On Tuesday, October 10, 2023, while blood was still flowing and fire was still blazing in the kibbutzim and cities near the Gaza border, I got a tattoo on my left hand: Hineni. In Hebrew.
Impossible to hide. Impossible to deny.
It was a tiny and probably banal attempt to buoy my soul amid a sinking sensation that now accompanied being Jewish in this world, though I couldn’t say for certain if this was a cowardly new world that had just surfaced, or the world as it has always been, finally revealed.
Up until October 7, 2023, I didn’t know what Hineni truly meant. I understood what the word signified in pivotal moments in the Bible—being fully present and committed, accepting a divine responsibility to act—but I never imagined it could have any relevance to my life. But on the night after the massacre, everything changed. Reading Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s To Heal a Fractured World, a book about choosing duty over inaction, the words hit me like a physical blow, an emotional punch in the stomach. There it was, the explanation I didn’t know I needed: “Hineni. Here I am, ready to heed Your call, to mend a fragment of Your all-too-broken world.”
Hineni. That single word echoed through my secular brain. Lacking a traditional relationship with God, I had no idea who was calling to me, what they were saying, or what I was being called to do. I just knew the world was, indeed, all-too-broken, and breaking still. I knew it needed mending. I knew that it was my responsibility to step up.
Probably the first person ever to have had a tattoo emergency, I woke up the next morning, found an artist, and made an appointment. It was not an act of defiance. It was an act of certainty. With every sting of the needle, I imagined my grandfathers, turning in their graves.
For the granddaughter of immigrants from Eastern Europe who came dirt-poor to Mexico and managed to build a rich and plentiful life with Judaism as its axis, a tattoo was certainly not a Yiddishkeit thing to do. And yet, walking out of that studio and into the all-too-broken world with Hineni visible on my hand, I had never felt more Jewish.
In the nearly three years since the October 7 Massacre, as I became a Jewish activist in conferences and social and mass media, there have been numerous times when looking at that tattoo offered me guidance and strength. Every time I’m attacked, whether by an online mob or by face-to-face aggressors, I look to the tattoo as my superpower—a shield of a word printed on the back of my hand.
Was I acting by chance or by choice? I didn’t know, and now I no longer care. I may have been in the right—or wrong—places at the right—or wrong—moments, but it was my choice to act, each and every time. Both in real life and on social media (the line between the two growing thinner and blurrier with every passing day), I have often found myself entrenched in controversial conversations around Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. I suppose it was possible to extract myself from these moments, but I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—stay silent.
Hineni moments—transformative experiences that look almost like ordinary occurrences to an outside observer—are odd. Both familiar and terrifyingly new, they force you to practice direct honesty while taking a stand for the very first time. It is not easy to interpret a conflict that is both so complex and, in essence, so simple at the same time. War and violence never allow for an easy explanation. But standing up for morality and the rights of all people to freedom and safety is simple. Introducing the everlasting promise of Tikkun Olam to an audience manipulated by algorithms is an uphill battle, a repeated discomfort disguised as courage. But striving for a better, more peaceful world should be something we can all get behind.
Finding it hard to remain morally disciplined while fighting something morally obscene, I spoke up, hoping it would get easier with time.
Am I saying the right thing? Am I using the correct tone? Am I letting my passion and anger get the best of me? Or am I striking the right balance between brain and heart, reason and empathy? Finding it hard to remain morally disciplined while fighting something morally obscene, I spoke up, hoping it would get easier with time.
Unfortunately, it never did. This is when I learned an important lesson about showing up: Hineni does not eliminate doubt. Instead, it demands action despite doubt.
Over time, the questions changed. Instead of doubting how I was expressing myself, I started asking who I was speaking to. Was I speaking to the unreachable masses, or was I speaking to the few people still willing to listen? Was I having an impact? What was I trying to achieve?
I am not trying to reach the whole world. Some people—those who already share my views and values—do not need my words. Others have decided not to hear a single thing I say. And yet I refuse to back down, speaking to the people who still have enough doubt in their hearts to listen.
Speaking up is hard. Extremely hard. And yet, every time I try to make the safer choice—trying to remain quiet, holding my tongue and refusing to engage—my left hand betrays me. There it is. Hineni. Not a decoration. Not a slogan. A question. A command. A witness.
Getting that tattoo was not just a turning point. It was a point of no return. Every time I have spoken up, every single statement I’ve posted online or made on my podcast, every public talk I have given—I have done so knowing there is a price to pay. Whether it be losing friends, missing out on job opportunities, facing rabid hatred on social media, or enduring uncomfortable, and sometimes violent, personal attacks, I have found it is a price I am willing to pay. Sometimes I pay it with a smile on my face. Other times, with tears in my eyes.
The tattoo is an instant reminder that what we are going through is not new. That encountering hate, and standing up against it, has been not the exception but the rule of our 5,000-year history. Some Jews find their raison d’étre in prayer, I find mine in standing up against hate in the outside world
But the harshest truth is that even when I’m not taking a stand, even when I’m talking about something completely different, the tattoo is an unequivocal testament to my Jewishness. And that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. Why, then, do I keep speaking up? Why not keep quiet? Why not cover up my hand on occasion?
The answer lies in a comic strip I first saw more than thirty years ago: of an old man and a small child sitting on a park bench. Asked about the number tattooed on his arm, the old man explains that it is a remnant of a time when hate, intolerance, and death ruled the world.
“So, mister, you kept the number to remind yourself of that time?”
“No, dear boy, I kept it to remind you.”
The Hineni on my hand is a source of strength when I speak up. But it is also a reminder to those who see it—Jewish or non-Jewish, curious or uncomfortable—to act, to stand up, to choose dialogue over hate, to believe in tolerance over supremacy. It is a reminder. A reminder to everyone willing to listen of the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people.
Maybe that is the call Rabbi Sacks wrote about—the call to heal this all-too-broken world. Not as a reminder to the self, but to those who have yet to heed the call. To remind you.
Here I am.
Hineni.
