Remember when we were young, in Tel Aviv?
Were we beautiful like the kids at th
e Nova festival?
Remember camping out in fields and parking lots all over the country? Weed covered in sand and only four types of beer at the bar? Kapulski and Spaghettim? Shotei HaNevua and Beit Habubot?
Remember our wedding in Herzliya? Do you know where the video is?
Remember thinking maybe they didn’t kill the three teens they kidnapped in 2014?
The Breakfast Club? The Champa and 50 shekel bottles of cava with little glasses?
My early 20s to late 30s was full of endless nights and days spent in the heat and exhaust and shouting of the city, getting everywhere on sherut line 5, 4, 66, 16, and 82.
It was the Second Intifada at the beginning. None of us had kids and we were too young to be as scared as we needed to be. We also weren’t in Jerusalem.
In the years to come, leading into my early 40s, almost everybody got married, had kids, and moved to the suburbs where we still couldn’t buy apartments. The rooftop parties in Tel Aviv never stopped, we just stopped getting invited to them. Instead, it was preschool parties in the rec rooms of suburban apartment towers from then on out.
Since a little after midnight on October 7th, every moment spent not watching the horror unfold from our new home has been spent thinking about the two decades we spent in Israel before moving to the U.S. a year ago. By we I mean my wife and I but also anybody who was there with me during those years – at the kiosk, on the sherut, in a club, a party, a wedding, or arguing with me in line at the post office. I think of the years – the best of my life – spent in a country that I’m not entirely sure exists anymore or hasn’t been changed forever.
Grief? You’re soaking in it
The brain fog is real. It catches you everywhere and makes you get lost walking around the grocery store, driving home, or mid-sentence unable to remember what you’re saying.
Fog turns to anger when you step outside and the world is not in ruins and everyone is carrying on very well for a Tuesday morning thank you very much.
It’s a common refrain when someone is in mourning for a loved one. Your life before that loss is over, never to return. This loss for Israel – 1,400 murdered and counting, most of them civilians, hundreds of men, women, and children kidnapped to Gaza – is so enormous, the images and the horror so apocalyptic, the failure of our leadership so absolute, to tear apart the world that existed on October 6th.
October 7th – the worst day for Jews since the Holocaust and one of the bloodiest and most horrifying in our history – has split our lives into the before and the after.
Every mundane or life-changing memory I have of Israel that came before seems from a different world. I think of the most random Israeli pop culture moments and they feel like a dream. Adi Ashkenazi on the Yair Lapid show manifests as a signal sent from space, Yanir HaAhmash, as a voice from a lost civilization.
(this old clip did make me laugh yesterday though, it probably always will)
And forget about listening to Israeli music. Not just the songs they play on Yom HaZikaron – the up-tempo ones are even worse – they make me think of weddings we went to.
I realize that this feeling is grief. It is grief combined with guilt, worry, the peaks and valleys of adrenaline and fear, and a feeling of helplessness that is paralyzing.
No one is ok and they might never really be ok again.
The stories and the images that keep coming out are horrifying and soul-crushing. But if we avert our eyes from the loss, we can see stories of incredible heroism that rekindle hope from the ashes.
That’s part of why I have faith in Israelis, who are facing an existential threat and have almost no state or national leadership to depend on.
The Forever Pandemic
They were clapping and singing on the balconies again last week in Israel.
School is canceled, the streets and sidewalks are largely empty, and a de facto lockdown is in place.
People are again stuck at home spending way too much time with their kids, while also looking at them and feeling grateful and guilty that their children were not murdered or kidnapped.
I’m still in the WhatsApp group for our old building in Hod HaSharon. The solidarity that I saw in the early days of the pandemic seems to have returned. The rec room of the building next door has been turned into a staging area for collecting donations for displaced residents of the south and reservists, and someone floated the idea of turning our rec room into a hostel of sorts for survivors of the massacres.
There are also frequent offers of help. People text the group when they’re going to get groceries to see if anyone too scared to leave home wants to place an order. On October 8th, one neighbor asked if it was safe to go downstairs to walk her dog, and a former neighbor of mine who drove this SUV that was obviously an unmarked security vehicle said he has a gun and will gladly escort anyone in the complex who needs to go outside, even just for a walk.
People are also using the WhatsApp group to share photos and unconfirmed rumors, especially the woman who is now living in our old apartment. Yesterday, the 12th day of the war, the rumors and panic circled around reports that Arab men posing as cleaners have been spotted taking pictures of houses and apartment buildings around the building. Police have tried to downplay and debunk the fears, but the neighbors at the old building have decided to change the entrance code regardless. As one neighbor put it, just our 17-floor building alone is like an entire kibbutz in the eyes of an attacker.
I’m also still in the WhatsApp groups for my younger daughter’s kindergarten and my older daughter’s elementary school. Both feel like a window into a world that would have been ours, into trauma and fear that our children have avoided, for now.
Is what we’re feeling survivor’s guilt? I don’t know, but I think of all the people who I knew and met in Israel from my 20s through my 40s and wonder how many of them were killed or harmed on October 7th, how many lost loved ones or barely escaped with their lives. I think of all the little towns and kibbutzim along the Gaza border that I visited covering wars, “operations” and “escalations” over the years and wonder how many of the people I met were taken from us.
The Shoah Will Be Televised
We are seeing unspeakable horror in the videos the terrorists filmed as they attacked the towns and kibbutzim of southern Israel.
Our slaughter has been recorded, televised, and celebrated around the world and it will take a long time for most of us to recover if at all.
The People of Forever actually are afraid, and they are shattered and heartbroken. But not for the first time.
Everyone’s response since October 7th seems to be “there are no words” or “I don’t know what to say.”
This is because there are no words to explain how people could gun down entire families, tie them together and burn them, or throw a grenade into a concrete bunker where they know unarmed civilians are cowering in fear. There are no words to describe the glee they show on video, the way they took their time and enjoyed themselves, and the way they kidnapped babies and children after slaughtering their parents and siblings.
But when there are no words there can still be actions. I don’t know what these actions should be, but for me way over here it’s being there for my wife and kids because I’m fortunate enough to still be able to. It means being around Israelis and Jews and doing Jewish things as much as possible right now. It means checking in on the people I love who are still over there and looking for ways to volunteer.
None of it brings anybody back, but all of it matters. It has to, right?
Otherwise, all you have is helplessness. All you have is doom-scrolling and doing things like driving around town blasting Monica Sex and trying not to cry in traffic.
I always thought if you move away from Israel the country will continue on a track parallel to your own and you can visit anytime and pick up where you left off.
That idea has been shattered. I know that the next time we visit, it won’t be the same place we left. I know the people I love will be changed.
I know when I see you again it won’t be the same.
But it will still be home.