Crying collective tears: Israel and Judaism helped me through October 7 - opinion

The last year has been marked by intense loss. The loss of loved ones on the frontlines, to terror, to suicide, in captivity, and of course, on October 7.

Those losses are carved into our daily lives in Israel. When we buy coffee, when we see a new baby, when we stand next to a soldier on the train when we see hostage posters lining the platform of the station. In every action, the loss is palpable. 

The writer Menachem Rosensaft, speaking about generational Holocaust trauma, once wrote, “Many if not most children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors live with ghosts. We are haunted much in the way a cemetery is haunted. We bear within us the shadows and echoes of an anguished dying we never experienced or witnessed.”

But this time, we did bear witness, did experience, and that makes the shadows and echoes of loss all the more visceral.

But there is another unspoken loss that we have collectively experienced since October 7.

That is the loss of friends and acquaintances, many times people who formed an integral part of our circle, who we cried and laughed and ate with, but who on October 7 made choices that pushed them from our lives. These losses of these former friends - maybe they cut us out or we were forced to cut them out - is a very real grief. There is no Jewish or Israeli person I know who has not grieved the loss of someone they trusted, someone who on October 7 chose to celebrate, condone, justify, the horrific massacre of Israelis at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

For many of us, the shock at that abandonment never quite dissipates.

It is no surprise then, that so many turned inwards, reexploring their Jewish identity, their connection to Israel, their need to be around their own. So many of us only feel satiated, seen, and understood when around our people. Perhaps that has made us more insular, but, given the circumstances, who can blame us? Members of my family who previously felt little affinity with their Jewishness,  suddenly felt a craving to be with other Jews. We all closed the circle a little.

On October 7, only a few weeks after I chose to make Aliyah to Israel, I had the choice to leave and return to England. Yet I knew I couldn't be anywhere but my chosen land. I knew I would suffer with the trauma regardless, but I wanted to suffer surrounded by the collective.

I did return to my family for a few weeks later on, and I found I felt suffocated by the banality of existence there. It felt so wrong to see people walk about as if nothing was happening, when my loved ones were being killed and being held hostage and sheltering from missiles. It felt so sick to see people in the street, and think to myself, did they cheer when we were killed?  

In Israel, as airless as it can be at times, I feel I can breathe.

Finding solace in Judaism

Perhaps the most unexpected part of the last year has been my Jewish journey. Growing up secular, with no religious knowledge bar the rudimentary, but nevertheless with a strong academic understanding of Judaism and a deep Zionism, I felt myself in between spaces when I made Aliyah. Having become more religious in the last few years, I felt too frum for the secular crowd, but too green for the religious one.

October 7 changed that. I found solace in synagogue. I found peace in daily prayer. I found answers with Gd. 

And it wasn't gradual as some might expect - the day of October 7, a mess of snot and tears and shock, the only thing I could think of to do was recite Kaddish, and then later Tehillim. The following  day I woke up and said the Shema. And I've said it every day since. Soon came the daily Amidah. I have not missed a Friday service. I began keeping Shabbat. I became shomer kashrut. I studied. I questioned. I evolved.

And it led me to an amazing community of religious young people, including my now dearest friends. Without them, I would not have made it through the last year. We have cried and laughed together, sung together, prayed together. I found what I needed in Gd, in Judaism and in them. 

Irrevocably, powerfully, my Judaism became the most important part of my life.

I could not read the words in the Torah when I first sat in my local synagogue, but I reacted intensely to the words and the music.

Regardless of how many times I hear it, I always feel the hairs on my arms rise when we sing Psalm 93, usually after Lecha Dodi on Kabbalat Shabbat.

"The floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring. Above the voices of many waters, the mighty breakers of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty."

When I read and sing those words, I equate the flood with the will of the Jewish people: one collective fluvial voice. And the voices of the waters, these are our tears, tears of joy, tears of love. The symbolic tears into which we dip the karpas on Passover. Tears that speak for us even when we cannot.

We have all shed many tears since October 7, some silent, some loud, but we must remember that we are not alone when we cry. The nation cries alongside us. 

October 7 changed us all in ways we cannot put into words. The horror of this will affect generations to come.

But I hope that what we pass to the next generation, what we transmit - L'dor V'dor - is not just the trauma, but a deep and resounding love for Israel, for Judaism, and for each other. That, above all else, would be our greatest victory over the enemy.