Moving forward: Reflections from an American Jew

Before 10/7, I’d been writing more softly—songs and prose. Quiet hopes. Phrases meant to express something about love, about longing, about the mystery of being alive. About beauty itself.

But in the aftermath, what I wrote took on a different kind of beauty—less soft, less placative. Far darker. Congealed blood. A howl of anger. A raw cry of grief.

And yet even that has passed. It must.

There is no use anymore in carrying anger. Or shock. Or surprise. Or despair.
What matters now is knowing.

Knowing that Am Yisrael—the Jewish Nation, a mere 0.02% of the world’s population (more, if we count the forgotten and absorbed)—will survive. And thrive.

Knowing also what it means to be “Chosen.”

It’s a phrase often misunderstood—sometimes by Jews themselves. Being chosen never meant being favored. It meant being tasked. It meant being called to witness and speak of a great and terrifying mystery: that beyond rock and water, salt and air, stars and gravity and time, there is a Force (some call it God) that sustains the world moment by moment. Who recreates it constantly. Who refuses to let it be static.

We are the people who insist—often to an uninterested, unhearing world—that there is meaning. That there is law. That there is good. And that good matters.

This is no privilege. As history reminds us—this role costs dearly. Few people love a witness. Fewer still love a moral reminder. Especially one that refuses to disappear.
Especially now.

Perhaps that’s why modern Israel, home to over half of world Jewry, is so reviled. Not because of this or that policy. Not this or that prime minister. But because Israel exists—and insists on existing. Proudly. Powerfully. Jewishly.

Some claim their hatred is political. That it’s just about “the occupation.” Just about the “disproportionate response.” Just about “Netanyahu.” But how to explain the many wars waged against Israel? The missile barrages? The suicide bombings that came decades before today’s headlines? How to explain the pro-Hamas marches in the streets, some within hours of October 7? How to explain professors laughing, celebrating rape and beheadings? Synagogues firebombed? Jews spat on? Shot at point-blank range. Bullied in their own neighborhoods? Burned to death.

Just as no one calls for the destruction of France or Egypt or South Africa, no one may call for the destruction of Israel. That idea—however cleverly dressed—is an ancient one. And it always ends in blood. This time, the world has seen Israel denying the opportunity for more Jewish blood to be spilled. From what I can tell, many are not happy with Jews defending themselves.

But I do not write this only in defense or mourning.

I write it in hope. In search of something to steady us again.

Because what happened on October 7 wasn’t only an atrocity. It was a rupture in the moral order. Something broke—in the world, but not in us. We are not unmoored. We are not broken.

Our ancestors handed us something strange, even miraculous: a structure for memory. A language for grief. A rhythm for what comes after the cry.

That structure is why we know how to mark mourning. Why we know how to bless food. Why we know how to sing even in exile. It’s why we fast on a random Sunday in August to remember a siege 2,000 years ago. And why we can hold, with unbearable clarity, what happened on October 7—not as a news cycle, but as part of something much deeper. Something ancient. Something still unfolding.

Tisha B’Av commemorates the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. But over time, more and more tragedies became associated with it. Expulsions. Crusades. Pogroms. Shoah. It became a container. A calendar entry for sorrow. But not for the sake of wallowing—for the sake of transformation.

The question we ask, on that day and always, is: what do we do with memory?

Because memory—unexamined—is just noise. But memory turned over, worked through, given shape, becomes direction. That becomes the revelation of our collective soul.

The Talmud asks: why was the Second Temple destroyed?
And it answers: because of sinat chinam—baseless hatred.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook once wrote:
“If we were destroyed, and the world with us, due to baseless hatred,
then we shall rebuild ourselves, and the world with us, with baseless love.”

That’s the project now.

Not forgetting. Not softening. Not “moving on.”
But moving forward—with clear eyes, open hearts, and an uncompromising love for our people, our homeland, and the mystery that binds us to both.

May all of the kidnapped victims — the living and the dead — be sent speedily home to their families. 

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Dedicated to:
the brave young men and women of the IDF whose courage, ingenuity, and skill protects the State of Israel and the Jewish people.