One year later
On October 6, 2023, I was having a fabulous day. My husband and I were taking a weekend away at the end of Sukkot. We flew down to Florida, on a plane filled with other Jews ending Sukkot. We enjoyed a beautiful day at the beach and had Shabbat dinner with my parents. We went to bed happy and relaxed, expecting to have a weekend filled with fun.
That was not to be the case. We were awakened early to multiple pings on my husband’s iPad. My daughter was texting us from Israel that she was trying to get out. What? Why was she trying to get out? What was happening? Our friends were texting us to find out if she was all right. What was going on?
From that moment of abrupt awakening, our lives were forever changed.
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We couldn’t immediately understand the horror that was happening, and we couldn’t imagine the extent to which the murderous Hamas terrorists went to slaughter, mutilate, rape, burn, and torture our People, but we knew something, unlike anything we could imagine, was happening.
Our daughter got out of Israel on the last flight possible and ended up in Istanbul. She then went to Budapest. Eventually, she went to Warsaw and then here to New Jersey. We were so relieved that she was safe, although she was traumatized immensely.
Many of my other friends were not so fortunate.
Many of my friends live in the Otef, the Gaza border communities, and had spent their lives trying to build bridges of peace. They would drive Gazans to Israeli hospitals. They had Gazans working on their kibbutzim. They believed in a peaceful future.
After October 7, they were forever changed.
In the past, whenever I would hear of sirens in the south, I would always reach out to my friends to check on them. This time was no different, except when I texted my friend Noa, she told me that her husband had been shot by terrorists, and she went into labor while she was in her safe room and was at the hospital too. My friend Michal told me that she and her children had been in the safe room on their kibbutz near the border for hours, hearing gunshots and worrying they might not survive. My friends in Merchavim were out protecting their moshavim. My friends in Ofakim were dealing with the loss of more than 50 people mowed down by the terrorists in cold blood. One of those people was a police officer, Igal Illuz, whom I knew and admired. He went to fight the terrorists who had taken the older couple hostage, and they shot him in the neck and side in the gap between his body and his bulletproof vest. Heartbreaking.
I remember feeling such anger! How could this happen in Israel? How could this happen in the one place in the world where we were supposed to be safe?
Obviously there were many reasons, but I don’t want to get into politics. Let it be said that I believe many mistakes were made prior to October 7. Since that day, the country has been reeling and has come together and broken apart many times.
I visited Israel twice since October 7 — in January, on a solidarity mission with Hadassa, and in July, to visit and study at the Hebrew University. Both trips were powerful and important.
In January, everything was so raw. I visited Hostage Square and the Hostage and Missing Person forum, where we met relatives of some of the hostages. We met Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin in Jerusalem. We went down to the Nova site and visited Kfar Aza. We saw Hadassah’s amazing rehabilitation center, which opened almost six months ahead of schedule to meet the needs of the people of Israel. It was an intense and impactful trip.
In July, I saw that the country was recovering to an extent. Life goes on. If it doesn’t, the bad guys win, and we can’t let that happen. I revisited the Nova site and saw that trees have been planted for each person murdered that day. I visited the car cemetery, where my friend Noa told me her car sits. After her husband was shot by terrorists it was riddled with bullet holes.
I can’t believe it is one year already. It feels like yesterday. Whenever I think about it, my heart breaks. I think about all the lives lost and all the lives destroyed. I think about our people still being held hostage, and I can’t sleep. I only know them from their pictures and the stories I’ve heard about them. But I feel like they are my family.
I can’t imagine what their families are truly experiencing. The pain they must be feeling is something I cannot comprehend. I just want to send them strength and love.
What I have learned this terrible year is that together we are stronger. The Jewish People pulled together after that black Shabbat. The People of Israel organized and helped each other when we were broken apart before that day. In the year since, we have broken again, but we need to come together to continue to heal. Some things are more important than our differences. We need to believe that the Jewish People will survive this and continue to thrive. We need to come together to fight the hate and antisemitism that have come out into the open and infected the entire civilized world. We must unite against this hate for our future and for our children’s future.
We need to return to a time when we can have a fabulous day and not feel guilty for being happy. We need to return to a time when we can feel joy. We need to show the world that we will get through this terrible time when we are fighting against so many enemies. We have survived worse than this.
Am Yisrael Chai!
Stephanie Z. Bonder of West Caldwell, MA. Ed., is a Jewish educator who teaches throughout the MetroWest community and the National Hadassah network. She is continuing her educational journey by pursuing a masters in Jewish education from the Melton Hebrew University School of Education.
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