Remains of the day – No more

A few days ago the Jewish people began the period known to us as the three weeks. On the same day as we were fasting for a tragedy from long ago, we also marked 1,000 days since October 7th, 2023. To me, 10/7/23 feels more like a thousand years ago, yet somehow also yesterday. A few years ago, I mean months or was it weeks, the whole country experienced  one more day of war on a random Monday. By Tuesday it was over. By Shabbat, when the rabbi in shul mentioned it, I was shocked to realize that it had, in fact, been just the beginning of that week. 

If someone asks about the October 7th war, it feels like it happened so so long ago. And yet, every day, it is still happening. We want it to be over, we want to say “It is done. It is over.” But almost daily we see pictures of smiling boys in army green ages 20, 21, now frozen that age forever. Our breath catches, we feel heartbroken and also uncomfortably relieved if it is not our particular boys or girls in green. We are sad for those who were closer, but we are far enough that we can, after a minute or a few, go on with our day.

The sirens have (mostly) stopped. Those taken, even the ones who were brought home only to be placed in the ground, have all finally been returned to our land. It should feel like it’s over, done. Nigmar. But it continues, like a horrible background noise that you learn to live with for months, or years, or a lifetime. Which war are we on? Which new war within a war that has been happening forever? Or is this just another one on the long list since 1948, when we decided No More, we are back in our land and we will not be killed just for being alive.

And yet. And yet. Bondi Beach. London. New York. Detroit. The list goes on. They’re only angry at ‘zionists’ they say- 100 percent the new antisemitism. It always starts with the Jews, world. When will you wake up? When will you see it? First they come for the Jews, wrote Martin Neimoller so poignantly, and others don’t speak up. Not to be a doom prophet, and not to make the wedding joke, but you’re next. Wake up world. Wake up and smell the propaganda, the hate, the gaslighting and brainwashing. It doesn’t stop here. But we, we are done. It will stop at our borders. We will be vigilant. We will fill all of the terror tunnels, we will build stronger borders, and we will go into any area preparing to murder us and stay wherever we must in order to keep our people safe. If you can’t see our good, our light, we don’t care anymore. You can live in the mess you’ve made.

Yes, clearly, we are still sending rescue teams to disasters, like Venezuela’s tragedy, to save and care for those who were hurt- we’re good at that, because WE care about life, and because we’ve had to learn. Then we send the experts in recovering bodies because, l’tzareinu, we have had to learn to be good at that also. Then we will send those who can help with mental and physical recovery, because there is no nation like ours that knows resilience better. We are a people who know that even if there’s a tragedy, a close friend murdered with her daughters on their way to a family vacation, a neighbor who fights for those who can’t who was killed on his way to do grocery shopping, a girl in a yellow sweater whose life was taken as she waited at a bus stop, three boys kidnapped on their way home while the whole country waited for two and a half anxious weeks to hear that they finally got home safely- but they didn’t.

Maybe those horrors prepared us as a country for October 7th, although how could they? How could we be prepared for an infiltration of thousands of monsters who murdered, raped and pillaged, who tried their damned best to perpetrate a genocide and thankfully (?!) only raped, tortured, and killed 1,200 innocent men, women and children? How could we possibly understand that two and a half weeks of waiting for three boys was NOTHING compared to a million years of waiting and hoping and praying? We rejoiced with every one returned alive, despite their awful state, and had our hearts broken again and again into pieces with each one of the 251 we got back only to put them to their final rest. Hearing the news, as it trickled and then flooded out about all that had been really perpetrated on that dark day, how could we stand getting up again after each terrible blow?

On top of all of that, pouring acid on our wounds, we had to handle the world’s reaction. Forget October 7th (no, we never will), what about October 8th? How did those evil, unspeakable creatures manage to infiltrate the minds of people in such an insidious way that they could say we were the ones in the wrong? We hadn’t even gone in to bring our people home yet and already there were protests- how could that have happened? In what upside-down Hell have we woken up, to have Never Again have happen again, on our own land, and for somehow it to be turned around? Not only was it done to us, but we were and are blamed for it, and for continuing to protect ourselves. How? What? None of it makes any kind of sense, and yet. We continue. We help each other, take in communities (or what’s left of them) and care for them, sit with them as they wait and wait and wait to be able to go home, to rebuild their homes and their lives. We take in those who can no longer be in places that are still being targeted daily, find places for them to live some kind of life, bring them food, do their laundry, and celebrate when they give birth in our community in their temporary home.

How do we do this? We sing. Over the past 2,000 years in exile, we sang. We sang about coming home to our land, about the end of the endless wars and Jewish bloodshed. We sang about our Hope, which finally was realized. We thought, we hoped, that this was it, but the wars and the Jewish bloodshed didn’t end. And yet, and yet. The hope sustained us, helped us get up every time we were knocked down, helped us go on every day like “normal,” when we knew it was anything but.

The song Vehi Sheamda tells a thousands of years old story about how in every generation they – the world, those who believe the ridiculous lies, try to destroy the soul of the Jewish people, but they don’t succeed. We carry the light of a star in our hearts, and it guides us, Hashem helps us out of even the deepest darkness that the world can throw at us. We just need to reach for the light, to hold on until dawn. Recently, we had a winning entry to Eurovision for the third year in a row. What struck me was that, unlike the past two years, where we had a song by Eden Golan that told the story of October 7th (the real one- October Rain, before the world made her change it) and the year after, another by Yuval, who had to hide beneath the bodies of her friends to survive that dark day; astonishingly, she was the one who told us that a New Day would rise. This year, our (Israel’s) entry was a simple song about a girl, remarkable this year for its ordinariness. That we could go back to singing that which any other country might, was a miracle in itself. Yaakov Shweky reminds us that We are a Miracle, and what brought us through the darkness of the past thousand days was mostly a song about how to get out of depression (Latzet Medikaon).

These three weeks are, historically, the saddest of the year. They carry the results of our internal strife. I was naive enough to believe, to hope, that this past thousand thousand days (years) would bring us closer as a people for more than just the time of waiting. Tragically, it didn’t. We are still on opposite sides, even as we continue to fight bombs, missiles, terrorists, and on top of that, world opinion. So where are we? What can we do? Each one of us can keep remembering that time where we stood together, hoping, praying, waiting. We can remember that when we are divided, we fall, and only together we succeed.

The posters and banners and road signs that told us “Biyachad Ninatzeach:-Together we will triumph” are gone. There are no more tissue containers will blue and white flags and blue stars, with reminders that we are one people in one tiny country. We are falling apart again: Two Jews, many opinions. Like the flowers in my picture, from before I knew where the Nova festival was, we can bloom again. But we need to open our eyes. I can see the remains of that day. More than the scars both visible and unseen in most of our people, there are still so many stickers on cars, light poles, sign posts. There are still posters of Hadar Goldin, who we got back after more than a decade, lining our main highway. The remains of yellow ribbons fluttering from bridges. Yellow ribbon stickers and Bring Them Home on cars and store windows. Bumper stickers on cars and lampposts reminding us of those we lost in the fight against evil. And even if we were to remove them all today, even when Nir Oz, and Be’eri, and all of the South and North get rebuilt, the residue will stick, will be there. We will carry the scars on our bodies and souls. The day remains imprinted on our shattered but healing hearts. We remember, we know. Because if we fail to remember our history lessons, they repeat. And now, repeat after me: Never Again. And if we remember this, we will finally dance again.