two years ago, in the middle of the night, i woke up to my mom crying downstairs. she was on the phone with her cousin, who was telling her about the attacks in israel.

she told me she didn’t know everything yet, told me not to worry, and told me to go to bed. i woke up and saw that there was an attack at a music festival in israel. i thought that this would be resolved in a couple of days.

i don’t mean to take away from the trauma israelis faced on 10/7, but i think there’s a different kind of grief as a diaspora jew knowing that you’re safe in bed across the ocean while your family in israel was hiding or killed. you were safe because you weren’t in israel but people your own age who were murdered in cold blood weren’t as lucky. it’s not survivor’s guilt, exactly, but it feels similar.

jews are small group. every israeli i know either knew someone who was murdered on 10/7 or knows someone who knew someone.

when one of us is murdered, we all collectively grieve. we’ve been grieving for two years and i’m tries.

i’m sad, today. i’m sad and i’m mad and i’m hurt and i’m angry. i’m sad that the hostages have spent two years, not knowing when they can come home. i’m hurt that the world is either turning a blind eye or cheering. i’m mad at everything hamas has done for the last several decades.

i watched the videos for the first time and i’m sad and hurt all over again. hamas is evil. there is no humanity in them. gallant was right: they’re animals. same goes for every single “civilian” that participated in the 10/7 attacks. same goes for the “civilians” that turned over hostages who tried to escape back to hamas.

i don’t know what i’m trying to say. maybe im just screaming into the void, who knows.

i’ve mentioned it before but i call the not-quite-survivor’s-guilt non-survivor’s guilt, like “why am I alive? why am I alive but not hersh? why am I alive but not kfir?” especially if you talk about antisemitism. idk though.

but brief note: they’re not animals, that’s the problem, they’re people, people are capable of doing that and if we make them animals we make it easier to think about but also less accurate.

a year ago, i was celebrating simchat torah when my rabbi interrupted the services to let us know there had been an attack on israel. we didn’t know how bad yet, but we prayed everything would be alright. the rest of the service went on as planned, but there was a chill in the air, like we knew something had changed. something big. but we didn’t quite understand it yet.

a year ago, i watched people i’d followed for years celebrate a gruesome massacre of over a thousand human beings before we even really knew what had happened. i watched anons pour into my inbox, demanding i condemn israel even though israel hadn’t even retaliated yet.

a year ago, i talked to my nonna on facetime for her birthday. she was in her 90s and wasn’t as present anymore, and i could barely focus because my thoughts were thousands of miles away. i promised her i’d call her the next day but my next day became scrolling past horrific photos and videos i didn’t want to see, posts celebrating the attacks, posts telling people that if they didn’t celebrate the attacks that they were bad people. she died two weeks later and the same people sharing the posts celebrating the massacre sent me messages telling me it was good my nonna was dead, or extremely crude and disgusting messages about what they wanted to do to her dead body because she was “probably a zionist.”

a year ago, i worked at a synagogue that started getting dozens of calls and emails from people, across the spectrum from neo nazis to evangelical christians to radical leftists saying the most horrific things, telling us it was our fault, that we had to do something, that it was on us. we were responsible. an anon told me i was a zionist because i had a zionist language on my blog (hebrew) and worked at a zionist institution (synagogue).

a year ago, i started losing friends one by one after many of them started to share posts justifying or celebrating the massacre or memes created by neo nazis, some of which didn’t even bother to sub out “jews” for “zionists” but they shared them anyway. i was pushed out of an activist group after months of begging them to stop using antisemitic language because i had the audacity to tell a white gentile in the group not to say racist things about a black indigenous jew behind her back, and said gentile told me he didn’t have to listen to me and that he could “claim” the holocaust too because his ancestors were from eastern europe.

a year ago, i watched in real time as the world i thought i knew, the world in which jews had a future and safety in the united states, crumbled day after day. people that previously went out of their way to take care of me and support me decided that because i didn’t feel comfortable marching alongside pictures of hitler i must be a zionist and therefore no longer belonged. the person processing my government aid didn’t want to approve me because i worked for a synagogue part time and argued that the synagogue should just pay me more because “they can afford it.” my synagogue, which has been involved in social justice since its founding several decades ago, along with its rabbis who have been just as involved, were abandoned by the communities they had put their blood, sweat, and tears into advocating for when they had the audacity to grieve for the dead of october 7th.

a year ago, i learned the hard way that we are not special in this time. antisemitism is a river that has ebbed and flowed for thousands of years, and i felt like a fool for thinking a dam could be built overnight.

a lot of people say that every day of this year for them has been october 7th, but for me every day has been october 8th. the day after the initial shock, when reality started to sink in. the realization that all the people who had shared “happy rosh hashanah” posts or complimented my kippah or pretended to care about harry potter goblins were quickly dropping the facade. that my token minority card had expired and now having a jew in their group didn’t look diverse, it looked “sympathetic toward israel.” every day has been a painful reminder that no one else is grieving like we are, and a large number of those people are angry that we are grieving. they don’t understand that we’re not just grieving the lives lost and the hostages. we’re grieving for the world we thought we knew, a world where we might have a chance to thrive like we did in the golden age of spain. but those golden years are ending. and that is one of the things we are grieving.

a lot of people also say that they wish they could go back to who they were on october 6th, but i don’t. i’m glad the illusion was shattered, that i can see more clearly who will stand with jews even if they face backlash, who will challenge their antisemitic biases and do the hard work to unlearn them, and who did not have to be asked twice to share literal nazi rhetoric if it meant feeling like a hero. i’m glad the masks are coming off because it means you can’t gaslight us anymore and tell us it’s all in our heads. we can see you for exactly who you are now. and we will not let you break us.

i don’t want to be living forever in october. i don’t want the blissful ignorance of october 6th, but i also don’t want the bitter anger of october 8th. i want to stand up for what i believe in, to celebrate my culture and my people, and no amount of intimidation or harassment will keep me from loving my jewishness. you have shown me i can no longer live in october 6th, but i refuse to let you keep me in october 8th.

From a year ago...

They tried to kill us.

No cutsey “we survived, let’s eat.”

They tried to kill us.

And they did kill 1,200 of us. They tortured us. They took hundreds of us hostage. They said they would do it again and again and again until there were no more of us.

And the world cheered.

I see posts about Oct. 7, and I cannot let the memories of those who died be a blessing. Not yet, not while worldwide infantilization and encouragement of Hamas continues, not while people march in the streets calling for more of our blood, not while Israelis and diaspora Jews both must fear for our safety due to lies perpetrated by those who wish to hate, scapegoat, and find a whipping boy instead of face their own inhumanity toward their fellow humans.

Pelvises broke from rape.

Appendages were sliced off.

Civilians at home, at a concert, freshly returned from a peace conference were killed, murdered, tortured, taken away to be shot, locked away from sunlight, strangled to death.

Oct. 7 is a memorial day, a day of pain and suffering and carnage, and I am not yet ready to find the blessings in it.

Home

This house is just a building. It is not mine, we did not buy it, and what remains of it belongs to Nir Oz. It is not my home. My home was the kibbutz, the friends and the community. I was not born here, but I lived here for the last four years. Shiri was born here, and here the two of us learned to be parents, a family. Here Ariel learned to walk and talk, here he told his first joke. Here he became a big brother when Kfir was born. There are more good memories in this house than I can describe.

I sit on the couch, in my corner where I always sat. Almost two years have passed since I sat here, and I can still see the house as it was on Oct. 6, only this time it is not clean and not tidy, and this time there is a big bloodstain from Tony, our dog, on the floor. The couch Shiri sat on, where I used to rest my head on her lap, is perforated by bullets. Kfir’s trampoline is abandoned outside the house and dirty. Ariel’s sandbox is full of things I do not recognize. His new bike was stolen just when I had started teaching him to ride without training wheels. I did not get to teach him that, but the memory remains.

Among the rubble, after the terror tornado this house went through, I find things. Like this napkin I hold in my hand that easily could have been thrown away or vanished into the cracks. An orange napkin from our wedding. It has shards from the cup I broke under the chuppah. We kept them, planned to make something of them, but we never had time.

I am at home, in a place I know and do not know, one that has turned from familiar to foreign. Entering it now feels like my whole life - nothing like what I knew. They too have become messy, stained with blood, sad. It no longer feels like a home, the feeling here is dark. From a house of joy and laughter it has become cold and painful. And it is quiet. Not the good quiet we loved, but a bad quiet, the kind of terror quiet. I have not come in here much. It is hard for me. There were times I was at the kibbutz but did not enter the house. I know that every time I go in, I do not know what I might discover. Kfir’s diaper basket. Ariel’s toy car. A dusty photo album under the sideboard.

Like packing things when you move to another house, I pack memories. I decide what I will take with me and what I am willing to leave behind. Items with bullet holes or blood, or anything that reminds me of Oct. 7, I do not take. I do not want to hurt the good memory. Over the years I fear it will disappear.

I will donate the children’s blue chairs. I will also give Shiri’s art supplies that we bought to do activities with Ariel to other children who can play and create. I will take some of the boys’ dolls. Objects have no value except for the memory that comes with them. Every object floods me with a happy memory, and every object I cannot find is a memory taken from me. I look some more. Shiri’s dresses. Ariel’s costumes.

In captivity, when Nimrod Cohen was with me, Nimrod, who is still there, we spoke a lot about holidays. A memory of Ariel dressed as a dinosaur came up then, before his Batman phase. Shiri sent me the video from the kindergarten. Each child went up on stage and presented their costume. His first costume was a carrot. The second was the baby on the Bamba package. When I talked about it with Nimrod, the video kept playing in my head and for three days I did not stop crying.

The last kiss

Once Shiri and I had a little fight, and that morning when I left for work I kissed Ariel and Kfir. I was angry. On my way she called me crying and angry and said, "No matter what happened, and no matter what we argued about, you must not leave the house without giving me a kiss." I felt really bad that I left like that. I agreed immediately and apologized. All day I felt bad and guilty, and when I came home from work I hugged and kissed her without stopping and promised her it would not happen again.

On Oct. 7, before the terrorists managed to break into our house, we heard them drilling at our front door. I looked at Shiri and asked her, "Fight or surrender?" She told me, "Fight." Earlier, when talk of an infiltration started in the kibbutz, I had already brought the pistol and an extra magazine. I opened the safe room door, aimed toward the door they were drilling and began to shoot. When they managed to enter the house through the bedroom window, they began shooting back. During the gunfight I saw their bullets penetrate the safe room door, like it was made of butter, toward Ariel’s bed, where we had asked him to hide. I told Shiri, "I have to surrender, they are shooting toward Ariel, I do not want him to get hurt."

I placed the pistol and the magazine on the small table in the room, I lay down on the floor and shouted, "Enough, enough, there are children here." In Hebrew, in English, hoping they would understand something. Then they entered the safe room. They kicked me while I was on the floor, and when they pulled me up, one of them motioned for me to go outside. I pointed at Shiri and the boys and said, "Not them," and he nodded "no." I pointed at them again and said, "Not them." The terrorist pointed at me and told me, "Only you, come on."

I signaled with my hands if I could give a kiss before I left. He nodded "yes," "come on, come on." I went to Shiri and told her they had come to abduct us, that they do not take women and children. "It will be fine, I will go with them so they will not hurt you and I will not make trouble," and Shiri was afraid, holding herself back from crying.

I kissed Shiri, Kfir and Ariel, I told them I loved them more than anything in the world, always and forever. I told myself in my head they would execute me outside, and I entered a kind of euphoria. My whole body felt light. I was not afraid. At every step of the way to Gaza I said, here it comes. When they took me out of the house, here on the grass, during the lynching, I thought I was about to die. Before they shoved me into the tunnel, they shone a flashlight on the body of a man who looked like he had been dead for quite some time. Son of a bitch, do you want to kill me next to this disgusting thing? That is what flashed through my mind. He only said to me again "come on, come on" and pushed me toward the tunnel opening. Then I understood they wanted me alive. I thought of Shiri and the children and told myself they would take them to a safe place, they would wait for me. I would come out and we would overcome everything, Ariel would get through it with our help, Kfir would probably not remember too much because he was a baby. Everything was small compared to us. If I had known this would be the last time, maybe I would have kissed more, kissed again. Today I understand how meaningful that kiss was. the last kiss. Shiri, I never left the house without giving you a kiss.

They dragged me out of the safe room, Ariel’s room. The room that was beautiful and innocent, full of toys, experiences, stories. That morning it was our fortress, and now it is simply a sad and aching room. Without Ariel and Kfir’s laughter. Here we were all together for the last time, the whole family. That was the last time I saw them, and here we parted ways. It was the end of the Bibas family.

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you wake up on a clear day in October, like any other day, and get online like you always do, your window to the world, like the Lady of Shalott up in her tower, chasing visions and seeking dreams through the glass in her mirror. something frivolous is on your mind, the comforting things you immerse in every day with your friends through the screen, favorite pop stars and fictional characters, pretty photography, gentle words. it is autumn and the leaves are turning, the chill slowly spreading its fingers under doors, and that’s your favorite season.

when you log on to your blog, scrolling is normal at first, but then you see a photo of a fence being bulldozed, in a post that rapturously calls it the most powerful photo of resistance in human history. a mutual you just talked to yesterday reblogged this. there are photos of houses burning and bullet riddled cars accompanied by laughing emojis. there’s post after post after post throwing around the words “from the river to the sea” and “colonizers” and “resistance” again and again, cheering. an actress you follow on another platform posts to her stories how stricken she is by what she’s seeing and standing in solidarity with the Jewish community, and one of your mutuals immediately makes a post calling her a slur and saying she should be killed. it’s hard to even discern what’s going on because it’s relegated to this stream of vicious blood frenzy, as if the people you once interacted with daily, including people you loved and trusted dearly, have flipped a switch and become ravenous zombies, and the infecting virus is hatred.

other images begin to appear. a girl dragged brutally into a vehicle at gunpoint, covered in blood. another, broken and bent at wrong angles, armed men sitting on her, spitting on her, leering at her laid in the back of a truck. it’s unclear if she’s alive (she isn’t). a mother whose face is a rictus of fear, clinging to her two coppery haired children. a young woman forced onto the back of a motorcycle, screaming and reaching her arms out for her boyfriend as they’re separated. a young man with his arm blown off, in shock from the pain. an elderly woman snatched from her bed and kidnapped, defiantly trying not to show fear. so many people running from a music festival that has become a killing field. bodies dragged into the streets where exuberant crowds await them, a carnival of death. there are people burned alive, ashes, but you can still tell they were people. there is so much blood, red splashes everywhere, smeared across floors, ceilings, roads, faces. no horror movie will ever compare to this.

the carnival, in mere hours, gets louder online too, more grotesque. reports emerge of atrocities that you don’t even want to repeat. the same mutual who reblogged the fence being torn down - queer, feminist, her bio says - reblogs a post full of rape denial and antisemitic conspiracies. the rapes are still happening in real time. you block her. she’s the first, but not the last. the bodies are still warm on the ground and crowds gather around the world to revel in the slaughter. you have never seen anything like this. you never even imagined it. this isn’t the world you knew, the depth of this cruelty is something you thought was long extinct. you were wrong. you’ll be wrong a lot, often, about how deep this hatred runs, watching it unfold in the years to come, but of course you don’t know that then. you desperately tell yourself this is momentary, somehow it will pass. is anyone else even seeing this? (yes, and there are three categories: those hurt and disturbed by it, those participating in it, and those who do not care. the first group is the smallest). as you bear witness, you alternate between silent tears and anxiety riddled gasps for breath. how is this real? how is this the echo of our ancestors, crying out across centuries, in scenes so gruesomely similar to every pogrom?

surely, you think, people will understand how devastating this is. reports come in of hostages taken, from the elderly to small children. surely the world will fight for them. (it won’t, it will tear their posters down and root for their deaths.) you do not know who any of them are yet, but eventually their names and stories will become a part of you, etched into your mind, your heart. you will remember their names more clearly than you remember the names of the friends who betrayed and abandoned you through violent bigotry and callous indifference.

you are thousands of miles away, but who you were dies that day. it’s a lingering death, not immediate, it takes you a month or so to notice, as the horrific rhetoric gets worse and increases in volume, unti they’re even demonizing the shema. that’s when you give up, surrender, and leave. that’s when you realize the illusion of safety in spaces from this are gone - it seeps into everything, and the music communities and the character fandoms and the art and poetry blogs will all be subsumed by this. it steals joy. it is inescapable. your life, which was small and isolated and quiet to begin with, will utterly change and is forced to close and shrink for your own wellbeing, nothing but severed connections in its wake. you were once far more open and soft, but you learn to be guarded. you learn to grieve in a never ending cycle. you are still who you were, your soul, your beliefs, but what you thought that meant in the world entirely and achingly transforms. you never imagined you could lose this much, mourn this much, and your heartbreak is nothing, infinitesimal, when compared to the suffering endured by countless others in this agony. this is not a world that welcomes you.

there is a before and an after. the before may have been an illusion, it may as well have been an alternate reality, a different universe. the after understands far more about the machinations of this evil, the blindness that accompanies it, the after is stronger and far more aware, but you do miss the before, when things could be silly and sweet without the shadow that now taints it all, without the knowledge you now possess. maybe that’s why Eve wasn’t supposed to bite the fruit, because the knowing is so painful.

two years is nothing, the blink of an eye. two years is endless, lurching slowly forward, a slideshow of images that cycle through your mind, new horrors added far too frequently, thoughts of beautiful, bright people tortured and starving and executed in tunnels, of a ceremony around those copper haired children’s coffins, of more murders around the world, of slogans and chants for more death.

the mirror crack’d from side to side.

two years is a lifetime but compresses into a single heartbeat, because it is still that day. it is October 732.