In recent months, as clashes over the war in Gaza have fractured American campuses — including my own at UCLA — I’ve been thinking frequently of Grace Paley’s 1991 story “Three Days and a Question.” In this short, autobiographical tale, the Jewish American author and activist recounts three scenes that take place over the course of three days on the streets of New York. In each case, a bare arm is proffered by someone who has suffered trauma.
As its title suggests, Paley’s story offers not easy answers but probing questions: questions about Jewish identity, antisemitism and the difficulties of solidarity that remain as urgent as they were when Paley was writing. (She died in 2007.) All three of the scenes Paley recounts resonate 30 years later, but the first one is uncannily familiar in our moment of conflict.
The story opens: “On the first day I joined a demonstration opposing the arrest in Israel of members of Yesh Gvul, Israeli soldiers who had refused to serve in the occupied territories. Yesh Gvul means: There is a Limit .” As with today’s campus protests, this demonstration, which takes place during the first Intifada, is teeming with members of the press, including an anchorwoman.
“‘What do you think?’ the anchorwoman asked. ‘What do you think,’ she asked a woman passer-by — a woman about my age. “‘Anti-Semites,’ the woman said quietly.
“The anchorwoman said, ‘But they’re Jewish.’ “‘Anti-Semites,’ the woman said, a li.
