A Jewish Journey of Identity and Courage

Chapter 7 David

“It was awesome! If you play like this in the game, we’ll definitely make it to the finals, no problem,” Coach Joey said at the end of another exhausting practice for our upcoming semifinal in the district school championship. I was still catching my breath as I headed to the locker room, feeling exhilarated after scoring several three-pointers. I was confident the coach would let me play in the game—this was my chance to prove myself to the whole team. We walked out together, and it seemed like Marcus and his group had finally stopped their nonsense. They were laughing and patting each other on the back, and we knew we had a real shot at making it to the finals, maybe even winning! I unzipped my bag and pulled out my phone to text my mom and let her know when to pick me up. Coach had said practice would run late, so I wanted to keep her updated. I glanced around, but everyone was busy changing and getting organized. The noise from the showers was overwhelming, and I could only imagine the smell. Mom had mentioned she was out and told me to wait for her up front. Just as I was about to close my phone and tuck it away, an Instagram notification caught my eye. I was tagged in Marcus’s story. Great. I clicked the link and, as expected, saw a caricature of a Jew with a big nose and piles of money. How is he not tired of this? The next story featured a photo of a poor child, captioned with claims that Israel starves Palestinian children and that one hundred thousand kids die of hunger each year because of Israel. I wondered if anyone noticed that the image was fake—it looked like it had been generated with AI, since the child had

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