This Shabbat, a week later, was a day of peace. Pieces of our battered spirits being picked up and examined, as reality sinks in because there is nothing to distract us. No phone, no Facebook, no Instagram, or X to post on, to howl #HamasisISIS. We have a family with eight children for Shabbat lunch. Jews by choice from North Carolina who moved to Israel two years ago. They are shaken. They are happy to be with others. We are happy to be with them. To break bread and be together.
Today, I feel the whisper of my ancestors as Israelis literally pick up the pieces of the cruelly murdered in the South and run DNA tests to identify them; as the social media war has broken out; as I cannot sleep, desperately trying to fight the malicious propaganda promoting Hamas and terror, that has made Jews unsafe worldwide.
Who is speaking up and crying out, saying “It’s not okay,” like New York Mayor Eric Adams did? As the Global Imams Council did, issuing a Fatwa against supporting Hamas. History will judge us as we choose silence or speaking out. Evil or truth. I know which side I am on. I am standing on my street in Jerusalem and hearing the Shabbat songs from neighboring homes sung loudly.
Sarah Sassoon is the author of Shoham's Bangle and the forthcoming This Is Not a Cholent. She lives in Jerusalem.