Between Walls of Fragility and Faith

This time last year, my roommate Hallel and I rushed to the floor of the downstairs hallway while the sirens from a rocket barrage echoed throughout our home in Jerusalem. It wasn’t the noise that paralyzed us, but the suddenness, the way the stability of one moment could be snatched away the next. We sat shell-shocked between sirens and checked the news, not understanding the extent of the trauma that would soon be revealed. Upon learning of the massacre at Nova, our minds went immediately to our other roommate, Didi, who was at a festival in the south with his phone off, totally unreachable. Was he safe? Would he come back home? This was a quiet type of torment that neither Hallel or I voiced out loud until he made it home in the evening. We didn’t yet know that these early moments would be only the beginning of a deeper unraveling that we’re all still coping with to this day. 

The news didn’t stop. It came from every corner, every source, each story more horrific than the last. But we couldn’t stop reading. I felt the false illusion that if I could just grasp the chaos, then maybe I could wrestle it into submission. Instead, it devoured me. Still, I prayed that somehow we’d wake up from this nightmare— a nightmare that still hasn’t ended for so many of us. The whole country sent frantic messages, desperate to find out who was safe. We now know that many people didn’t get a response. Friends, beautiful people we used to laugh with, are now names on weathered posters, faces on murals, subversive graffiti, memories etched into dog tags, labels on bottles of Tubi60. Their lives used to be so intertwined with ours. How do we ever recover from the grief that comes from such extreme and violent loss? It’s been a year of searching for the answer. 

Last night I walked from shul through Rehavia and came upon a sukkah dedicated to the hostages. It hit me then how impossible it was that, a year later, we’re still waiting for them to come home. In that moment, something cracked within me, and I finally felt the small respite that comes with a desperate, deep cry. I met a woman there, Stephanie, who raised her children alongside Evytar David, one of the hostages still being held in Gaza. As she shared stories with me, I recognized the quiet exhaustion in her voice— the type that comes from holding both faith and grief at once. So many of us have learned this year how to live in that strange liminal space between hope and despair. 

Walking home along Ibn Ezra street, I passed beneath balconies alive with singing and laughter. It’s that perfect time in Jerusalem where the sun slows down and the air seems to hold its breath while waiting for the autumn rain. How desperately we need that cleansing downpour. Warm light from the street lamps spilled through the sukkahs, casting delicate shadows of palm branches and paper chains onto the pavement. For a moment, I felt it— the life that once was, the “before” of sukkot last year. It was almost as if I could reach out and touch this feeling, like I could step back into it, but it was just too out of reach. And in that space between what was and what is, I found myself floating between both. I collected rosemary and flowers from the gardens along Gan Sacher to bring fresh life into my home. 

I remember from last year how the sukkahs around Jerusalem stayed up long after the holiday had passed, lingering in the streets with nobody to take them down. They became symbols of a celebration that felt impossibly distant as we dealt with the devastating aftermath. I heard recently about a father who keeps his sukkah up because his son, also taken hostage, promised to take it down. His sukkah stays standing— a testament to hope, to the fragility of a promise not yet able to be fulfilled— a testament to a promise suspended in time. 

We’ve spent the last year marking birthdays, weddings, and chagim, trying not to diminish the beauty of these special moments. We still managed to dance and laugh, even attended festivals after some time, but the reality of it all is always humming in the background. It’s a delicate balance— holding space for both the past and the present while trying to remain hopeful for the future. Some friends came back from miluim and got married, some friends needed to escape. All of them carry stories that can be too much to bear. I quickly learned how to hold space for what they’ve been through without unearthing the wounds they’ve tried so hard to bury. 

In Jerusalem sukkahs decorated with tapestries, plants, art, and even a disco ball, we gathered to eat, laugh, sing, and speak about the significance of the holiday. The symbolism of Sukkot mirrors the chaos we’ve weathered over the last year— the fragility of the structures we sit in, the vulnerability of our existence, and the suddenness with which everything can change. We spoke about building a strong inner world that is capable of coping with whatever the external world throws our way. I realized then just how profoundly our tradition embraces this complementary tension, teaching us to hold both worlds within us as we navigate life’s complexities.

The grief from October 7th isn’t something I’ll ever move past. It’s carved into me, shaping me in ways I never anticipated, in ways I probably will never fully grasp. I think of the lives that were interrupted mid-sentence, mid-scream, all of the unfinished stories. I think of the favorite books of each hostage left on chairs at the National Library, gathering dust like the books in their bedrooms. There were even a few long-term international friends I lost, ones who would have justified it if I were among the dead. And there will always be this eerie understanding that it could have been any of us. 

Continuing onward, despite it all, takes a kind of strength that isn’t loud or heroic. It’s a quiet, persistent kind of endurance, breathing through the weight of it, moving forward step by step. All year, we’ve had to learn how to let grief and joy share space, how to make room for sadness without letting it drown us, how to laugh even when we felt broken. But in the cracks left by loss, a special type of love has emerged— more raw, more fierce than before. In our darkest moments, people have come together in astonishing ways. I’ll never forget all of the chessed tents that popped up, how every restaurant and coffee shop turned into a packing facility to supply boxes for soldiers, how Jewish friends all over the world did whatever they could to support us all here. We’ve learned to hold onto ourselves, to each other, even as we carry the weight of what’s gone, and as we work to build a future of what could be. I’ll keep hoping that by this time next year, sukkahs won’t be a haunting reminder of those who weren’t able to sit within them, with us, as we mourn those we’ve lost and wait for the rest to return home.