That date we have all been dreading is here.
It’s Oct. 7.
Simchat Torah, the holiday of rejoicing with our Torah, the Jewish calendrical date marking this moment in time that forever altered the course of our history in Israel and for Jews the world over — that’s still a couple of weeks away. But Oct. 7 has arrived. The date after the Yom Kippur War began half a century earlier, on Oct. 6. What a sequence.
Sunrise memorials — to mirror the sunrise time frame of the day when the massacre was launched, were observed throughout Jerusalem and Israel — particularly down south, where Hamas invaded.
A pained moment of silence observed at sunrise.
One year. The first year.
The thing is, usually a one-year time marker, such as an anniversary or other event that took place in the past, is acknowledged in the present. Usually one is celebrating something that transpired that is still meaningful, or remembering something significant from the past.
That’s not the case here. While we are remembering what happened last year, we are also still living it.
It’s not a memory from the past from which we have moved on and are processing with the distance of time. Rather, we are still navigating this tragedy of Oct. 7 in the present. The wound is still open. Perilously painful.
The hostages are still captive in Gaza. Heroic soldiers are still sacrificing their lives. War funerals and shivas are still part of the landscape. Just the other day the terrible news that another hostage was officially confirmed dead came to light.
So much of our perspective has been re-crafted and needed to be re-formed, re-oriented, after Oct. 7. I don’t think any of us are the same or can ever be the same again.
The undercurrent of this past year and today is still devastating.
Now there is a war on a second front. The North. With Hamas- aligned Hezbollah. In Lebanon. Again.
Beacons have emerged amongst our people this past year. Parents and families that got pulled into our public space against their will, by way of unbearable tragedy, bereaved parents, bereaved families, who with unmatched courage, strength, voice and leadership, guided us in how to respond to the Oct 7 tragedy.
Names I only know now, names of people who were not in my orbit, are now inspirational personalities, part of our Am Yisrael orbit. If only we had never learned their names, never seen their inspirational personas. If only.
Destiny was imposed on them.
Nationally, there’s a background kind of sadness that permeates. There is a kind of collective exhaustion.
Yet, there is a force of life that seems to go beyond all.
I go about my groceries in the shuk, the open air market, purchasing wares from various vendors, including one Arab vendor. He too has a picture of a hostage he is close with, on the wall. The proprietor of this boutique-y fruit and vegetable stall is also wishing for the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas, of our enemies. He said as much to me as he passed me the simanim, the symbolic fruits and vegetables I had purchased, including leeks — for our enemies to be cut off. Squash, for our enemies to be destroyed. The linguistic play on words of these vegetables works in Hebrew.
On Oct. 6, the night before the dreaded one-year anniversary, I decide to go to the Kotel, the Wailing Wall. As I was leaving the Arab souk from the Muslim Quarter and just exiting Jaffa Gate, the expanse of those ancient strong encircling walls stretch before me. Then I notice the unusual reflection. On the high stone walls, gleaming in the night, are the visages of the hostages and the number 366. For this past year from Oct. 7 to Oct. 7 was counted day by excruciating day. But here they are and here it is, splayed across the Jerusalem night.
In the days preceding this Oct. 7 was Rosh Hashanah, when the difficult narrative about Abraham being called to sacrifice his son Isaac is chanted from the Torah. At the last moment an angel appears and instructs Abraham to spare the life of his bound up son, and indeed Isaac’s life is spared.
This past Rosh Hashanah, as this Torah narrative was chanted, for so many of the beautiful soldiers, the precious hostages, no angel came and called out at the last moment — “al tishlach yadcha la’na’ar, do not stretch out your hand against the boy.” The sweet visages hauntingly passed before us. Their sacrifice seemed to rise from the Torah reading, unspared by the angels.
The war seeped into Rosh Hashanah and permeated the prayers unlike any other Rosh Hashanah prayers from any other year. Words I’ve recited for decades jumped out at me from the page, as though they were newly inserted specifically for the situation we are living through. Their power was visceral.
On the night before Rosh Hashanah, instead of the shofar a different siren suddenly blared. We were attacked by hundreds of ballistic missiles from Iran. As we ran for our lives into the belly of the building, to the bomb shelter, from the balcony I caught sight of shooting rockets across the sky, and then Iron Dome’s brilliant interception. The lights spark across the sky in such synchronicity, dare I say it is a strange kind of beauty all its own.
Deeper still, is the beauty of witnessing such an open, revealed miracle of protection. Within the bomb shelter the computer screen was constantly lighting up with red marks of where the missiles were aimed at. The entire map of Israel was dotted in red. Hundreds of missiles were shot across the entire country. We all huddled together, families with small, impatient and concerned children, elderly women and men sitting quietly, almost frozen to their chairs, teens and young adults valiantly calm, murmuring Psalms, along with others too, all of us alternating between psalms and figuring out how to access news, or call loved ones, as the thunderous booms we heard kept dropping. I’m new to the building. This is how I met my new neighbors, in the bomb shelter. When 10 or 15 quiet minutes pass, we exit. Just as we were about to leave, another round of ballistic missiles began raining down. We stayed on until we received the all clear.
It was over. All was OK.
Another miracle.
What euphoria. Yet also a casualness, as many of us returned to our kitchens to collect some of the now burnt foods that were cooking in the ovens as we instinctively abandoned our pre-Rosh Hashanah laden kitchens for the bomb shelter.
Rosh Hashanah eve 5784. Unforgettable. We lived Jewish history. We lived through a miracle.
We continued preparing for Rosh Hashanah, cooking the special symbolic dishes, setting the holiday table. But then the next day, this miracle we just lived through was pierced by such pain. Not two days after the beginning of the ground invasion of Lebanon, and eight beloved IDF soldiers, young men on the cusp of life, were now gone.
Rosh Hashanah candles were lit in tears. It was a New Year, but with the tragedy and pain and its consequences from this past year, this past Oct. 7, still bleeding. The next morning, I prayed “vatikin” in a sunrise Rosh Hashanah prayer service.
Now it’s come full circle. Oct. 7. Until it will come full circle yet again, on Simchat Torah. A national yahrzeit, compounded,
Avinu Malkeinu, “our Father our King,” as we say in the prayers of the Days of Awe, be charitable and merciful with us.
Let this year bring mornings and sunrises of promise, of calm, of vatikin prayers of a dawn of a new day.
© IJN 2024
