October 7 Made Me a Driver
Lahav Harkov – I got my driver’s license at age 35. I put it off and delayed and deferred it until finally I couldn’t anymore: The only way I could afford to own a home was to live in new construction, in a new neighborhood, with very little public transportation and no shops or schools […]
Towers Of Tuna
Gila Green – “You don’t have to buy anymore tuna,” my 19 year old daughter said. “We have enough here for a…” She declined finishing her sentence. It was the day after Passover, in Israel, ‘Isru Chag,’ and we were turning the kitchen back into an every day one, a chametz kitchen. But there was […]
Would You Step on my Dance Floor with a Machine Gun?
Emilie Vallieres – The late afternoon light is the one I prefer It makes the life around so much brighter The wind calms down, yields the sound of the infinite Out of time Out of touch In a country so proud to shine with virtue It is still October 6th for you and me I […]
Will I Be the One Who Pays?
Boaz Zaidler – It is not easy for me to write about October 7th without mixing in politics. And though we saw it coming, it still surprised us. It surprised me. And I may be the one paying the price. But that’s how I operate. Packing a bag, kissing my girlfriend goodbye. Leaving. Heading north […]
The Stench of Death
Dr Mehak Burza – I was in Phuket, Thailand on October 7 getting ready for a day-long boat ride while answering emails about the virtual Holocaust International conference I planned to host a week later from New Delhi – on the 14th of October – when I got an email: ‘perhaps we should postpone the […]
‘That’ Day
Professor William Kolbrener – That day my life changed. I stopped writing scholarly articles; I put aside a book project. After October 7th, I left a job as academic director of a non-profit fighting antisemitism. I did not want to fight antisemitism on the battlefield of ideas: the battlefield had come to my home. We […]
My People, My Son
Erica Landis – The smell of chlorine. On my clothes, on the red terry cloth towel. I can’t stand the color red. Even before that day, the color would make take my heart beat quickly up into my throat. The chlorine wafts through the air and in my hair and fingertips as I try to […]
‘I Wonder What Her Name Is’
Naomi Ruth Henoch – It’s a leap year. It’s a leap day. It’s one extra day for the hostages to remain in captivity. One extra day for Ayelet to wonder if her daughter Naama is alive. If Naama is pregnant, or broken, or alive, or dead, and what is worse? It’s her face I remember, […]
Oct. 7th has been good for me
Oct. 7th has been good for me. I was cynical; now I am sober. I was depressed, now I am very sad. I was here, now I am away from home. I was a Jew, now I am Jewish. I was Israeli, now I am Israel. Oct. 7th has been good for me Itamar, Israeli […]
Finding God at the Rijksmuseum
Finding God at the Rijksmuseum – William Kolbrener I spent 15 years studying in yeshiva, but did not know what it meant to believe in God, nor to be a Jew, until an unexpected layover in Amsterdam, a winter afternoon at the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum is a sanctuary for the beautiful, the rooms housing […]
