“ARMENIANS AGAINST HATE” it says in fat letters on a large banner hoisted in front of an Armenian Community Center. I drive past that center twice daily, since arriving in San Francisco a month and a half ago to tend to my son, severely injured from a catastrophic paragliding accident. It is located between the Beth Israel Judea Synagogue and the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church on the aptly named Brotherhood Way.

I can never predict when the banner is up, its appearance sporadic. But my mind is glued to the statement whenever I drive by, searching for interpretation. What hate are they against? The one extended towards them by their genocidal persecutors, or the one they feel towards their historic enemy? The hate in the world, bubbling up wherever we look in these desperate times? Are they really able to speak for the group at large, a uniform Armenian mindset?

My mind roils, the topic of hate of personal relevance. I find myself caught by hate these days, an emotion I despise and have rarely given into across my lifetime. I hate the cruel twist of fate that destroyed my kid’s body in a nanosecond of miscalculating height and wind speed. I hate the medical system that is unable to provide pain relief for crushed spinal nerves, phantom pain and abdominal spasms. I hate the war with insurance companies trying to duck out of obligations. I hate the way the urban environment is set up, making it hard to push the wheelchair.

On a more universal level, I hate the way the pandemic is allowed to rage, adding isolation to someone confined to a sickroom to begin with. Hating the tragedy of unnecessary deaths for those exposed to the dangers of the virus for lack of economic security, the drama of all these generations of children missing out on equal education. I hate the system that allows climate change to go unchecked, leading to fires that bring untold suffering to mankind and nature. I hate the way I see the poorest of the poor, the unhoused, crowd the sidewalks unprotected from the ashy air, cough shaking their emaciated bodies.

I don’t want to be consumed by hate. In some ways I cling to it, however, as a protective measure. If I peeled back the layer of hate, like peeling back the layers of an onion, I’d come to layers so suffused with grief and fear I might not function. Just like thinking about the riddle of hate-opposed Armenians protects me from thoughts about my helplessness in view of suffering for yet another day, week, month, year, the anger protects me from far more painful feelings.

Yet today, according to the Jewish Calendar, we end this year and start off fresh. A period of contemplation invited to draw parallels with what people lived through and survived for thousands of years, putting personal hardship in perspective. Reflection on right and wrong instills a sense of obligation to go beyond individual tragic times and focus on communal effort to improve the world as a whole against the forces of darkness that currently surround us.

I will peel the onion. Tears will flow. May they cleanse the way to the promise of sweetness still contained in a possible future. L’Shanah Tovah.