How October 7th Changed Our World Forever
It is so hard to fathom that three years have past since we experienced the horrible October 7th tragedy.
With a reported 1.5 million Israels who are currently impacted psychologically, emotionally and physically by this tragedy, the shocks, aftershocks and trauma of October 7th will continue to have an indelible impact on our community for generations.
As the most horrendous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the horrifying events of October 7th are seared in our memories and has given birth to a renewed movement of antisemitism and Jew-hatred.
It is inconceivable to think that the slaughter of 1300 Jews in southern Israel would have ignited such a firestorm of violent global hatred against Jews as never before imaginable.
What was it about the October 7th attack that produced this level of antisemitic hatred?
If anything, I would have thought that a tragedy of such magnitude would have create a sense of empathy and shock in a civilized society. But the very opposite occurred. Acts of violent antisemitism exploded and has spiraled completely out of control since that time.
Retrospect
Throughout our history, Jew-hatred and antisemitism was metastasizing just below the surface of our society. But immediately after October 7 it exploded like a tsunami.
It represented a zeitgeist which blamed Israel and those that supported Israel with a variety accusations. They viewed Israel as an oppressor guilty of genocide and indiscriminate killing, as well as a country with no moral or ethical standard.
This misconception has been and continues to be completely debunked and fabricated as a false narrative which has proven to be a big lie in support of Jew hatred and discrimination.
The Morning of October 7th
On the morning of October 7th, 2023, time stopped. And when it started again, we were not the same community we had been the day before.
For many of us, since it was shemini azeret, the news arrived in fragments. Although many of us in the States were in shul that morning, news began to spread that Israel was attached in the South by Hamas and that hundreds of Israelis were kidnapped and taken hostage to Gaza.
It wasn’t until after Yom Tov that evening did we begin to hear about the enormity of the attack, with details that were beyond belief.
It was an incomprehensible tragedy which changed the course of Jewish history and for humanity.
The Post October 7th Impact – Three Years Later
The first change we experienced resulting from the October 7th tragedy was immediate and visceral.
It created a sense of vulnerability our community had allowed ourselves to forget. Many in our community grew up believing that “Never Again” was a settled promise. That a pogrom on that scale, broadcast in real time, could happen to Jews again felt like a rupture in history itself. Our parents and grandparents understood it instantly. For our children, it was their first encounter with that kind of fear.
The second change was in how we as acheinu bnai yisrael relate to each other. The arguments that had divided us for years regarding politics in Israel, over religious differences, over who was “too left” or “too right” suddenly felt insignificant, minuet and small.
In Israel, at shiva houses, at rallies, at airport drop-offs for sons and daughters returning to their units, we saw each other not as factions, but as a large mispacha. We learned each other’s phone numbers. We checked in. We showed up.
We also changed in how we demonstrated our Judaism publicly.
After October 7th, wearing a kippah on the street, putting up a mezuzah in a college or university dorm room. Posting it in support of Israel stopped being private choices and became acts of identity and courage. Antisemitism that many of us had only read about became something we had to carefully explain to our children when they came home from school. It made some of us quieter. It made many more of us louder, and prouder, yet more visible and even more vulnerable.
Perhaps the most profound and deepest change is internal. Before, many of us lived with the quiet hope that we could be fully accepted if we were just successful enough, quiet enough, accommodating enough. After October 7th, that illusion disintegrated. What replaced it is something more honest and more durable regarding an understanding that our safety, our identity, and our future depend on each other as a community and as a global family.
One would think that following October 7th, our families would be more hesitant to make aliyah to Israel. Yet, we are now witnessing an amazing yearning to make aliyah among families and our young adults.
There are those who claim that renewed interest in making aliyah is a phenomenon resulting from increased global Jew-hatred and antisemitism and there are others who feel that making aliyah to Israel is a natural evolution of our continued destiny and journey as a Jewish people.
In reality, we are far more anxious than we ever were before and yet we are also more connected, more serious about Jewish education, more committed to Israel and more willing to stand up for one another.
October 7th broke something in our world. In our community, it also awakened a sense of responsibility for each other that we will carry forward. We will never be who we were before. And perhaps we are not meant to be.
It affected our community in ways that are still unfolding. Not just on the big days when we gather for rallies or memorials, but in the small, everyday moments.
The sense of safety disappeared.
For decades in America, we could live as Jews in ways that felt completely secure. We could walk to shul on Shabbat, send our children on a school bus to a Jewish day school or yeshiva, wear a Star of David necklace, put an Israel flag or chanukia in our windows, and never think twice. After October 7th, and the wave of antisemitism that followed on campuses and in the streets, that innocence ended abruptly.
Parents started having conversations with children they never thought they’d need to have. Shuls hired more armed security personnel , but we also started looking over our shoulders. That low-level anxiety and question of “is it safe to be visibly Jewish here?” is something our generation had never carried about before.
In an odd way, we became one community again.
As indicated, prior to October 7th, we were deeply divided to the extent that we it felt like we couldn’t be in the same room.
On October 8th, that all collapsed. Religious and secular, left and right, Ashkenazi and Sephardi. We were just at each other’s houses. You saw it in every community. The fundraising that crossed every shul line or boundary, the Tehillim lists that included every name, the young people who put on tefillin for the very first time in years because they wanted to do something.
We remembered that we are mishpacha with achdut, before we are anything else.
Jewish identity became active, not passive.
Before, for many, being Jewish was a background fact. After, it became a decision you make every morning.
Enrollment in Jewish schools and after-school programs increased. More people coming to minyan, more people learning torah, more people wearing kippot or laying tefillin like not just in shul, but outside. When being Jewish costs something very special and is cherished.
We also see a generational shift. Teenagers and college students who had been distant suddenly became the most outspoken. They organized, they argued with professors, they stood up at student government. October 7th forced them to answer the question: “What does it mean to be a Jew?” And many answered with honor and pride.
Our connection to Eretz Yisrael became personal and even more painful.
It stopped being about politics and started being about people and family.
Since October 7th when the rest of the world turn away or remained silent, it hurt deeply. It made us realize that while we have many friends and neighbors, ultimately, we only have each other.
Prior to October 7th, we thought we were a collection of individuals who happened to be Jewish. After October 7th, we remembered we are a community that is responsible for one another.
It made us more sensitive, vulnerable, kinder, more understanding and more resilient at the same time.
At the end of the day, we all appreciated each other in ways never before imaginable. As a result, we all now stand ready and able to fulfill the great mitzvah of kol yisrael avevim zheh ba.
