I No Longer Believe
By Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman
I have never recovered from that traumatic day, Simchat Torah in Israel—October 7,
2023.
That day that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
My great-great-great-great grandfather, Rav Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, zt”l (1786–1851), is the first name listed on the Wall of Remembrance in Har Herzl dedicated to the victims of terror who were martyred settling the Land of Israel.
He was murdered by a machete-wielding Arab on his way to tefillat Vatikin in the Old City of Yerushalayim in 1851.
His grandson, Rav Yoel Moshe Salomon (1838–1912) established Petach Tikva and Nachalat Shiva, the first Jewish neighborhoods outside the walls of Yerushalayim.
His great-great grandson, Yoel Moshe Eisenman (1925–1999), my father, fought in the Haganah and IDF and was wounded in the Battle of Latrun.
My son, Tuvia Eisenman, served for three years in an elite anti-terrorist unit and was called up on Simchat Torah. He served in a combat unit for over 100 days.
The State of Israel, the land and the Israeli army are indelibly etched into my religious and cultural DNA.
When the horrific details of the attack became clear, if I had to choose one word to describe my existential reality, that word would be devastated.
I was and am profoundly saddened, as we all are.
Yet, on a personal level, I was devastated, and I still am.
I struggle with life, especially with the emotion of happiness.
I am constantly aware of the ongoing pain and suffering that the previously unimaginable events triggered.
The plight of the hostages and those whose lives have been irrevocably altered haunts my every moment of consciousness.
Food has become tasteless, and life has lost its joy and excitement.
I am a shell of my former self.
Yet, I also feel betrayed.
By whom?
Let’s not go there.
This feeling of betrayal stems from my upbringing.
I was brought up with “Never Again.”
I was raised to believe that the entire raison d’être of the State of Israel was to guarantee that “never again” would we have to endure the mass slaughter of the Jewish people.
I was raised as a child to believe and trust in the State of Israel and its army.
It was the protector of my people.
The guarantor of their safety.
I am no longer the person I was on October 6.
I no longer believe.
Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman is rabbi of Congregation Ahavas Israel in Passaic, New Jersey.
Far Away
By Merri Ukraincik
One month after the shock of October 7, I traveled to Israel to see my son, who had just made aliyah before Rosh Hashanah.
The El Al flight was packed as usual, but passengers moved gingerly through the cabin as if lost in thought, prayer or sorrow. Only the blessed crying of all the babies on board broke the stillness. With his mother’s approval, I gave an apple to the little Israeli boy seated near me. He smiled and hit play on a cartoon, making it briefly possible to envision a world returned to normal.
We landed and emerged into the eerie hush of a sparsely populated Ben-Gurion airport. I spotted the boy at the luggage carousel, the apple still in his hand. Soon after, I got to hold my son, who was fine, baruch Hashem. Still, I would only have believed it with my own eyes. It was hard to let him go, or to keep myself from counting his fingers and toes as I did when he was a newborn.
In Jerusalem, I stayed in a hotel that had become the not-so-temporary home of families displaced from the South and the North. Meanwhile, the streets seemed almost bereft of young men. Many restaurants were shuttered for lack of staff. Shops, certainly tourist ones, had few customers.
What flourished were heartbreaking installations for the hostages, posters pleading to bring them home, as well as signs promising victory through unity. At the train station, I watched a secular young man lay tefillin, wishing I could hear the prayer on his lips. An elderly couple traveling to an appointment in Tel Aviv feared venturing far from home, wondering if they’d make it to the public bomb shelter on time if there was a rocket.
I went to Machane Yehuda on Friday, lured by the shuk’s familiar aromas, heady with spices, coffee and fresh challot. Two lines snaked out the door of the bakery because, the sadness and the war notwithstanding, Shabbat was still Shabbat. And Israel was still Israel—holy, colorful, resilient, hopeful.
Another day, a friend and I volunteered on a farm, picking grapefruit in the rain. We worked hard, our faces smudged, our clothing drenched. Yet the experience was joyful, strengthening my love of Judaism and my sense of rootedness in our homeland and the story of our people. All this despite the war. Or because of it. I hesitated before boarding my flight, not wanting to leave.
Once back home, I began to read more works by Jewish and Israeli authors. As a writer, I began to tell more stories about Israel, the hostages and antisemitism. And though I was already a proud Jewess, I donned a Magen David necklace for the first time. It hadn’t felt necessary before.
This Mother’s Day, my son FaceTimed me as the moon rose in the Jerusalem sky. “Twenty seconds,” he said. The siren blared on cue, announcing the start of Yom Hazikaron. His gift was one of proximity. For that one important minute, I did not feel so far away from him or from Israel.
Later, when the sun set on our side of the world, I touched the star at my neck and felt love. Gratitude, too. So I thanked Hashem for enabling a heart to beat in two places at one time, which I could not have imagined possible before. Then again, everything has changed since October 7. And so have I.
Merri Ukraincik is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.
“You Came Back”
By Pnina Baim
In October of 2023, we were visiting New York, after having moved to Israel just over two years earlier. It was our second trip back, and we spent the time visiting family, catching up with friends, shopping and enjoying Dunkin’ Donuts.
On Shemini Atzeres, as we were about to sit down for lunch, my husband, Jacob, whispered that Luba, our secular neighbor, said that something terrible had happened in Israel—the worst attack since the Yom Kippur War. At first, I brushed him off, but he spoke about people being killed and some even kidnapped. The adults in the room were in disbelief.
Even though I only observe one day of yom tov when I’m outside of Israel, I resolved to avoid any melachah the second day of yom tov, hoping that somehow that small merit would help lessen this harsh decree. I spent the second day of yom tov in our old neighborhood shul reciting the entire Tehillim with a few women while the men tried to sing and dance to keep up the spirit of Simchat Torah.
Once yom tov was over, there was no longer a way to avoid the horrific news, and while we tried to absorb the shock and avoid traumatizing our children, we had another challenge: our flight, scheduled in two days, was canceled, and there were no available flights back to Israel.
Despite the fact that Israel was very much in the throes of war, with schools closed and supermarkets running out of essential groceries, we just wanted to go home.
While we waited in New York, Jacob took our kids and their cousins to the yeshivah basketball game at Barclay Center in Brooklyn, and they participated in their first Israel advocacy event, singing, dancing and waving Israeli flags both in the stadium and outside. They came home flush with pride for their country and their people; I couldn’t have been prouder of their resilience.
Finally, after a few days of nail-biting anxiety while I entertained the idea of renting an apartment in Brooklyn and re-enrolling my children in their previous schools, Jacob managed to get us on a connected United–El Al flight on the following Motzaei Shabbat. Thrilled that our aliyah had not been reversed, I shared with a few friends that we were going to be returning to Israel shortly.
The explosion of support we received was unexpected. We received so many messages thanking us for our bravery, with food delivered to our home and people hugging me in the street. I was confused as to this outpouring of emotion and suprised when people told me, “Everyone is trying to leave, and you came back. It gives us strength to go on.”
Every day that we are back in Israel feels like a gift. Seeing the incredible unity, resilience, outpouring of chesed and generosity that is so definitive of Am Yisrael has only strengthened our decision. We are so grateful that this is our home.
Pnina Baim is a writer living in Jersualem.