When I Close My Eyes: Remembering October 7, 2023

Photo Credit: S. Mitchell Weitzman

When I close my eyes, I try to distance myself from the pain of October 7, fearing that I will be consumed by it.

When I close my eyes, I grapple with how, in the early days after October 7, before any Israeli response, demonstrators inverted their moral compass.

When I close my eyes, I try to forget that posters of hostages were ripped down from walls.

When I close my eyes, I try and comprehend how Jewish graves and Holocaust memorials are desecrated.

When I close my eyes, I mourn the loss of both Israeli and Palestinian children.

When I close my eyes, I recoil at being fearful of being Jewish in today’s America, walking past guards at synagogues and community centers.

Photo credit: S. Mitchell Weitzman

When I close my eyes, I wonder whether a glimmer of light will ever seep in through the darkness, believing that somehow, it must, because, if God created man and woman in God’s own image, that image is holy.

About the Author

S. Mitchell Weitzman is the co-author, with his mother Lucia, of The Rose Temple: A Child Holocaust Survivor’s Vision of Faith, Hope, and Our Collective Future. He is a former columnist with the Washington Jewish Week and continues to write, as he puts it, “with one voice from many souls.” A native of Detroit, he is currently a health policy attorney based in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area.