Thirty-two years ago, on one of those magnificent autumn days when the sun is out and the air is crisp, I sat on the small hill at the back of our property which overlooks the road. I don’t remember what I was doing; just that it had something to do with the garden. I heard our thirteen-year-old son calling out a greeting to me and looked up to see him crossing to our side of the road on his way home. I remember smiling and thinking that seeing him made the day perfect.

Then a shot rang out – or what sounded like a shot – and I heard our son let out a yelp. He grabbed one hand with the other and blood began streaming between his fingers.

It took me a few seconds to grasp that somehow there was a connection between the sound I’d heard and my son’s bleeding hand. But very quickly I tumbled down the hill to him, looking around furtively to assess any danger that might still be lurking. His face was white; his mouth slack. I grabbed him to me and pulled him into a dead run back to the house.

After a harrowing drive to the nearest hospital emergency room, x-rays, a very kind doctor extracting what was left of a small part of a bullet I don’t remember the name of, we checked into a nearby hotel because it was too close to Shabbat to drive home. Miraculously the bullet hadn’t damaged a nerve. The wound was painful but that would pass.

You may be familiar with that odd phenomenon of a parent being scared to death because of a danger a child has been in and the anger that comes with the relief of the passing of the danger. Like when a small child goes missing in a mall and then suddenly appears. That’s how I remember the time we spent in that hotel. Miserable for both of us.

Though there was no long-lasting damage to my son’s hand, there was definitely long-lasting damage to me.

I lost something very essential and dear to me – my basic innocent and naive belief that I could keep my children safe.

He’d been so close to me – maybe 20 yards away – and, yet, a nearby teenager’s wreckless play, putting fire to a bullet from his father’s personal weapon, wounded, and could’ve permanently damaged, or even killed, my son before my eyes.

In the thirty-two years from that day to this, I’ve made peace with that reality. Our five kids have made it into middle age, surviving whatever craziness they got themselves into. (And there was a bit.) These days I worry sometimes about our grandchildren, but I realize that they, too, will live their lives without my being able to control the dangers through which they’ll pass, hopefully successfully.

Life has been good to us.

We live in a house we love. We have a garden with gloriously large trees we’ve nurtured for over thirty-five years and a back porch on which we eat breakfast when weather permits, looking out at flowers, birds who come to eat and bathe in our yard, and the occasional fox. We travel to amazing places, celebrate many happy family occasions, cherish thirty-year-old friendships, do things we love, enjoy our relationship with each other, and are in relatively good health.

And then October 7th happened.

On another peaceful autumn day, the sun shining and the air crisp, thousands of Arabs – Hamas soldiers and regular residents of Gaza – men, women, and teenagers – stormed the flimsy gate separating Gaza from the Jewish kibbutzes, moshavs, and other small communities close by. They carried out the worst, cruelest atrocities perpetuated on Jews since the Holocaust.

Parents were brutally murdered in front of their children’s eyes, Women were violently and repeatedly raped while their incapacitated husbands and young children witnessed their degradation and murder. Babies were burned in microwave ovens. Adults and children were dismembered and beheaded. At an international music festival, over 250 young people were slaughtered, some shot to death as they ran for their lives, and others (not so lucky) caught and tortured before being killed.

For six and seven hours, or longer, people hid in their “safe rooms” or, in the case of the music festival, under bushes, behind trees, or under cars, praying for rescue. A few were able to hold out until family members from far away or army forces were able to reach them. Many were murdered or kidnapped into Gaza before help could reach them.

By the end the October 7th massacre over 1200 Jews had been brutally raped, tortured, mutilated, and/or killed. Over 200 Jews had been dragged into captivity in Gaza.

Since that day, when the true face of evil was revealed, my reality has once again shifted.

It took a couple of weeks for Jews around the world to come out in active support of Israel. At first we heard mostly of their fear for themselves – taking mezuzahs down and taking Jewish star necklaces off.

It took anti-semites of every order and in every country only hours to begin to demonstrate in the streets around the world in loud support of Hamas and against Israel.

University professors and administrators defended the anti-Israel, anti-semitic protests and posters as being protected by freedom of speech. One university professor even declared from a loudspeaker to a group of pro-Hamas supporters that she felt “empowered” by the events of October 7th. Administrators at Cornell, Harvard, and Penn shamelessly defended the call for the genocide of Jews as not being against campus rules, depending on the context.

I still remember well the United States of my childhood and young adulthood when no one could express anti-semitism out loud, no matter what they thought or felt in their hearts.

Women’s groups were totally silent concerning the gang rapes of Jewish women, the mutilation of women’s breasts, and the humiliation of parading Jewish women’s naked bodies through the streets of Gaza as residents there – men, women, and children – spat on them.

“#MeToo Unless You’re a Jew” went viral.

Those of us who were active in the women’s rights movement of the 60s and 70s were angry and ashamed.

Today I often catch myself looking at a beautiful young woman crossing the street in front of my car with the words of witnesses of gang rapes echoing in my head and thinking – “It could have been this young woman.”

It was so random. It could have been any woman.

I’m torn between reading yet another witness’s account and clicking on by without stopping. How many stories of such brutality can a soul bear? But what right do I have, as one who was spared the atrocities on that day, to ignore the testimony of those who lived through it?

I don’t know how anyone who survived the evil carried out so joyfully on October 7th will be able to find happiness in their life. To be able to trust other people again. To have a happy relationship with a partner. To fall asleep at night and find peace in slumber. How can they listen to people around the world defending their attackers and feel safe in this world? What effect does the deafening silence of women’s organizations have on their feeling of solidarity with other women?

I live my life in a pastoral setting, far removed from rockets and Gaza. And yet I wake up every morning and read the names of the fallen soldiers from the previous day and look at the photos of their beautiful, young, smiling faces. I believe fiercely that we must keep fighting until the evil has been wiped out, at the same time my heart aches for the loss of the lives of Israelis fighting for our right to live peacefully within our borders.

My hope of peaceful co-existence with Arabs in my Homeland has been shattered. I’m suspect of all.

Most of the communities in which the atrocities were carried out were politically left-wing; their residents believed in co-existence to the point of driving their Gazan neighbors to Jewish hospitals when they were ill, and to work inside Israel. In a shocking turn of events, the specific Gazan Arabs who were helped by their Jewish neighbors were exactly those who carried out their murder and directed others to the more vulnerable homes.

I look back on the unbounded optimism and basic joyfulness of my pre-October 7th life and wish I could have all that back. Maybe someday I’ll make peace with the reality of horrific evil in the world and be able to move on.

For now, there is a background of sadness omnipresent within me. A constant low-level mourning for those murdered, for the orphans, those who lost the most loved person or people in their lives – what a euphemism “lost” is for what happened to them – for those whose memories and dreams are forever tainted by horror.

I don’t forgive the world for its insensitivity to what happened to us on October 7th; for the minuscule attention span, the insistence on proclaiming moral equivalency, the legitimization of the rape, torture, dismemberment, and murder of Jews in any way, and for any reason, the silence of women’s organizations all over the world – they are no longer my sisters!.

If before October 7th I found the whole “Woke Movement” a bit ridiculous but temporary and basically harmless, today I know better.

My entire view of the world has changed.

We recently spent several days in Rome. One of those days was spent on a tour of The Colosseum and The Forum with an excellent guide. We had a basic, sketchy knowledge of both places but our eyes were opened that day. During those three hours, we learned of the cruelty of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. Far from romantic, people were pitted against each other, exotic animals against each other, and criminals were executed during the intermissions, as 50,000-80,000 spectators watched: men women, and children – yes, families came to “enjoy” the bloody battles to the death. For four hundred years this form of entertainment went on. Citizens of Rome were gifted with free tickets twice a year.

While shocked at this knowledge of the Rome we’d thought of as bestowing great culture and development upon the world, we found ourselves thinking that not much has changed since then. Hamas and the general population of Gaza, have proven humanity is still cruel, violent, jealous, and hateful. The residents of Gaza, have shown that simple citizens still get pleasure out of watching other human beings humiliated, tortured, raped, and murdered.

Where do we go from here? You tell me.