Doughpamine Club

Baking as mutual aid + community care + where to put your feelings about Palestine and Israel rather than yelling at people on social media

Let me begin by saying that I am not a person who bakes. Like ever. When the war started in Palestine and Israel in early October I couldn’t do much of anything. This is a new experience for me, the paralysis. I am a person of motion, of action. I am the person who runs towards the fire. I’ve been working towards changing this behavior in myself, challenging my response to suffering, to urgency. This will be lifelong work for me and I am in it.

As a person who lived in Israel and worked in Gaza and the West Bank, my heart is breaking everyday in a surreal far away manner. I am worried and scared for people that I love in that region. I am not going to chose a side so if that is what you are here for, then you should find another place to put that expectation. My side is my friends, my family, and safety. I choose love and and I will every time.

On the first Friday that this war was happening I invited a few friends over to bake challah and taboon bread, talk, cry, and love each other in our kitchen. We had coffee, listened to records, messily baked bread and audibly WHOOPED when the taboon came off the grill so delicious and gorgeous. I then delivered the warm, comforting creations to Jewish + Palestinian friends and neighbors that afternoon. During those doorstep conversations we cried, hugged, listened, and shared our experiences of our hearts breaking more and more everyday. It was so sad and yet so nourishing.

So we’ve decided to keep doing this, the getting together and baking bread then sharing it with our community. Last Friday different friends came over and when we were done I delivered the bread to some Palestinian and Israeli students on the University of Texas campus for their Friday night meals. I cried in the parking lot afterwards thinking about how their mothers might be feeling to be far away from their kids and how scared they all must be.

I am sharing this with you all here, in substack form, in case you too are looking for a way to turn off the noise of the violence and turn up the volume on the care, community, and connection. If you are in Austin and want to join our little doughpamine club, please do. If you are outside of Austin and want to start your own action and want to do so in community, let me know how I can help.

One antidote to the anxiety that you are feeling right now is to bake some fresh bread, eat it, share it, listen to each other, love one another. Repeat.

Onwards, y’all.