Oct 7th Reflections
Ayala Dekel, Nir Braudo, Marcie Yoselevsky and Avi Austin Bierman share their reflections as we approach this anniversary. Israeli born and olim, parents and reservists, each of them offer a particular window to the experience of Israelis over this past year.
Ayala Dekel:
I have never experienced anything like the year we are closing. It is a year that swept us into an abyss of pain, evil, and cruelty that surpasses anything I could have imagined. And, at the same time, it was a year that revealed how much goodness, depth, courage, and strength are within me and around me. If a year ago someone had told me what we would experience this year, I would never have imagined that despite everything, I would still be able to laugh, hug, and feel joy and pride. This year, I rediscovered the power of life. The life force that allows you to get up despite the endless anxiety and fear. The life force that allows us to continue on even after we have lost loved ones. The life force that pushes us to pave the way forward, even when our hearts are still captive in Gaza.
For the last year we met once a week, on Friday, in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. We are a gathering of people diverse in every way you can measure, bound initially by the feeling that you simply cannot be alone in these moments before Shabbat and we cannot leave the families of the hostages alone. And so, week after week, in these Friday gatherings, unusual powers were revealed to us. I discovered how Judaism can be an anchor and provide stability. Week after week we stood there and sent the ministering angels to Gaza, to sit together with the abductees in the tunnels and brighten, perhaps a little, their days. I discovered that in Gaza, even in the captivity of Gaza, there were abductees like Omer Shem Tov and Eti Regev who made Kiddush and welcomed Shabbat. That this ritual gave them strength to survive every day. We found out how many small and meaningful gestures can also happen underground. How much mutual help and humanity can emerge in the great darkness.
Revelations didn’t come just in the Square. Also at home discoveries were made. Most of this year my partner was in IDF reserve duty. Amidst the difficulty, strain and worry, I rediscovered our strength together as spouses and I saw our children in a new light, their ability to be a support for us.
The army reminded us how our sometimes fraught and divergent national family can come together. Soldiers and reservists from throughout Israel came together in their uniforms and in their purpose. Little by little, this sense of unity crept beyond the army to the citizens at home, and we rediscovered and newed our connections.
This year, I was present at so many ego-free meetings of good people who simply want to do something for Israeli society and the Jewish people. I want to finish by sharing the words of Naama Levy, kidnapped a year ago and still held in Gaza. Naama wrote these words at the end of her mechina (pre-army gap year) program, a year spent in leadership training and personal development. Precisely now, when her voice cannot be heard from captivity, it is time to give voice to her words: “I learned not to give up. Not to despair. I learned to get up and try again even when it seemed that there was no chance. I learned to give my fullest even when I was already exhausted. I learned to think positively. I learned to maintain all optimism. I learned that I still have so much to learn.”
As we contemplate the close of the year, I wish for us to know that there is much to learn, that we will have the humility that enables learning from the other, and that we will be able to learn from Naama and all the abductees when they return to us soon.
Ayala Deckel is the head of BINA’s Secular Yeshiva
Nir Braudo:
I experienced October 7th as someone who grew up here in Israel, all my life educated in, and believing in, the idea of Israel as a safe place for Jews and Judaism. I still believe in this. But the reality that caught me on October 7th was very, very difficult. I struggled immensely with feeling that all this evil and all this hate for Israel and Jews came into our houses, to our communities, to childrens bedrooms. That reality was hard to grasp and was intensely, sometimes unbearably, sad. The numbers of lost and kidnapped. The closeness of it all, that we all knew someone and it was only a matter of how closely. The number of funerals and shivas we experienced. It was all overwhelming at times. It was nothing we ever imagined would happen in our lifetime.
On the other end of seeming impossibility, I experienced incredible moments of hope and pride. The creativity. The possibility to rise up, even after such a disaster. The ability to create all these unique things that only Israelis can do. People searching for how to help those in need, how to help the evacuees all over israel. People who came from abroad, volunteered, contributed their time, their skills and their money. People who found creative solutions to our very challenging situations. In many instances volunteers took over things that the government should do, but simply weren’t.
Again now, it has been an especially hard week. A few days ago I attended the Rosh Hashanah event at Sde Nitzan, one of the communities participating in Tzomachat Shuv (link to: www.bina.org.il/en/rebuilding-southern-communities/), BINA’s project for renewal in the south. At the event, I saw all the members of the community sitting together – kids, families, adults – sitting on the grass and singing Rosh Hashanah songs, singing about hope for the new year to come. I was moved and inspired by what human beings can do, to rebuild and celebrate less than a year after the worst disaster beyond imagination.
I’m also proud of the people of BINA. During the first week of the war, I watched as individuals took initiative and as we as an organization moved quickly to respond to the reality. I won’t forget the first weeks of the war and seeing BINA volunteers in action throughout the country – in agriculture in the north and south, in centers for evacuated communities, in distribution points for needed supplies, at kabbalat shabbat in Hostage Square. It is remarkable to me, in retrospect, that BINA led kabbalat shabbat gatherings when sirens were still blaring around Israel, when we ran together to the shelter singing shabbat songs.
May the new year bring peace, the return of our hostages, and the continuation of our work toward a more just society. Shana tova.
Nir Braudo is BINA’s Executive Director
Marcie Yoselevsky:
In the earliest part of spring, the fields in the south of Israel bloom with carpets of red flowers, kalaniot (anemone). Much of the country packs a picnic and drives south to see them. It is as idyllic as it sounds. Jewish and not, secular and religious, couples on dates and multigenerational families, everyone walks trails, exclaims “fantastic, this year is really exceptional!” and poses for pictures. These are the fields, communities, and lives attacked on October 7th.
I wrote this one year ago. The year since has felt like a hurricane through which we zig zag again and again. Sometimes we are outside it and we can see it coming at us. Sometimes we are in its grasp. Sometimes we are in the eye, waiting, not fooled by the tense, eerie stillness, knowing there is more to come. There is no completion, no conclusion, no comfort.
In moments of pain and crisis, when a loved one is sick, when a marriage is falling apart, nothing is simple and there is no moment of pure joy. But in these instances, I have experienced the remarkable human capacity to adapt, to adjust to new circumstances and somehow function through them. The pain moves to a place within reach, but no longer so thoroughly intertwined.
This year the circumstances are changing too quickly – we never have the opportunity to adjust and function in a new normal because it all keeps changing under our feet. And yet, over the course of a year, a lot happens. In this year, nothing here has been simple – everything comes with a ‘because’ and ‘despite’. I live in this country because I believe in its purpose, promise and beauty and despite much of its current leadership and the ugly realities of these days. I fly home to it during a war because of and despite the war. I visit the shuk (open market) because I need to feel its vibrant energy and despite the anxiety blended into that energy.
I wonder sometimes if people outside of Israel know that we are, all of us, doing some version of this. That along with there being no wholeness, closure or the comfort that can bring, there are no simple actions. That for a year now when we sit in the sun on a nice day, or mourn a particular loss amidst the many, or sit down to Rosh Hashana dinner, there is a ‘because of’ and ‘despite’. It is hardly the biggest story of the past year, but there is a particular strain and exhaustion that comes with each choice and interaction being so fraught.
I suspect this won’t go away any time soon but what I hope, as we start a new year on the anniversary of October 7th, is that we can soon close this chapter and begin the next one, the healing that has eluded us for a year. For that to happen we need to feel a peace and wholeness that I’m not sure we can fully reclaim. But as a first step, we must be reunited with our hostages, with those sent to fight, and with the parts of ourselves crushed on October 7th. The seemingly endless accumulation of new pains and losses has to cease. Because this has to be possible. Despite it all.
Marcie Yoselevsky is a member of BINA’s External Relations team.
Avi Austin Bierman:
We all know exactly where we were on the morning of October 7th, 2023. Those moments of realizing the enormity and horror of the day will forever be seared into each of our memories and the collective memory of the Jewish people. My morning began in Herzliya, being woken by my roommates’ calling out that there is a siren and we need to run down the stairs to our building’s shelter.
As someone that used to live on Kibbutz Alumim, in Otef Aza, I am used to sirens and do not panic when I hear one. My roommates dragged me downstairs and the whole time I was thinking “great, another round of ‘Hamas launching rockets at us and our air force responding’ is about to begin. Couldn’t they have waited till after Simchat Torah?”
After the obligatory 10-minute waiting period in the bomb shelter, we went back upstairs and as I went back to sleep, my mom, like any good Jewish mother, called me to make sure I was okay. As a former member of Kibbutz Alumim, I was still in the Kibbutz security WhatsApp group chat. It was while on the phone with my mom that, 10-minutes after the first sirens, I saw the message I will never forget, “Stay in the shelter. Terrorists in the kibbutz.”
My name is Avi, I am a former lone soldier and Oleh Chadash from the United States. I was released from my mandatory service in the army almost a full year before Oct. 7th. When I first made Aliyah to Israel, I lived on Kibbutz Alumim for a year and a half, through the lone soldier program Garin Tzabar. I was adopted by a host family who I am still close with and I often spend holidays with them on the kibbutz. Simchat Torah 2023, was supposed to be one of these holidays. I was supposed to be in Otef Aza and on Kibbutz Alumim on Oct. 7th but, due to chance, divine intervention, or whatever you wish to call it, I stayed in Herzliya. As the events of October 7th raged on, I was overcome with feelings of guilt, feelings of despair, but also inspiration. I did, and still do, torture myself that I was not there when I should have been, despite knowing that there is nothing that I, realistically, could have done to help. This sense of helplessness inspired me and guided my next actions, and in January I drafted to reserve duty, handling logistics on my old tank base near Eilat.
Inspiration strikes at odd times. On October 7th I hadn’t yet been placed in a reserve duty unit, had no commander with whom to speak, no base to go to, no weapon to fight with, and no medical training as an EMT or available medical equipment to provide. I did not know what to do and the despair was overwhelming. As a semi-observant Jew who keeps the holidays, I chose to drive a few of my fellow lone soldiers to meet up with their units because I knew that I had to do something, anything. Within two days of Oct. 7th, I was driving donations to the borders and begging every reserve duty commander that I could find to draft me to their unit. Despite what I was doing to help, despite knowing friends–who, for a lone soldier, are as close and loved as family–that were injured, missing, KIA, or preparing for war, and despite having to attempt to calm my own family back in the U.S., I had a responsibility to fulfill.
Amidst it all, I was also the recruitment coordinator for the Masa Israel Teaching Fellows (MITF) program that BINA organizes and operates. At the time, we had 33 MITF participants spread throughout Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, Kiryat Gat and Beit She’an. I was not only juggling the events of Oct. 7th as an Israeli and as a former lone soldier, but I was also trying to take care of 33 foreigners from the U.S., U.K., and Canada. I struggled with this, with juggling emotions and tasks all of which were equally important.
As I was driving around the country delivering donations, I also checked on and did my best to take care of our participants. My absence required my colleagues at BINA to cover many of my responsibilities.This time period only further proved the strength and resolve that makes BINA the community it is. BINA tightened as a family, not always agreeing, but always being there for one another with compassion and understanding.
Almost a full year and October 7th, 2023 has not yet ended. Now, as we all prepare for an expected, escalated war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, I am proud to say that the BINA family helped me get through the past year and I know that we will continue to help one another through the next.
Avi Austin Bierman, Head of Recruitment for BINA’s MITF program
