It has been one year since the October 7 atrocities. Hamas still holds 101 hostages in Gaza. For a year, the malice of some towards Israel and the Jewish people, the willful, gleeful distortions of history, and the hypocrisy of national, international, academic, humanitarian, and journalistic institutions has been on full display. Just as in the 20^th century, the reasonable man in the liberal state cannot comprehend an ideology backed by armed force that uses terror as a weapon and that is bent on conquest. It has not been an easy time to be a Jew or an Israeli. Except for the few survivors of the Holocaust we still have, it has been the hardest year for Jews in living memory.

Yet there have been moments of grace and strength. Many Jewish people who had become used to living as though antisemitism were a thing of the past reconnected with their culture, faith, and heritage. We witnessed the strength and dignity of hostage families like Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who spoke powerfully to anyone who would listen, including to the Democratic National Convention. In popular culture, we saw Israel’s emissary to Eurovision, Eden Golan, represent her country with a beautiful song despite the hecklers and the boorishness of some of her fellow singers, and despite the risks to her own safety. We saw the audacious and almost miraculous decapitation of Hezbollah, an enemy of all humankind including the Lebanese people. We witnessed a country facing existential threats almost unheard of in 2024 stand up and fight for its right to exist in a way that Americans and most Europeans have not had to do for a long time. We saw Gentiles standing up for their Jewish neighbors and friends, and Gentile political leaders stand up for their Jewish constituents. We saw Jewish students facing a wave of antisemitism on their campuses start to get organized and to fight back to ensure the vitality of Jewish life in our schools and the continued place of Jews in the arts, sciences, culture, and public life. We saw American and Israeli technical prowess shield the Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze living in Israel from waves of ballistic missiles and drones.

In the Jewish calendar we are now in the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. There is an awesome liturgical poem recited at this time of year that imagines that on Rosh Hashanah, God writes the fate of every person for the next year in a book, and on Yom Kippur the book is sealed. You might recognize it as an inspiration for Leonard Cohen’s Who By Fire.

Who shall live and who shall die, 
Who in good time, and who by an untimely death, 
Who by water and who by fire, 
Who by sword and who by wild beast, 
Who by famine and who by thirst, 
Who by earthquake and who by plague, 
Who by strangulation and who by stoning, 
Who shall have rest and who wander, 
Who shall be at peace and who pursued, 
Who shall be serene and who tormented, 
Who shall become impoverished and who wealthy, 
Who shall be debased, and who exalted. 

This thought hits home hard this year. But the poem goes on to say that repentance, prayer, and charity temper the severity of the decree.

It’s not in any of our power to free the hostages or to force Hamas to free them. It’s not in our power to return tens of thousands of Israelis to their homes in the north of the country. It’s not in our power to stop droves of ballistic missiles from raining down from the sky. Sometimes it seems that very little is in our power. Whatever is in our power to do, we should do: lobby our representatives; speak out in public; share our point of view with friends, colleagues, and classmates who have not put up impenetrable walls of ignorance and self-righteousness. But this year more than most, a little bit of repentance, prayer, and charity couldn’t hurt.

Credits: IDF (image); Sefaria (translation of Unetaneh Tokef, with my minor changes).