Israel today had its first October 7th since the indescribable one last year. It was an overwhelming remembrance.
“Kaddish” is the name given to an ancient Jewish prayer in Aramaic that is generally said by one mourning a deceased relative. It is usually said in an slow, solemn chant and is distinguished from the traditional prayers that are said in Hebrew. There was an old Jew who looked at the aftermath of the Holocaust. One third of world Jewry had been slaughtered by the Nazis, and most of Europe’s ancient Jewish communities were completely wiped out. The fellow said that the only thing left was to say Kaddish on Judaism. The ride was over. Fortunately, he was wrong as witnessed by the growth of Jewish life in Israel and beyond. As a note, there are still fewer Jews today than there were in 1939.
Today was the 7th of October. Israel had to institute some type of remembrance of the horrific events that occurred one year ago. While the fighting goes on and the wounds are more than fresh, the country set aside today to remember what happened on that day and since. The closest thing Israel has is its annual Memorial Day, which is planted one day before the festive Independence Day. Israel has had 76 years to hone the tone and pace of Memorial Day: somber music, carefully-orchestrated events at all military cemeteries, speeches by politicians, and finally the transition to the joy of Independence Day. October 7th was new: what does one do on October 7th? What is the order of the day? This too unfortunately will take some tweaking in years to come. So many horrific things happened and so many were murdered in the most brutal ways unknown to civilized society, how do you summarize or address something so evil?
One of our boys decided to have laser surgery on his eyes. His appointment was fixed for the 7th of October. The surgeon was a young Arab doctor. Everyone said that he was the best, and there was no question that we would take him for the procedure. This is one of the challenges in Israel. If all Arabs were wild-eyed Hamas rapists, then it would be easy to separate them and get them away from society. But such is not true. There are many Arab men and women who are fully integrated into Israeli society and see Israel as their home country. Finding some type of balance between the good guys and the bad guys is still a major problem here. The day before, a 19-year old female border guard was killed in a mass shooting in Beer Sheva. The terrorist was an Israeli Arab.
As my wife and I were camped out for two hours in the reception area of the clinic, we had a massive TV in our face for the whole time. The channel selected was non-stop October 7th. Essentially, the program cycled between three features:
– Horrific Hamas video of their attacks on Jews and Kibbutzim;
– Somewhat more sterile videos from the IDF and first-responders after the attack; and,
– Interviews with pained relatives of hostages and those lost in the attack or the subsequent battles.
I learned a long time ago that one has to figure out how to deal with these kinds of events. If you don’t care, you have no heart. Like all groups, Jews feel a strong brotherhood towards others, even those whom they don’t know and have never met. If you take things too much to heart, you can’t function. You don’t eat, you don’t work, and you just go around like a zombie. So there has to be some level of concern and interest, but not so much as to become emotionally incapacitated.
Though the TV sound was off in the clinic, the constant playing of horrific videos and seeing the broken relatives was too much. It was so overwhelming to see the completely burned out structures and then start to think what happened in those former houses. How parents were murdered in front of their children, how many of the victims were tortured prior to being ruthlessly killed. One sees the destruction and realizes that if Hamas had come to set up a perimeter and hold territory, then their approach would have been completely different. Instead, they came to rape, murder, torture, kidnap and steal. And as the army response was much delayed, they had hours to fulfill their deranged dreams.
Seeing the recently widowed wives of IDF officers or those whose loved ones were killed in front of them on the 7th, one wonders what happens next. The answer is that after a period of time, one has to move on. I don’t think that this is a Jewish trait; I believe that it is a human feature. The US lost over 500,000 soldiers in World War 2. No doubt, many of them were young husbands and many were also fathers. How did their widows move on from that horrible knock on the door? There is a Sinatra movie Suddenly that includes a woman who does not want to move on from the combat death of her husband. But in the end, she realizes that her son needs a father figure in his life. It will take years and rivers of tears, but most will move on in their lives. They will never forget their loved ones and they will always keep their memories alive. But they will also realize that they too need to live and not merely exist. They know that their children need a functioning parent and not just an empty husk of a human that was once inside there. It’s not easy, and the timing and events are not the same for everyone.
The same moving on will be true for Israel. If this first anniversary of the worst pogrom since the Holocaust was over-the-top and wildly painful, the next ones will be more controlled. Israel is still suffering from the heavy losses on that day as well as the deaths of hundreds of soldiers who have been killed in combat both in the north and south. The country is still wrestling with the hundred hostages as how to get them out but not reward Hamas with a lease on life. Israel is having a very challenging day on this 7th of October.
Biden and the West do not understand the need to completely destroy the megalomaniac murderers. Rather, they are importing their clones into their own countries. Israel, in a very painful awakening, has concluded that it has to finish off its terror enemies and not just manage their existence. The West will have a similar reckoning soon. I hope it will not involve events like those that occurred in southern Israel one year ago.