From the Seventh to the Ninth of October
It’s been a long journey from שבעה באוקטובר לתשעה באוקטובר — from the shivah (the seventh) of October, 2023 to the tisha (the ninth) of October, 2025 — but we are here, finally here. Ribbono shel olam, we’re finally here!
The combination of ecstatic joy, disbelief, relief, worry, excitement, and urgency is all-consuming. Collectively and individually, every single one of us has come up for a gulp of air and is waiting to exhale, to release, to scream, to break free, to finally embark on the long journey of “the day after.”
This two-year nightmare is coming to an end: the hostages will be released after hundreds of days of brutal Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad captivity that began on that bloody holiday morning and return to their families who have waged the most courageous and righteous fight in Israeli history despite enormous pressure and attacks from those in this Israeli government and their supporters who pushed a delusional fantasy of “total victory” over the mitzvah of פדיון שבויים (pidyon shvuiim, redeeming the captives); the 2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza caught between the death cult of their cursed leadership that was willing to sacrifice every single one of them in the largest and longest suicide operation in Palestinian history and the relentless Israeli airstrikes, “evacuation orders”, and draconian aid blockade that have laid total waste to large parts of Gaza and its infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, will finally get the respite they so desperately need and begin imagining a new, post-destruction, post-Hamas future; and yes, over a thousand Palestinian security prisoners in Israel, some with blood on their hands, guilty of murdering Israeli Jewish civilians, will go free and reunite with their families in the West Bank and Gaza — scenes most Palestinians will enthusiastically celebrate and most Israelis will deeply resent.
We are here, finally here, but the journey from the horrors of the seventh of October to the potential and hope of the ninth of October won’t be easy. There is no easy fix — no “total victory,” no “liberation.”
Hamas, like every other Palestinian movement that has used brutal guerrilla violence against Israeli Jewish civilians, failed. Netanyahu’s government, like every other Israeli government that has tried brute force and destruction over negotiated solutions, failed. Despite their rhetoric for months, both had to agree to a deal with elements that neither ever wanted to agree to.
The maximalists were and have always been wrong. Palestinians were never going to and will never “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea” and achieve independence by rampaging through Israeli Jewish neighborhoods and a music festival, indiscriminately murdering, looting, assaulting and kidnapping civilians. And Israelis were never going to and will never end this conflict and Palestinian nationalist aspirations by bringing down building after building, airstrike after airstrike, leaving thousands buried under the rubble.
Each side can and will claim their victories but the reality is the same as ever — just messier, with more pain, trauma, loss and destruction to clean up.
No one truly knows how the coming months will unfold, but neither people is going anywhere. Even the most violent and painful two years in our shared history in this land couldn’t change that.
The journey from the seventh to the ninth has been and will be long, excruciating and exhausting but we’ve begun, we’re here, it’s now.
We have finally arrived at the turning point we’ve all been waiting for.
A turning point charged with uncertainty, worry and disbelief but one that nonetheless finally allows us to exhale and embrace this joy and relief for a moment… and then begin to rise to the urgency and potential of this moment, moving toward a future that we all deserve in this land.
