Early this morning, I dreamt that October 7th was happening next door at our former neighbor’s. Hamas had taken over their house. The neighbors weren’t there anymore and I was alone in my mother’s (z”l) house, where I grew up, only I was this age, 61.
I thought, OK, time to get raped. I walked outside my mom’s front door and onto the front lawn. Next door, I heard them yell, “V’ahavta!” like a battle cry. V’ahavta means, “And you shall love,” and it’s part of the Shema, the central prayer of Judaism.
The full phrase is, וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ / “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” In recalling the dream, I thought it was the start of a different phrase, וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ/ “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Either way, it was ridiculous that Hamas marauders were yelling V’ahavta, rather than Allahu Akbar or something else, but that’s dreams for you. Maybe it was because a couple of years ago, Pat & I attended what was meant to be a dialogue between Memphis' Jews and Palestinians, and the imam said it is permitted, "...to murder out of love." Whatever that meant! I thought I had imagined it because who would say such a thing, let alone a clergyperson, but when I told Pat the dream afterward, she said, "Like the imam said."
Back to the dream: I stood on the lawn by myself and thought, Why am I presenting myself? Go back in the house and lock the doors. Thank God, I woke up.
Upon waking, I reasoned, probably, Hamas terrorists would have come over and burned the house down with me in it. What a way to go. Rape or house-fire, or both.
A month ago, we commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and I was working in Midtown Manhattan that morning until I fled the city. Today is the third anniversary of October 7th.
After 9/11, Pat said, "If I had been in the Towers that morning, I'd probably have run to the window to see what was happening, and not run to escape." Like she'd have been drawn to the spectacle of the catastrophe. I didn't get it at all. Me? I'd have run to the stairwell, I was convinced. And yet...
As soon as it was logistically possible to fly to Israel, following October 7th, I did. Memphis hosted a mission of more than a dozen delegates.
I hope it was the oddest tour I'll ever take, including the Moshav Netiv Ha'Asarah, a gorgeous, Israeli, collective village next to Gaza, where we were told, Gazan gardeners, who were employed by the Israeli villagers, gave Hamas info on homes there down to pet dogs' names.
Our guide, a former resident, walked with us past a house razed to the ground and took us up the hill just feet from the wall between the village and Gaza. He showed us the high-tech watch tower built into the wall, which he said had been destroyed by simple, Hamas-guided drones.
The tour also included meeting with the head of a volunteer group that searched for people, or parts of people murdered that day, and prepared them for Jewish burial. He described their effort while standing in front of a makeshift junkyard full of compressed cars that had been burned by Hamas followers.
Before talking with the volunteer leader, we parked the bus near the junkyard and spotted a platoon of female soldiers, who were preparing to go into Gaza that day. An older, male soldier was giving them a pep-talk. My rabbi then, Rabbi Sarit Horwitz, who accompanied us on the mission, along with another rabbi from one of the other Memphis synagogues, approached the soldiers and asked in Hebrew to speak to their commander.
A cute woman, who appeared to be maybe 20 years old, walked over to her, and Rabbi Sarit handed her a bundle of cards. The cards, Rabbi Sarit told the commander, in Hebrew, were made by students from one of Memphis' Jewish day schools. They were cards designed to lift the soldiers' spirits. The mephakedet/commander smiled and thanked her. We left them to continue their prep.
Later, we visited a hospital that used a special therapy for people with PTSD, involving hyperbaric chambers. People were sitting side by side in them as we walked by, almost as though seated next to one another on a subway. I felt grossly voyeuristic, and still, I couldn't look away. The hospital spokesperson, who accompanied the doctor on our tour, told us that the hospital aspires to treat anyone traumatized by October 7th and the war that followed, including Gazans.
Another day of the three-day, compressed visit ended with a Memphis Jewish Federation-sponsored cookout for dozens of Israeli soldiers of all genders, who were spending their days in Gaza. All of the soldiers seemed younger than 30. They looked baby-faced in their fatigues, and yet who knows what they had seen that day? They were happy for a good meal, and perhaps for how it symbolized a chunk of the larger Jewish community's support.
All of these memories were my version of metaphorically running to look instead of running down the World Trade Center stairwells, including seeing the Nova site, which was Ground Zero of the pogrom. We also visited a nearby kibbutz, where the granddaughter of two of our Memphian delegates, who had joined the Israeli army as a lone soldier, helped defend the village from the marauders before being killed weeks later while standing guard in Jerusalem, and we saw fresh almond blossoms and red anemones in bloom despite everything.
I needed to witness the pogrom aftermath for myself. Why? I'm not sure. I'd like to think it's because I learned, growing up, " כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה” / Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh"/"All Israel [i.e., the Jewish people] is responsible for one another," but I'm not sure it was entirely out of a noble impulse. I do know that despite it being just four months after the catastrophe, and despite not knowing if I'd be safe, I still needed to make the journey.
Now, three years later, I had the nightmare I had. My personal nightmares always end upon waking, but the larger nightmare hasn't yet ended. Still, we all go on.
The other night, I enjoyed leftovers from a lovely, local Lebanese restaurant. Since October 7th, we’ve brought two sets of Israeli second cousins to the restaurant when they've visited us in Memphis. Roi, the youngest, a teenager, who will soon do his military conscription, said it was the first good meal he had eaten in the South.
