October 7 changed everything. October 8 changed me.
On October 7, 2023, I was flying to visit family, entirely oblivious to the nightmare unfolding in Israel. While terrorists poured across the border—murdering families in their homes, hunting young people at a music festival, and dragging hostages into Gaza—I was simply sitting on an airplane.
By the time I landed and understood what had happened, I figured Israel would take care of it. They would get the hostages back, deal with Hamas, and the world would stand beside us in our grief. We had all seen the videos. We had watched the terror in real time. Give it a day, I thought. Maybe a few days.
I could not have been more wrong.
I was wrong about how long the war would last and how quickly the hostages would come home. But mostly, I was wrong about everyone else.
October 8 came, and people were already taking to the streets. Israel had barely begun counting its dead, yet thousands of miles away, people had already decided the Jews needed to answer for them. There were celebrations, rallies, and explanations for why the slaughter of Jewish families wasn’t quite as straightforward as it looked. We were expected to defend ourselves before we even had time to grieve. While parents waited to learn whether their children were dead or being held somewhere in Gaza, people were already debating what Israel had done to deserve it.
October 7 was horror. October 8 was abandonment.
I knew Hamas hated Jews. They had never hidden it. What I didn’t expect was for people thousands of miles away to rationalize—even defend—that hatred to people whose families had just been slaughtered. I didn’t expect the rape of Israeli women to be debated or kidnapped children to become part of an argument over history they didn’t write. I never imagined watching people tear down posters of hostages and believe they were doing something righteous.
Pandora’s box had been shattered beyond redemption.
Sometimes I grieve the Jew I was on October 6. She wasn’t less Jewish. She just carried it differently. She didn’t notice who noticed her Judaism. She didn’t hear the word “Zionist” and wait for what came next. She didn’t spend her mornings looking for historical proof that Jews belonged in places where others now insisted we were strangers.
I had always believed in Israel’s right to exist, but Zionism wasn’t something I thought to announce. Suddenly, everyone else was defining it for me. Zionists weren’t welcome. Zionist businesses should be boycotted. Zionists were colonizers, racists, Nazis.
So, am I a Zionist? Yes. I believe Jews have the right to live in our ancestral homeland and that Israel has the right to exist. I’m a Zionist—a fiercer and prouder one than I ever knew I could be.
Jewish life shifted in many ways too. Synagogues added more security. Jewish students learned which parts of their campuses to avoid. I wear a necklace shaped like Israel with a Star of David inside; my husband wears a silver star and has Jewish tattoos. We haven’t hidden any of it, but I notice people noticing now. When someone mentions Israel, I listen differently. When an old friend posts something cruel, I remember it.
Sometimes life goes on. You share dinner, wish them a happy birthday, talk about the weather, and remain friends.
But you know something about them now that you didn’t know before.
Three years is a long time. We still travel, work, laugh, and complain about traffic. I get my nails done. We go out to dinner. There are entire days when October 7 isn’t at the front of my mind.
It doesn’t have to be. It moved in.
We are also watching history change while we’re still living it. A massacre became “resistance.” Hostages became “prisoners.” Terrorists became “martyrs.” Jews who objected became the villains.
It felt like a seismic shift.
For years, people had called themselves “woke.” They told everyone else to check their biases, recognize coded language, question what they’d been taught, and listen to minorities. Then I watched so many of those same people repeat slogans they had never bothered to investigate and share history they had never studied.
Meanwhile, a lot of Jews were having the opposite experience. We were startled awake. I know I was.
I watched Jewish history begin to disappear in real time. Jews were suddenly foreigners in the place where Jewish history began. Jewish communities that had existed for centuries disappeared from the story. Pogroms before Israel existed were ignored. The Jews driven from countries across the Middle East and North Africa barely existed in the version of history now being passed around online.
And some of the oldest lies about us came roaring back. Jews control the media. Jews control the government. Jews buy politicians. Jews manufacture wars. Jews lie about what happens to them. Blood libel came back. Holocaust inversion came back. Collective blame came back.
Change “Jew” to “Zionist,” and people who would never dream of calling themselves antisemitic could repeat things that Jews have heard for centuries.
I knew these things from history books. I never expected to watch them happen in my lifetime. I decided the only way I knew how to fight the hate was to learn our history in order to preserve our future.
And I found Jews everywhere I looked.
I found so much more than persecution. I learned that we were fighters. We were resilient. We were funny and entertaining and brilliant and creative. We were scientists, doctors, musicians, inventors, artists, writers, soldiers, teachers, merchants, mothers, fathers, and kids trying to make a life wherever we landed.
We built things. We discovered things. We made people laugh. We made music. We cured diseases. We started businesses, created art, fought in other people’s wars, and helped build other people’s countries. When we were thrown out, we started again somewhere else.
We gave so much and expected so little in return. Most of the time, we just wanted to be left alone to live.
And somehow we kept going.
So much of my life I learned what was done to Jews, but not nearly enough about what Jews had done.
That’s the silver lining, if there is one. While I was finding out how comfortable some people could become with hating Jews, I was falling much more deeply in love with being one.
That’s why I document everything now. I’ve learned how fast yesterday can disappear.
I know things now that I didn’t know on October 6. I know how quickly something we all watched happen can be rewritten. I know how easily people can convince themselves that an ancient hatred is something new. I know things about the world, and about people I trusted, that I wish I didn’t.
There is no going back to October 6.
But I also know we’ll be alright. We always are.
When you really think about it, we’re kind of miraculous. There are so few of us. We’ve been chased, expelled, murdered, scattered, and told over and over again that we don’t belong, and somehow we’re still here. Still laughing, creating, fighting, building, giving, and finding each other.
Still Jewish.
I grew up reading about times when Jews watched the world around them change. Things people would never say became things people said out loud. Things that were unacceptable became acceptable. But those stories had already happened. When I had enough, I could close the book.
I never thought I would know what it felt like to live through one.
Sometimes I miss the woman sitting on that flight to Detroit. She thought Israel would handle it. She thought the world would understand. Mostly, she thought October 7 would end.
Three years later, I’m still waiting for October 8 to end.
