'We Will Dance Again': American-Israeli publishes first fiction novel on October 7 massacre

As Israelis reel from the emotional devastation of Hamas’s October 7 massacre on southern Israel, the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, the story of the Supernova music festival will join the list of calamities immortalized in fiction text – in Aviva Gat’s We Will Dance Again.

If tragedy inspires art, then it’s no surprise that Jewish tragedies throughout history, with the October 7 Massacre as the most recent, have inspired some of the most renowned texts of the past century such as John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. 

Joining the collection, We Will Dance Again draws on the experiences of real victims, telling the stories of young families, praying to God as they hear Hamas at their door, and young carefree festival goers enjoying music and the foibles of their youth.

Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, Gat, an immigrant from Los Angeles, explained that writing the book was her way of processing the pain she felt after October 7. 

Asked why she decided to write the first fictional telling of October 7, she answered that while storytelling was her calling, she felt others were more equipped to write non-fiction because they were more closely impacted or tied with those who were.

Much of Gat’s inspiration for the book seems to have come from those who chronicled the atrocities of the Holocaust. Gat had previously written My Family’s Survival, based on her grandmother Rachel Shwartz’s survival during the Holocaust. 

While Shwatz passed before Gat was able to comprehend questions she would later want to ask, her grandmother and several other relatives recorded their testimonies. “I didn’t start to get to know my grandmother until after she died,” Gat wrote.

A fictional account based on fact 

Gat expressed hope that by writing a fictional account based on fact, readers from a wider audience would access her works, opening new avenues for non-Jewish readers disconnected from Israel to learn what transpired on October 7.

Using Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz as an example, Gat described how the widely-read fictional Holocaust literature, based on fact, had been successful in educating the masses on Nazi atrocities.

“In many of the reviews [of The Tattooist of Auschwitz] people talked about how shocked they were and that they had no idea that stuff like that happened,” Gat explained, “and it was surprising to me that there were so many people in the world that didn’t know that stuff happened during the Holocaust... And I wanted to do the same about [what is happening] right now.”

Dedicated to the victims, survivors, and the hostages, We Will Dance Again tells the story of lives cut short by Hamas’s attack. 

Using writing for healing 

Gat, an Israeli-American traumatized by the news of October 7, wrote the book to heal from the emotional scars left by the conflict. 

Through writing these accounts, not only did she find a therapeutic outlet, she invited readers to connect with the people behind the “1,200” mentioned in almost every article and news segment on the Israel-Hamas War.

Self-publishing was not an intimidating task for Gat, as an established author who has published several works. 

However, she had wanted a literary agent or publisher to extend the book’s reach. Gat said that while publishers and agents called her book “well-written” and “engaging,” they left something unsaid as to why they wouldn’t publish her work. In Gat’s mind, she said, the elephant in the room was antisemitism.

Gat explained that many in the literary world were rejecting the works of Jewish authors “because they are afraid of the backlash.”

SPEAKING OF Sally Rooney, a writer who recently led 1,000 authors to sign a letter boycotting Israeli work in the industry; and a “blacklist” of Jewish authors circulating, Gat explained that the opportunity for Jewish authors to share their culture and their struggles was being attacked.

Adding to the minefield that many Jewish authors have to face, Gat claimed that works written by Jews were being targeted by a torrent of fake reviews by people who hadn’t even read their books.

“By not wanting to hear the Jewish story, there is no way they can understand our people... they can’t understand what we are going through and what is going on with us,” she elucidated. 

She later added, “I want people to read the book because I want people to know what happened and I think Holocaust literature is so important so we can remember all the stories of the people who didn’t survive the Holocaust... and I hope this new book does the same thing, that it helps preserve important stories about what happened here and I hope that people will read it to understand and have empathy and understand the situation better.”

“I will not let that silence me. I will do everything I can to get this message out and tell the world what happened here,” Gat promises on her website.

In telling the stories of the young families, praying to God as they hear Hamas at their doors, and of those young carefree festival-goers, Gat spells out how different each Israeli life taken was. 

She ensures that the civilians killed were truly depicted as people, and not just the consequence of foreign policy gone wrong.

Readers are unable to distance themselves from the unfolding story. With the color of young Reef’s and Omer’s hair, resembling that of the vibrant orange of the young captive Bibas brothers to the terrorists pridefully filming their attacks drawing from the live-streamed trauma endured by the Idach family – whose daughter Maayan was murdered and whose father Tzachi was kidnapped.

While the word “victim” is almost impossible to avoid when describing those harmed, Gat is clearly careful in gifting her characters with the fighting nature of a people whose country has faced attacks over the past 75 years.

Parallels to the heroic reality 

ITAI AND Dana’s story of love and sacrifice draws parallels to real heroes such as Ori Danino, who risked his life to save others during the attack. 

Danino, one of the six hostages murdered by Hamas in October, escaped the festival, driving himself and survivors away from the massacre, but returned in his car, hoping to evacuate others.

Asked if she drew on Danino’s heroics, Gat said that her characters were based on an amalgamation of hostages – there was no shortage of heroes that day.

“I think anybody who has been following the news will read a character and will see a lot of similarities... Nobody is one-to-one based on a specific person but I have read every news article, I have read the obituaries, I have listened to every interview... and every character is a compilation of several different people,” Gat explained.

Gat weaves moments of Israeli chutzpah – audacious defiance – into her characters, showing courage even in captivity. 

When a character refuses the hand of a terrorist attempting to guide her into a vehicle, those familiar may recall the dagger stare Rimon Kirsht delivered as a parting gift to her terrorist captors in November to the soundtrack of whistles from a jeering Gazan crowd. 

Though Kirsht will likely be recalled by the reader, Gat explained that when she wrote it she envisioned how personal autonomy was still asserted in small but meaningful ways by hostages.

“They tried to keep their dignity in any way they could,” Gat said, explaining that she had noticed this pattern while researching her novel. “I tried to take those moments.”

When readers finish reading the book, they encounter a link to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, where they’re invited to support families of those still missing; though Gat expresses hope that by the book’s release, these families will be reunited.

We Will Dance Again is available for pre-order on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/We-Will-Dance-Again-resilience-ebook/dp/B0DKC5DY2Q/

To read more of Aviva Gat’s work, go to https://avivagatauthor.com/we-will-dance-again/