Shayna’s Origin Story

I didn’t become outspoken because I wanted attention.
I became outspoken because I was targeted—and silence stopped being an option.

It began with hostage posters.

After October 7, I hung posters calling for the release of Israeli hostages. They were simple. Human. Nonviolent. Just faces and names—people taken from their homes. I believed, perhaps naïvely, that advocating for civilians would be uncontroversial. It wasn’t.

That act made me visible.

Almost immediately, I became a target of harassment. Strangers photographed the posters, tracked me online, and began circulating my name. What followed was not disagreement—it was coordinated intimidation. My personal information was shared. My address was posted. People I had never met began discussing me publicly, encouraging others to “do something” about me.

Then came the petition.

A campaign was launched to get me fired from my job. It accused me of things I am not, based solely on my identity and my refusal to stay quiet about Jewish suffering. Emails were sent. Calls were made. The goal wasn’t accountability—it was punishment. The message was clear: speak as a Jew, and we will try to destroy your livelihood.

By that point, I was already living with fear. I checked over my shoulder. I avoided being alone. I tried to be careful without disappearing. I didn’t stop being Jewish. I didn’t stop telling the truth. But I knew I was no longer safe.

And then it escalated again.

One night, as I returned home on Shabbat, three people got out of a car and attacked me. There was no argument. No warning. Just violence. I was beaten by multiple individuals outside my own home—at the address that had been shared online. The attack was the physical culmination of weeks of dehumanization.

This wasn’t random.
It was the end of a chain that began with speech being punished and ended with a body being harmed.

After the assault, I didn’t feel empowered. I felt shattered. Trauma doesn’t turn you into a hero—it strips you down. For a long time, my voice came out fractured. In pieces. In music made quietly. In writing I wasn’t sure I’d ever share.

But something fundamental had changed.

I understood, in my bones, that silence does not keep Jews safe. Accommodation does not stop hatred. Shrinking does not prevent violence. If anything, it invites it.

So I stopped shrinking.

Finding my voice after the assault wasn’t about becoming louder—it was about becoming clearer. I stopped explaining myself to people committed to misunderstanding me. I stopped asking permission to exist fully, visibly, unapologetically Jewish.

Around the same time, aliyah stopped being theoretical.

Becoming Israeli, for me, is not a political slogan. It’s a grounding choice. A refusal to live perpetually on borrowed tolerance. Israel represents something essential to my healing: collective responsibility, continuity, and the right to self-definition.

Aliyah is me choosing a future where my identity is not a liability.

The woman I am becoming now carries what happened without being defined by it. She understands power not as dominance, but as rootedness. As refusing erasure. As building a life that reflects truth rather than fear.

I did not survive violence to be quiet.
I did not endure intimidation to disappear.

I am growing into my voice, my creativity, my Jewishness, and my power—not despite what happened, but because I refuse to let it be the end of my story.

This is not a story about victimhood.
It is a story about becoming unmovable.

And I’m just getting started.