October 7th crushed us into diamonds

On October 13th, 2023, I boarded a flight from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport to Athens—the fourth flight I’d booked in a matter of days, the only one that hadn’t been canceled, to one of the few destinations to which planes departing Israel were still flying. The red alert sirens still echoed in my ears, and images from Nova, the peace-festival-turned-bloodbath, flashed through my mind like a haunting canvas splattered in red. I recalled stories from Kibbutz Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and so many more: tales of babies burned alive in their cribs, children torn from their mothers’ arms, families forever shattered by the mercilessness of Hamas.

Arriving in Greece, I was exhausted from nights without sleep, having run to and from bomb shelters for days on end. I found a hotel near the airport to crash in until I could get myself together and make my way back to my hometown of Boston. As soon as I sat down in the lobby and the quiet hit me—as soon as I had a moment of respite from the running, from the stories—the tears came, and they didn’t stop. I sobbed unabashedly for every tragedy that had crawled its way into my soul since that Black Saturday, until a gentle hand on my shoulder prompted me to turn around.

Are you okay? A man with sad eyes asked me the question in English, his words marked by a heavy Hebrew accent.

Ani – ani pashut kol kach atzuva (I am just so sad), I stuttered through my tears.

His own eyes welled up as he replied, Kulanu kol kach atzuvim, mami; aval kulanu b’yachad (We are all so sad, love; but we are together). And in that moment, this perfect stranger and I hugged as if we had known each other our entire lives. And no more words were needed. 

I understand that it may be incomprehensible to those who are not Jewish that my fellow Jews and I could grieve so deeply for a country that is, for many of us, physically oceans away; to grieve for individuals we have never met, never spoken to, never hugged. It may even seem absurd that I could be startled awake in the middle of the night by the haunting image of a redheaded baby boy named Kfir Bibas and his big brother Ariel. I feel as though I would give anything to hold those sweet boys, just as their mother, Shiri Bibas, clutched onto them for dear life as Hamas terrorists ripped them away. Perhaps it sounds strange to say that when those boys and their mother were abducted, a part of me was, too. A part of every Jew was, too.

And it may be inconceivable that I was there, every second, with the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin as they traversed the world, begging someone—anyone—to internalize their desperate pleas and transform them into action; because Hersh, though I have never met him, was my friend, my brother, and his loss felt like that of a loved one. Rachel Goldberg’s words rang like a siren in my mind, and her eulogy for her only son, who was murdered after 11 months in the clutches of Hamas—finally, my sweet sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally you are free!—broke me in the deepest way possible.

And I was at the Nova festival, too. We were all there, every Jew, dancing in community with our Jewish brothers and sisters, the warm desert air dancing with us on our skin. And I am every woman who was raped and murdered on that day, and I am every individual who tried desperately—to no avail—to protect her. And I was at Kibbutz Be’eri, at Kfar Aza, at Kissufim, clenching the door of my safe room for dear life as Hamas terrorists entered my home.

Thoughts of 10/7 may have, for many citizens of the world, conjured up parallel images of 9/11 or other attacks on innocents that evoke strong emotions. Every American remembers where they were on 9/11, the adage goes. And it’s true; that attack is embedded into the psyche of every US citizen. 10/7 is Israel’s 9/11, but no individual lost on that day was a stranger for the Jewish people. Each loss represents an acute fracturing of the Jewish family. We have been in a year-long mourning period, and this grief will endure indefinitely.

And as if that weren’t enough, let me emphasize that we, the Jewish community, were massacred twice on and in the wake of October 7th: first by Hamas, and then by so many facets of the world in which we live. Throughout this year of grief, we have been met with voices, from UN officials to college professors to our own friends, insisting that we have no right to mourn, even claiming that our family deserved to die. As we desperately tried to pick up the shattered pieces of our souls, we were subject to calls reverberating through cities and campuses to “globalize the intifada,” screaming that “resistance” (murder) is “justified,” all while draped in keffiyehs and waving Palestinian (and sometimes Hamas) flags. We saw media outlets and professors mourn the deaths of terrorists while excusing the murder of civilians. The world has left us feeling so deeply lonely.

Here’s the thing, though: There is a reason why the Jewish people have endured throughout history, against all odds; a reason I have only truly come to understand in the wake of the Hamas massacre. Our secret weapon is not “being chosen”; it is having chosen ourselves. It is a unique and simple responsibility that we have taken upon our shoulders, interwoven with our identity. It is the understanding that our lives are not merely individual, distinct blips in time, but singular threads in the tapestry of the Jewish story. I may be Lilia, but the story of Lilia didn’t begin in 1993 with an expiration date of when I will leave this earth. My narrative began over 3,000 years ago. I, Lilia, would not be possible without the story of my predecessors—those exiled from Judea, expelled from Spain and Portugal, those who endured pogroms, antisemitism, and the worst atrocities known to man. And just as I was there on October 7th, I was also there during every exile, during Kristallnacht, during the pogroms and the Holocaust and the Farhud. I was there—we were all there—because the thread of a singular Jewish life is inextricably entangled with every one of those stories. Against all odds, under the shadow of the world’s oldest and most persistent hatred that has tried, time and again, to eradicate us, every Jew is here. That is an absolute miracle.

10/7 was another chapter in our story. It shattered us, just as other stories have before. But from the broken pieces that remain, we will rebuild, together, just as we have, and just as we will continue to do. I am reminded of the Japanese art of kintsugi, the art of piecing brokenness together to create something even more beautiful in the end. Because our anthem (HaTikvah) is one of hope. Because our motto (Am Yisrael Chai) is one of life. 

The resilience of the Jewish community was recently felt deeply at the Israeli American Council Summit in Washington. We heard from Nova survivors and former Hamas hostages, from world leaders and activists. We cried, united in our grief. We would burst into song, a song which each one of us knew by heart: Am Yisrael Chai. This deep attunement to every wave in our emotional journey, and riding that wave with grace and resilience, is how I would define “Jewishness.”

And maybe this is why we have been history’s pariahs: because the world, as much as it tries, is incapable of destroying us. It is easy to hate a people that you cannot defeat; not because we are stronger than any other people, but because our past is inseparable from our present, because we defy the confines of the timelines of our individual lives, because our entire story centers around hope, around life, against all odds.

October 7th crushed us. But just as carbon is crushed into diamonds, so, too, have we emerged glimmering and defiantly brilliant. And we will continue to shine, no matter what we encounter in the next chapters of the ever-enduring Jewish story.

Am Yisrael Chai.