On October 7, we were hurled back to a time we thought was behind us — and a world that turns a blind eye

I love a beautiful view. But we can’t always have everything that we want. My apartment has a great porch — with a view of the porches of the buildings on the parallel street.

But there’s one spot where the buildings part and I can see for miles straight down the Begin Highway to the mountains ringing Jerusalem. On a sunny day this slice of the city lies before me in crystal clarity.

All summer long, as the oppressive heat gave way with the setting sun, the breeze picked up, and the leaves rustled around me, that spot on my porch felt magical. Was it just the relief from the heat that left me feeling hopeful? If the heat, so suffocating during the day — a heavy blanket wrapped around me I couldn’t shake off — just disappeared at the end of each day, could all our troubles do the same?

But summer is long gone. There’s no heat I need to escape. The breeze is uncomfortable, not magical. The changing seasons send a chill through me — and it’s not just the weather.

I can’t process the lives we’ve lost. How can I mourn so many people? I can’t even remember so many names. Not of the 1,200 people from Simchas Torah. Not of 800 soldiers. Not even the two or three or eight lost in subsequent terror attacks. What about all the names that don’t make it into the news? Survivors who have to live with incomprehensible realities. How can I process the lives overturned by injuries that will never heal? Entire communities displaced — what’s left of them?

There’s a part of me that feels guilty crying. Who have I lost? I don’t recognize the voice friends and family will never hear again. I can only imagine the smile, the laugh, the million moments they have lost. What right do I have to cry? But a cup tips over and I find myself crying over literal spilled milk. Or burnt toast. Or a broken dish. It leaks out everywhere, and I don’t have enough fingers to plug the holes in the dam. Simchas Torah (it hurts me to call it October 7. It was only October 7, because that day was Simchas Torah.) hurled us back in time, to what we thought was behind us. Terror, slaughter, destruction — and a world that turns a blind eye.

The pictures in history books have come to life in our daily news as we watch in horrified shock and disbelief — a river of blood that travels backward through our history, wide and rushing and seemingly endless.

We were always the Nation That Dwells Alone, and there is not a Jew alive today who doesn’t know that now. Marches, protests, declarations the world over make sure we know it.

We are Other.

As the world pushes us away, they push us into each other’s arms. We bump into each other and find we are only bumping into another part of ourselves. We’re surprised to discover a truth we thought we knew.

We are one.

Silly of me to even think I could hold back my tears. Whether or not I feel a right to it, this pain is mine. These are my people. Even if I’ve never met them, our souls are connected.

I feel it in the grocery store when I brush another woman’s hand as we reach for the same red pepper. We catch each other’s eye, smile. It’s there as I pull a stranger’s hand so she’ll make it onto the train before the doors close. It’s in the air like an electric wire connecting all of us; the current gets stronger the closer we get to each other. It matters not a whit that she looks different from me. You are mine and I am yours; we are in this together and we are more ready to help each other than we have ever been.

And help we do, in every way we can. Communities that never had anything to do with one another before connect just to show we care. Passing out packages of candles, grape juice, and challah before Shabbos, meals for families of soldiers away for so many months, carnivals for their children, visits and entertainment for evacuated families and an attempt to get them whatever they need, even though there’s no way to fit it all into the hotel rooms they’re forced to stay in….

The magic of a Jerusalem winter is that deliciously warm days can surprise you in the middle of the cold.  I step out to my porch, to my spot, my view. I think of the other kinds of stories from history books that we’re watching come to life — the stories coming out of the tunnels with the hostages. Just when we would expect them and their families to lose faith, we are inspired to tears at the faith they have found… fasting on Yom Kippur, when they were already starving, keeping Shabbos, davening — even hostages who were raised secular scrambling for any mitzvah, the families who greet them on release with Shema and brachos on their lips. Ripples that travel the world over, drawing an entire nation to do a little more, try a little harder. My heart bursts with pride, gratitude, and humility to be a part of the holiest of nations — a nation of alchemists, turning blood into gold.

I watch as day slowly morphs into night. The crisp line between buildings and sky slowly blurs. The mountains fade invisibly into the darkness. But while some things disappear, others come into focus. The traffic on the highway I have to squint by day to measure is now clear lines of red and white paired headlights. The roads that blend with the grass and fields around them by day become lines on a map where streetlights glow. I watch traffic lights miles away go from green to yellow to red and back again. The strings of the String Bridge, invisible by day, shine in technicolor light against the dark sky. A million details hidden in the brightest sunlight burst into view against the inky blackness of night.

Like the stars, there are some things you can only see in the dark.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 934)