why i can not be silent

Just as a religious person has certain religious duties that help him or her make sense of the universe, finding order in the chaos so i have a need to write and speak out about matters of the heart.

In the Jewish calendar are certain dates that mark important events for the Jewish people,

more often than not the events are battles,

Chanuka was a battle of a small people against an occupying foreign force that made laws forbidding the Jewish people from practicing their faith,

this was not the first time Jewish people could not practice their faith ,

when the Jewish people lived in Egypt they too were not allowed to practice their faith openly as the Pharoah of Egypt decided that male Jewish babies were to be killed,

One mother decided to hide her baby boy, she placed him in a basket on the Nile, he was called Moses, and would grow up to realize his identity as a Jew and to lead his people out of bondage.

Chanuka was different though, there the Jewish people were  living in the land of Israel, the one Moses led his people to but could not enter himself.

Chanuka marks the courage of the Jewish people to rise up against an oppressor and to fight for their rights for their own identity, for the right to be different.

 Why am i then adviced by my Jewish lawyer to be silent because the court might not like me writing about the violence i had experienced because i was a married woman.

Why do the Jewish people keep marking dates in their calendar to remember the times they had fought against oppressors?

On the eight days of Chanuka we light each day a candle to remember the miracle of the light that kept burning despite the efforts of others to put it out.

On Passover Jewish people remember they were once slaves and had no rights and why do we remember constantly our history anyway?

Some say the secret of the survival of the Jewish people is that amazing collective memory, the ability to remember the history, the struggels.

However remembering something has been done to you, that you were abused does not necessary make someone a survivor.

In order to survive abuse  one needs not only to be angry at abuse  but one needs to have a reason to survive,

I believe that the Jewish people have a mission to keep the light burning in the world, that means that wherever human beings are abused, and that means everywhere, for whatever reason, we need to speak out against that.

Jewish people have led the struggle for equal rights and against racism in the USA and in Russia,  they had been the spear head of changes in society , in the struggle to change unjust laws, striving for a situation where all have rights as well as duties.

In each of one there is a small Moses not looking away when he or she sees an act of violence towards another human beings.

I have seen so much of this blindness to another's pain , as a parent i have seen my own children hit in the family by a father who like Pharoah hardened his heart and turned away from suffering.

Now i am adviced not to claim my words as my own, because a judge in family court might not see it favorably.

I have experienced domestic violence, i have been hit and my children too, and society did nothing to protect us,

now i am told to be silent, well, by what law? 

Who decides that people that speak out are mad`?

I am not claiming to be a prophet or a judge, all i am is a historian of pain and i would like to see the end of the story, i would like to declare this struggle victorious, but what is victory for me?

The victory of the survivor is the ability to speak out , and to remember that a struggle occured , and that the forces of light overcame the darkness,

that in between the light and the dark many colors came out and each and one will have a name and a place and will not remain hidden any more.