By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence
Everyone has their own personal version of events when it comes to October 7th. Where they were, how they found out, how they were affected, how they were filled with doubt that something like this could actually happen. It’s the same with September 11th and how that day is seared in our minds forever. It’s the day we lost our innocence. The day we realized that, like our ancestors before us, those whom we thought were our friends are not to be trusted.
The day formerly known as Simchat Torah 2023 will now forever be associated with that wanton attack, the day we were reminded that the struggles our grandparents dealt with in the Holocaust are still struggles we must deal with today.
Antisemitism, hatred, and a general revulsion toward Jewish people based solely on their Jewishness might be something we thought no longer existed in 2024, but here we are, still fighting for our right to exist. Still fighting for the right to practice our religion freely in the country that’s been our ancestral homeland for thousands of years.
We are still fighting to free the hostages while the world cries for ceasefire. We see the freed hostages still dealing with the trauma and the fear of a recurrence, which will no doubt haunt them for the rest of their days.
As someone who was born and raised in New York, I cannot deny that tinge of envy I immediately felt after October 7, when soldiers and reservists were called back to their posts. When swarms of fathers, sons, husbands, and even Americans living abroad who haven’t served in years ran to defend their land without hesitation.
I know now from my comfortable enclave in America, with no direct threat to my life, that I will never feel for my birthplace the way they feel about Israel.
In the darkest of days after 10-7, seeing that solidarity and love for a land has given me hope that we will be victorious over the evil forces of a brainwashed people who were born to hate us.
Social media has been a double-edged sword over the last year, with every encouraging message of hope and love towards our people being met with an endless amount of vitriol, many of it being the type of baseless hatred that is a result of complete ignorance.
There are echoes of what my grandmother’s family must have seen before the Holocaust, one day living among their neighbors and the next, her entire family murdered while she spent the next five years hiding in cellars and running through forests in a desperate attempt to save her life.
That type of experience never leaves a person, and for the remainder of her 93 years, I doubt she ever really trusted humanity again. There’s no going back from a place where you see how people truly feel, regardless of their reasons.
It’s something I’m sure a lot of us struggle with, the idea that others can discriminate based on our religion, and although it comes with a healthy portion of self-consciousness, I think it’s better to know than to think we’re on level ground with those who have no tolerance for people and religions that are different.
And although this experience has exposed a type of sadness and pain that many of us have never witnessed before, I also see a strong resilience among our people, and it has brought us together in ways I’ve never seen before.
We are no longer categorized by our level of observance because that doesn’t matter and it never has.
We are one people who may do things with various levels of observance, but we were all born as Jews. We are meant to be unified, not isolated based on our levels of observance.
We lead our lives with light and love, we celebrate holidays with their special customs, the foods we cherish, and the traditions we have upheld for thousands of years, teaching our future generations to be proud of where they come from and celebrate it, not hide it.
The beauty of Judaism won’t be dulled by the ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding of others.
This year on Simchat Torah, we need to celebrate the day regardless of what our enemies tried to accomplish last year. We need to celebrate our traditions and embrace our fellow Jews, regardless of their level of observance. And above all, we need to give thanks to Hashem for sustaining us and enabling us to reach this occasion.
Am Yisrael Chai. n
Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of 5, a writer, and a social media influencer.
