October 7: The Fear That Crossed The Ocean

Are you safe?

It is such a simple question. Three words I had asked people in other contexts, after storms, accidents, or emergencies. But after October 7, 2023, those words changed.

I was thousands of kilometres away from Israel, sitting safely in Toronto, while people I cared about were living through something I could barely comprehend. I wanted to check on them constantly. Are you safe? Are your children safe? Have you heard from everyone?

They were the ones living through sirens, loss, uncertainty, and fear. I did not want them to have to reassure me. So sometimes I checked in. Sometimes I waited. And sometimes I simply worried.

In the hours, days, weeks, and months after October 7, I saw images and heard stories that changed the way I understood the world.

Young people who had been dancing at a music festival were suddenly running for their lives as gunmen opened fire. Some hid anywhere they could, including dumpsters and Port-a-Potties, trying desperately not to be found.

I saw the terrified faces of people being dragged away from the people they loved. I saw families destroyed. I saw people forced into vehicles and taken into Gaza, where some would remain for months, and some for years. I heard accounts of horrific sexual violence.

What I remember most are the faces. Once you have seen that kind of fear, really seen it, it becomes harder to pretend you do not know what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

I do not wish I had looked away. I wish there had been nothing to see. There is a difference. Burying my head in the sand would not have changed any of it.

And then something happened that I had not expected.

The hatred came here.

Into my city. Onto my streets. Onto my social media feeds. Into conversations with people I knew.

At first, I think part of me expected compassion. Not agreement about every political question. Not identical beliefs about Israel, Gaza, war, history, or what should happen next. Just compassion. Something as basic as: This was horrific. I am sorry. Are you okay?

None of that requires indifference to the suffering of others. Compassion is not a finite resource. Caring about those in Gaza should never require minimizing October 7, dismissing Jewish grief, or looking away from antisemitism.

Instead, while many of us were still trying to process what had happened, I watched October 7 be rationalized, contextualized, and “both-sided.” I watched people repeat slogans, accusations, and things they had seen online with startling certainty, as though this were a contest that required them to choose a side and defend it.

People were choosing sides while some of us were still trying to comprehend how something so horrific could have happened.

They included people I knew, people I had trusted, and someone I had loved.

I remember trying to tell someone I cared deeply about that I was frightened. I was not asking for a political debate. I was not trying to convince them of anything. I needed compassion from someone I thought knew me. And I did not get it.

Later, I began to understand why. I realized this person had absorbed a stereotype of Jews as wealthy, successful, privileged doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. That stereotype did not reflect me or many of the Jewish people they knew through me. My own lived experience had disappeared beneath an idea of what Jews were supposed to be.

But there was another assumption underneath it: that wealth or professional success somehow made Jews secure. Financial security is not the same as safety. History has made that painfully clear.

It made me realize how differently Jewish history is understood when your own family is part of that history, and when you grow up knowing what has happened to those who came before you.

If someone cannot even sit beside me while I say, “I am scared,” then they are not going to be the person who hides me if hatred ever comes to my door.

That thought was not theoretical to me. I grew up knowing that, throughout Jewish history, survival has sometimes depended on who opened the door and who closed it.

I lost work. I lost friends. I lost a relationship. And there were moments when I wondered whether I was losing perspective too.

Was I allowing social media to consume me? Was I seeing danger everywhere because I had become afraid?

I know fear can distort perception. I know spending hours immersed in stories of violence, hatred, and antisemitism can change the way you see the world. I have questioned myself about that more times than I can count.

But questioning my fear does not require me to pretend that the things causing it are not real.

Another claim would appear on my screen. Another slogan. Another distortion repeated as fact. I would open another article, check another source, compare another number, and follow another citation. Then I would look up from my phone and realize hours had passed.

I kept trying to replace slogans with history and buzzwords with facts. Sometimes I would finally put the phone down completely depleted, knowing that I had probably changed very few minds.

Why am I defending the basic humanity of my people to strangers on the internet? Why does this require an argument?

Beneath the anger, the research, and the constant urge to correct one more false claim, there has been something quieter.

Loneliness.

There are people whose silence I noticed. People I thought would say something. People who had spoken loudly about injustice before, who seemed to have endless language for hatred, oppression, prejudice, and fear, and then suddenly had very little to say.

I waited. Sometimes I checked. Nothing.

Why aren’t you angry too? Why doesn’t this scare you? Why do I have to explain why it scares me?

There are moments when I have wondered whether I sound paranoid. Overly sensitive. Dramatic.

But I cannot separate those fears from the history I grew up knowing. I know what can happen when Jews are described as uniquely evil, when hatred toward us becomes socially acceptable, and when individual Jews stop being seen as individual human beings and become symbols of everything someone believes is wrong with the world.

I wish I could say those fears stayed on my phone. They did not.

Last week, I was going through my jewelry and found a beautiful Star of David necklace I love. I picked it up and immediately wanted to wear it.

And then I hesitated.

Not because I had stopped loving it. Not because I wanted to hide being Jewish. I hesitated because putting on a piece of jewelry I love now raises questions it never used to.

Where am I going? Who will see it?

Is this safe?

That question again. Only now I am asking it in Toronto.

I hate that something as simple as putting on a necklace now requires that calculation. I hate that hatred from outside has been allowed to occupy this much space inside my life. I hate that any of it has started to feel normal.

Three years ago, I thought the trauma of October 7 would be what happened that day.

I did not understand how much of the trauma would come from everything that followed.

And “Are you safe?” is no longer a question I think only Jews should be asking. It is a question I think everyone should be asking themselves.

When hatred becomes acceptable because people believe it is aimed at the right target, what happens when the target changes? When dehumanization becomes normal, when disagreement becomes permission to hate, and when people learn to look away because someone else is being targeted, who exactly is safe?

The question is not only what happens to Jews. It is what happens when those who spread hatred are emboldened by those who refuse to challenge it.

I am still grieving. I am still angry. I am still frightened for my people, and by what I see being normalized around us.

I cannot go back to being the person I was on October 6, 2023.

But something else happened too. My love for my people grew. My connection to Judaism grew. My love for Israel grew. So did my yearning for peace.

October 7 changed me, but it does not get to decide the limits of the life I have left to live.

I can still love, write, laugh, travel, and make art. I can build community. I can practice my Judaism. I can let people into my life when I choose to. I can experience joy without betraying my grief.

Grief does not require me to stop living. Fear does not get to make my world smaller forever. Hatred does not get to decide who I become.

Three years later, the impact of October 7 has not faded. I don’t think it ever fully will.

I am still here.

My people are still here.

Israel is still here.