Part I: The Meeting of the October 6 and October 8 Jews

(What follows is the first of a five-part series – a reflection upon the three year anniversary of 10/7.)

A recent post here in ToI by a woman named Irina Zavina captures the  phenomenon of the October 8 Jew. Of late, I am meeting – self-declared – October 8 Jews frequently. Each time, I am taken with their depth of knowledge. Subjects that took me over a decade to master, they learned in three years. Rhetoric that confounded me, they cut through as with a sharpened knife. Rarely do they come across as fanatical. Instead, they evidence the characteristics that Joshua, Moses’ successor, affirms at the beginning of the Book of Joshua: strength and courage.

Of equal merit for attention is the October 6 Jew. October 6 Jews – and each one’s story is unique – did not foresee the particulars of the Hamas attack on Shabbat-Shemini Atzeret-Simchat Torah 2023, but their awareness of the depth of Jew-hatred, the capabilities of our most dangerous enemies, the feebleness of many of our declared allies and friends rendered them alert; when 10/7 arrived, they were pained, but they were prepared.

The place that the 10/6 and the 10/8 Jews meet is not by way of our communal infrastructure. In fact, one of the shared realizations of 10/6 and 10/8 Jews is how flabby and inflated our communal infrastructure is. For the most part very well-resourced, the return on our dollar is feeble. For this reason, 10/6 and 10/8 Jews either operate as independent activists or seek to develop new infrastructures for our self-defense in the social media and public space.