What does October 7 demand of those of us who are still here?

As we mark another year of the horrors of October 7, I feel like we are entering a different stage. For so long, we were still deep inside that day, grieving, fighting, waiting for hostages to come home, helping survivors, trying to explain to the world what had happened while still trying to understand it ourselves. Now, perhaps for the first time, there is enough distance to ask a different question: who are we becoming because of what happened?

I don’t mean finding a “purpose” in something horrific or trying to turn tragedy into something positive. I mean taking responsibility for what comes after, for what we change, for what we choose to carry forward and for what we want to pass on to our children.

Personally, October 7 sparked a major identity journey for me. I moved from Israel to Australia shortly afterwards, not because of October 7. I had grown up partly in Australia, and my husband and I wanted our three children to spend a few years outside Israel, experiencing another culture and a wider world. I deliberately chose a non-Jewish school because that openness mattered to me. I wanted my children to feel comfortable among people from different cultures and backgrounds.

The irony is that I thought leaving Israel would teach my children more about other people’s identities. I didn’t expect it to make all of us think so much harder about our own.

In Israel, I never really had to think about being Israeli. Hebrew surrounded us, Jewish holidays were in the streets, the supermarkets and the school calendar, and so much of Jewish and Israeli identity was simply there. Outside Israel, suddenly it wasn’t automatic and after October 7 another layer entered our lives. My children began absorbing something much more subtle: the awareness that being Israeli can sometimes require calculation.

They know that in some taxis we switch from Hebrew to English. I never sat them down and made this a rule, somehow they understood it. A few months ago, I was in a shopping centre with my son, speaking Hebrew loudly as I often do, when he suddenly stopped me and said, “Mom, you’re screaming in Hebrew.” It was such a small comment, but it hit me hard. He had absorbed something I had never consciously taught him, that sometimes Hebrew, the language that had always felt completely natural to us, should be made quieter.

I remember thinking: this cannot be the Jewish identity I pass on to my children. Of course I want them to understand what happened on October 7, to understand antisemitism, to know our history and the sacrifices people have made so they can live freely as Jews and Israelis. I do not want their identity, however, to be built primarily around what they need to fear, defend or hide. I want them to know what they need to protect themselves from, but I also want to give them something to move toward.

Through Citizen Café, the Hebrew and Israeli culture community I founded, I have watched this same question play out among Jews around the world. People who had barely thought about their Jewish identity for years suddenly began searching for connection, for community, for Israel, for Hebrew, for some way to understand where they belonged. Something clearly awakened after October 7, and I have come to believe something very strongly: trauma can awaken identity, but it cannot sustain it.

Fear can remind us very quickly who we are. Antisemitism can make someone who has barely thought about being Jewish suddenly feel very Jewish. I don’t want the next generation to need another October 7 to understand why being Jewish matters to them, and I don’t want “Never Again” —a phrase that re-emerged even more strongly after Oct. 7—to be one of the most compelling invitations we can give them into Jewish life.

For some people, fear may be what brings them through the door, but fear cannot be the reason we expect them to stay.

That, to me, is one of the most important questions facing Jewish life today. Are we giving the next generation a Jewish identity built around love and belonging, not only fear and antisemitism? Are we giving them a Jewish life they actually want to inherit? If our strongest moments of Jewish connection happen only after attacks, wars or tragedy, then crises are doing the work that Jewish culture, education and community should have been doing all along.

My own work has taught me one thing about what an alternative can look like. I have seen people with very different religious backgrounds, politics and relationships with Israel find common ground through learning real-life Hebrew together, the Hebrew of jokes, music, WhatsApp messages, arguments and the small nuances that make a culture feel alive. Hebrew is only one door. For someone else, that door might be Shabbat dinner, Jewish texts, social action, synagogue, music, food, Israel, history, or a conversation with a grandparent. 

We don’t all have to enter Jewish life through the same door, but we need to build more doors that people genuinely want to walk through.

I find myself confronting that personally too. For the first time in my life, I am consciously creating things I once took for granted. I make a bigger effort to gather friends and family for Friday-night dinners, I even bring apples and honey into my children’s non-Jewish school so they can share something of who they are with their classmates and feel proud of it. These are small acts, but they feel different when nothing around you is doing the work for you.

That has made me rethink what it means to pass on identity. It is not enough to teach the next generation what happened to us, we also have to give them a reason to care about what happens next.

One day, this period will become history. Our children will learn what happened on October 7, they will learn about those who were murdered, those who were taken hostage and the extraordinary sacrifices made by soldiers, families and ordinary people. They will inherit something else from us too: whatever we build next.

That is where I think the responsibility of this moment becomes uncomfortable. Honoring what was lost cannot only mean protecting what already existed, it must also mean asking what wasn’t working before October 7. 

Where were people already disconnected? Where had Jewish identity become something inherited passively rather than experienced meaningfully? Where were we relying too heavily on history, obligation or fear instead of creating real belonging? Sometimes honoring loss means having the courage to build differently.

When I think about my own children, that is what feels most urgent. I don’t want them to inherit only the instinct to lower their voices in a taxi, I want them to inherit a Jewish life they feel proud of, challenged by, connected to and responsible for continuing, something they genuinely want to belong to.

Three years later, perhaps that is what October 7 demands of those of us who are still here: not only what will we remember, but what will we build?