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Sarah Tuttle-Singer
A Mermaid in Jerusalem

Standing on a precipice, a year ago today

Photo generated by the author using Ai

A year ago today, I stood on the edge of a precipice without even knowing it.

It was October 6, 2023, and I had dinner and brushed my teeth and went to bed and I was still one person, taking my faith in humanity for granted.

Even in the face of the world’s challenges, I held onto a fervent belief that we are fundamentally good, that somewhere deep inside, everyone wants peace.

That’s how I felt a year ago.

Then the war began. Sirens. News updates. Shiraz murdered. Vivian burned.

October 7 broke the world I knew. We weren’t just at war—we were witnessing atrocities I couldn’t have imagined, the kind you think belong to a different time, a different people, a different nightmare. Mass slaughter. Women and men violated. Children stolen from their homes. Families wiped out as if they never existed. All at once, my faith shattered. How could this be humanity? How could this level of cruelty and suffering exist, not just far away but here, in a place where I had built my life, raised my children, loved?

The days after that were a blur.

There was a strange, visceral sense of betrayal. I used to think we were all connected, that even across divides of religion, nationality, and politics, there was some thread of shared humanity holding us together. But that thread snapped. I could feel it unraveling in the streets, in the terror on people’s faces, in the emptiness that followed.

Suddenly, the things I had once believed—about people’s capacity for kindness, for understanding, for empathy—seemed naive —
Even dangerous.

And yet, as the war ground on, as we faced each new horror, something began to shift again. The same humanity I had lost faith in began to re-emerge in unexpected places. It wasn’t in grand gestures or peace talks—it was in the small moments of people helping one another. The neighbor who shared their food. The friend who took in another family, strangers, because they had nowhere else to go. The prayers whispered at dawn and dusk, for all those lost, for all those still alive.

I had changed. I could never go back to the woman I was on October 6, standing on that precipice. But slowly, I realized that maybe humanity hadn’t changed either—not really. Perhaps I had just seen it in its most terrible, raw form. Perhaps faith in humanity isn’t about believing in a perfect world, but about seeing the dark and still choosing to find the light.

A year later, I know I can’t take faith for granted anymore. But I also know it still exists, just in a more fragile, precious form—one that needs to be nurtured, held close, and shared. I know now that humanity is capable of both the worst atrocities and the smallest acts of grace, and it’s in the balance between the two that we live.

October 6, 2023 feels like a lifetime ago. But today, I am stronger for the brokenness. I’ve learned that faith isn’t static—it’s something we rebuild every day, piece by piece, person by person. Even in a world on fire.

About the Author
Sarah Tuttle-Singer is the author of Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered and the New Media Editor at Times of Israel. She was raised in Venice Beach, California on Yiddish lullabies and Civil Rights anthems, and she now lives in Jerusalem with her 3 kids where she climbs roofs, explores cisterns, opens secret doors, talks to strangers, and writes stories about people — especially taxi drivers. Sarah also speaks before audiences left, right, and center through the Jewish Speakers Bureau, asking them to wrestle with important questions while celebrating their willingness to do so. She loves whisky and tacos and chocolate chip cookies and old maps and foreign coins and discovering new ideas from different perspectives. Sarah is a work in progress.