I’m Almost 78. This Is The Hardest Time In My Life To Be Jewish
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/opinion/yes-israel-film-boycott.html
This week, I lost a great friend and fellow physician. His name is Ray Kahn. He was the first pediatrician in Fort Bend County back in 1979 when he moved to Houston after completing his first-class training in Canada and the northeast U.S.
He was a visionary. Everyone else saw empty space south and west of the city. Ray saw the future and wagered that families would grow in Sugar Land and beyond. The children of those families would need a doctor. He was right. He was it.
When we moved to Houston in 1984, Genie contacted one of her medical school classmates who was a pediatric sub-specialist at Baylor to get the name of a good general pediatrician for our 4-year-old son.
“Ray Kahn is the best in Houston.”
And he was the best right up to the end because at 78, he was still seeing kids in his office. He was my go-to guy for all things pediatric and for all questions about infectious diseases and vaccines. He knew exactly what viruses were sweeping through Houston at any given moment. Allergens, too. Ray was never wrong.
His sudden death shook many of his friends to their cores. Me included. At his funeral on June 12, I was reminded how our Jewish faith is so critical at major life events from birth to death. Participating in the service and at the graveside provided about the only comfort I had had since his death on June 9. It reminded me, as if I needed any reminders, how critical Judaism is to me—now more than ever.
But, as I imply with my title, it is a tough time to be Jewish.
The attached editorial from The New York Times on June 13 by Michelle Goldberg describes the terrible boycotts aimed at the latest film by Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid. The film called “Yes” was described by Goldberg as “The Zone of Interest”..made while the Holocaust was happening. It is obviously about the current state of affairs in Israel and Gaza where the extreme right-wing Netanyahu government is in charge and raining terror down on Gaza following the terror of October 7. While defending itself from Hezbollah terror in the north, Israel is raining terror down on innocent Lebanese. And what these dreadful Jewish Israeli men are doing to the Arabs on the West Bank, and allowing the settlers to do to these Arab farmers, and how the Israeli Defense Force and police are turning a blind eye is awful. It is thus, a tough time to be Jewish.
This describes the dilemma for those of us American Jews who are staunch supporters of Israel, true Zionists, but who cannot sanction the wholesale killing of civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank by an Israeli government that can only be described as extremely reactionary and, frankly, of clouded mind due to religious zealotry and nasty revenge. I understand the argument about how many parts of the West Bank had Jews on it in the Bible thousands of years ago. Wake up! It’s 2026. Turning to the Bible for solutions to modern land disputes is not rational. To be blunt, it’s an excuse.
This situation, in turn, is coupled with Palestinian political impotence and a complete lack of leadership beyond militias, and the obfuscation by the wealthy Gulf Arab Sunni states who look to the United States to fight their battles and are astonished when Iran attacks them after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
Frankly, I look around and have no idea whether there are any adults in the room in the Middle East or the White House Situation Room. President Trump has painted himself into a terrible corner and took us all with him. How is he going to make a deal with Iran, and make it look better than the Obama deal that he tore up? He cannot, because there is no way Iran cuts the deal without the release of billions of dollars of its assets currently held by the U.S. How is Trump ever going to get that enriched uranium out from under the rubble in Iran? What can he offer Iran to permanently open the Strait of Hormuz and what makes him think that the Iranians will abide by any deal now that they have learned that they can close the Straits at will with a fleet of drones?
And to make matters worse, Israel is at war with the whole world. It is never good for Jews when our state is hated by everyone, even most Americans, I fear. Like Trump, Israel, too, gets blamed for high gas prices and probably ought to. American leadership and Israeli leadership are equally culpable, inept, and drenched in self-serving behavior. These leaders are no longer in agreement with each other. Trump wants this war over, gas prices down, and inflation cooling. Netanyahu wants to wipe out Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and most of the Arabs on the West Bank, but especially Iran. The U.S. wants the war to end. Israel wants it to drag on.
I took great comfort on Friday June 12, when Dr. Kahn was laid to rest at a Jewish funeral service with our rabbis officiating, Dr. Kahn’s son giving a fabulous eulogy, and even his widow, summoning up the courage and strength to bid him an eloquent good-bye. As we recited the 23rd Psalm, I was soothed.
By contrast, the rise of anti-Semitism in America, in Europe, in Australia, and around the world has been inextricably fueled by anti-Zionist sentiment due to the outrageous behavior of the Israeli government.
The only hope I have is that the world knows the truth. But, all of it. Iran did want to destroy Israel. It still does. But Israel is killing thousands of civilians in a hunt for terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. But was the killing of 70,000 in Gaza anything more than Biblical revenge? I think not.
Netanyahu wants Iran destroyed. An Iranian nuclear weapon is, indeed, an existential issue for Israel. But you will have a hard time convincing me that waging an air war on Iran by the U.S. and Israel without Congressional approval or any Arab allies was the way to guarantee Israeli longevity. Clearly, it was not.
Friday was a comforting time for me to be a Jew, to be among Jews, even if it was to bury one. Most of the rest of the time lately, being Jewish has become a challenge. Despite adversity, the rituals of our faith can heal even as the healing needs to be augmented by time. The behavior of Israel and the United States in the Middle East over the past four months will not improve the lot of we Jews, there and here.
I am a Jew to my very core. I will be buried close to Ray Kahn someday. I may have been born in a Catholic hospital—St. Raphael’s in New Haven, CT—but I will be buried with my fellow Jews in a cemetery on Antoine in Houston, TX near the Ikea. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am a proud Jew and an enthusiastic Zionist. It is who I am. But others are making it harder than necessary right now. I still rejoice. It is still good to be Jewish even as it has often been hard. But there have been worse times and there will be again. That is why Israel’s existence is so important. When we have nowhere else to go, we must be able to go there. I just wish the Israeli leadership understood its responsibility in the larger world and stopped acting like the Jewish kid who needs to fight because he is Jewish. Israel has been fighting for 78 years. It might consider making peace with its neighbors somehow.
We Jews may not be accepted everywhere, but we are in most places, and certainly still in the United States. That gives me hope.
