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Odellya Sohnis (Courtesy of Odellya Sohnis)<\/p>\nOdellya Sohnis (Courtesy of Odellya Sohnis)<\/p>\n
Odellya Sohnis, 30, is an Israeli-American who has lived her whole life in the United States. Her Israeli mother met her American father in New York.<\/p>\n
Before Oct. 7, 2023, she always felt secure in how other people perceived her Israeli identity. But after the Hamas attack on Israel, her feelings changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI dance Brazilian zouk socially, and I\u2019ve watched antisemitism increasingly seep into recreational spaces that used to feel separate from politics,\u201d she said in an email.<\/p>\n
Sohnis, who lives in Philadelphia, responded by \u201cintentionally bringing Jewish people looking for connection together through dance and social experiences.\u201d Every Monday evening along the Schuylkill River Trail, Sohnis gathers five to 20 people for zouk classes.<\/p>\n
Except they don\u2019t have to dance zouk. If they want, they can just sit on a rock and read. It\u2019s a place to let go and feel safe in one\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like you don\u2019t have to leave your identity at the door,\u201d Sohnis said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, you also are not forced to defend your identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be 20 people. It could be five people. But we want to grow it. It\u2019s really like an underground scene. Zouk is not something you hear about on an everyday basis,\u201d Sohnis said. \u201cIt\u2019s about having this self-awareness, body awareness, social awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January 2024, Sohnis was attending the Interfusion Wellness Festival for the second time. The annual event in Arlington, Virginia, offers workshops, spaces and gatherings incorporating yoga, meditation and dance, among other holistic wellness practices.<\/p>\n
During the festival, Sohnis heard from a fellow Jew who had been in an ecstatic dance room that someone had yelled, \u201cFree Palestine!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he realized, hey, you\u2019re excluding Jews and Israelis,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt was like, that\u2019s accepted?\u201d<\/p>\n
After the incident, Sohnis started noticing similar dynamics emerging in some of her friendships. The Philadelphia resident still has extended family living in Israel. Her friends knew this; yet they never asked about them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m seeing my friends either quiet or debating with me. I just want my friends to ask me if my family\u2019s safe and if I\u2019m OK,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The anti-Israel politicization came for her zouk spaces, too. Sohnis was organizing her own classes in different rooms around Philadelphia, but then \u201ca girl boycotted my venue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said it\u2019s supporting genocide. She told people not to go, and sent them Al Jazeera articles,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Sohnis began to see this everywhere, in zouk spaces, while taking part in her preferred workout of rock climbing, even while walking down the street.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou couldn\u2019t go to Washington Square Park [in New York] anymore without a Free Palestine keffiyeh,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A zouk dance partner told her that Oct. 7 was a bad day for Israelis but a good day for Palestinians.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the first two years, I was crying twice a day. It was hard not to talk about it,\u201d Sohnis said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she just had to let go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt this stillness, this quiet,\u201d Sohnis said.<\/p>\n
Sohnis began finding new spaces. That\u2019s what the Monday gatherings were all about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think it\u2019s important that we don\u2019t seclude ourselves,\u201d she said. \u201cI started bringing more Jews into the scene, and doing it in our own space. Non-Jews are welcome too. It\u2019s not advocacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is something I\u2019ve noticed, and I guess it just happens with time. People aren\u2019t crying about it the way we were. We don\u2019t have to constantly cry about it. We rise above,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Advocacy, though, is also important to Sohnis. She recently participated in the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s Glass Leadership Institute<\/a>, which introduces young Jewish leaders in Philadelphia to the organization\u2019s fight against antisemitism.<\/p>\n A few years ago, she worked with Tribe 12 to produce a four-part workshop called \u201cIsrael and Palestine: Arming Ourselves with Clarity and Advocacy through Empathy.\u201d Sohnis continues to facilitate sessions in the series in Jewish organizations and at events, like at the BBYO International Convention<\/a> in Philadelphia this past February.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing we can control is how we connect with each other and how we listen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Odellya Sohnis (Courtesy of Odellya Sohnis) Odellya Sohnis, 30, is an Israeli-American who has lived her whole life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[523,69,71,70,8402],"class_list":["post-253887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-people","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-you-should-know"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}