” Act Two: “It was a Hamas bunker!” Act three: “So you’d have us all killed instead?”

There it is - that is the plot. Annihilate or be annihilated as we once were.

If you are praising Osama Bin Laden’s letter to America, you have lost the plot.

If you graffiti a synagogue you have lost the plot.

If you are praising the October 7th slaughter you have lost the plot.

If you think Amnesty International is an antisemitic conspiracy theory you have lost the plot.

If you are think Doctors Without Borders are lying you have lost the plot.

If you think Unicef is lying you have lost the plot.

If you’re siding with Marjorie Taylor Green you have lost the plot.

If you are a Democrat even considering voting for Donald Trump you have lost the plot.

The plot is our the only guide out of this hell.

If we lose the plot, we lose our humanity.

There are premature babies wrapped in tin foil to stay warm in these hospitals.

There are 240 hostages made less safe because of this. Farther from their homes because of this.

The deus ex machina is so very clear.

You have lost the plot if you don’t see it.