THE SAME DIFFERENT STORY
Around the world a million people’s different stories are taking place at the same time. All completely separate. October 7th sends a shofar call to them. A message dispensed to every one. This clarion call. This alarm broadcast loudly through the pipes of each persons heart hits each of them in different ways. None can ignore it. But it hits them in different ways. Some freeze. Some propel into action. Some run away. Some run towards. It hits people in different ways. There is a private conversation that happens in each persons soul. In many ways it’s not even a conversation. The voice just springs up within them.
I just met someone who was living in America on October 7th. He was a junky. Twelve years taking heroin every day. He’d tried to quit countless times but always failed. When the grimmest, bleakest news of his People being massacred in Israel hit him, something switched inside. He decided there and then that he wanted to live. And that to live he must be in Israel. So he came. And he made aliyah. And he has been clean of drugs since.
There are a million and more different Jewish October 7th stories. Scattered in different parts of the world going about their business, the shockwave of that day trembled beneath the feet of Jews wherever they stood. It affected them in different ways. Some good. Some bad.
I will never say thank you to October 7th. I will never say thank you to horror. But in a world where horrors happen and will continue to happen, I’m glad that human beings are given a choice in how they respond, and that some choose to respond with good.
And furthermore, that the greater the evil, the more powerful the good that must come in response.
My husband and I are new olim; we came on September 29 and you were the one who put the bug in my ear. My intention as a painter is to see what I can add to the Israeli art scene, but more to the point, 10/7 forced me to research histories — Jewish history, Israeli history, the history of Islam, of Iran, of the Ottoman Empire, the history of antisemitism, the history of the Church, everything even marginally related to 10/7. And the more I researched, the more outraged I was that the world sided with the people who were trying to annihilate us. I just got to the point where I didn't want to live in the *galut* anymore, I didn't want to *contribute* to the *galut* anymore, I didn't want to contribute to a country that wanted me dead. I wanted to contribute to my own people. So hopefully I will have good ideas and good execution and come up with something worthwhile, and if I do, you will be part of why it happened.
My personal story is that October 7th was the last nail in the coffin where my atheism is buried. Before the Ukraine war, I was living in my bubble, thinking wars and bad things are a relic of the past that has nothing to do with modern life, at least as far as Europe is concerned.
Then Ukraine happened, and the horrors done there were deeply troubling, because they didn’t make logical sense. I sat and thought about this, but had no clear takeaway.
Once October 7th happened, the horrors it contained made me realise that such evil can’t exist without Evil. And if Evil exists, then it means God exists too. And then, suddenly, a lot of other things feel in place with much greater clarity than I ever had before.