What October 7th Means to Me

I just want to take a moment to reflect on what October 7th means to me now.

When I woke up on October 7, 2023, I was a different person. I knew that antisemitism existed, and I knew that there were attacks against Jews all over the world, including in Israel. I knew about the history. I knew about the Holocaust. I knew about pogroms. I knew that Jews were still being attacked simply for being Jewish. But, for the most part, those things existed at a distance from me. They were horrible, but they were things I could read about, think about, and then put down.

As the events in Israel unfolded that day, something in me simply froze. My nervous system could not process what I was witnessing. The sheer horror of it washed over me, but somehow never quite made it through my skin because I could not deal with it. I remember seeing what was happening and feeling as though my mind was protecting me from fully understanding it.

And now I know why.

I was witnessing a pogrom.

Not in Russia. Not in some distant chapter of Jewish history. I was witnessing one in the homeland of the Jewish people, in the country that was supposed to be our refuge, where we were supposed to be safe and secure. That realization changed something in me. Suddenly, the things I had learned about Jewish history did not feel quite so distant anymore.

And so much has transpired since. The hostages were kept for years and were finally all returned. The conflict intensified. The suffering continued. And once again, Jews found ourselves being blamed for our own suffering. I have watched the conversation around Israel become increasingly difficult to navigate, even as I have tried to understand the suffering of innocent people on all sides. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from watching the world demand that Jews justify and defend our own existence over and over again.

I never realized until October 7th and its aftermath just how difficult it could be to be Jewish. When Israel was founded in 1948, it was supposed to be the dawn of a new era in which Jews would no longer have to live as a vulnerable minority, waiting for the next wave of persecution to arrive, as we had for centuries in so many places. We would finally have a country of our own. We would finally be able to defend ourselves. We would finally have somewhere to go.

There was something almost heartbreaking about the hope behind that idea. After everything Jews had endured, perhaps having a Jewish state would mean that we could finally stop worrying about whether the countries around us would decide they did not want us anymore. Perhaps antisemitism would finally lose some of its power because Jews would no longer have to depend entirely on the goodwill of other people for our safety.

Instead, the hatred changed its language.

Antisemitism has, in many places, morphed into anti-Zionism, which is beyond ironic to me. For generations, Jews were told to go back to Palestine, which was the name given by the Romans to the Jewish homeland after they destroyed Jerusalem and sought to sever the Jewish connection to the land. And when Jews finally did return, the hatred followed us there. It still follows us.

Despite the hatred, or maybe even because of it, I have become stronger and grittier since becoming more actively Jewish. I have had to learn to let so much roll off my back. I have had to become more comfortable with the fact that not everyone is going to understand what Jewish history means to me, or why Israel matters so deeply to me, or why October 7th affected me in the way that it did. I have also had to learn that I do not need everyone’s permission to feel what I feel or to be proud of who I am.

In some strange way, October 7th brought Jewish history much closer to me. Things that had once felt like stories about people who lived generations ago suddenly felt like they belonged to my own life. The fear, the vulnerability, the instinct to protect one another, the determination to survive. These are not abstract ideas anymore.

And yet, I do not want October 7th to be the thing that defines my relationship with Israel or with Judaism. I do not want the last thing I remember about Israel to be fear.

In February, I am planning to return to Israel for the first time in more than a decade.

I can’t wait.

I am sure that going back will be complicated. I am sure that I will see things differently than I did the last time I was there. I am sure that I will carry October 7th with me when I go.

But after everything that has happened, I also feel something I did not fully understand before.

I am going home.