OPINION:
That day, Oct. 7, 2023, was terrifying. Nothing in my life could have ever prepared me for what happened, and what would come the following year, much less to still be at war.
I woke up, along with my wife and kids, to an air raid siren about 50 yards outside our bedroom window. Especially if you’re sleeping, the sound is particularly piercing, loud, and jarring. That would be the first of four times we were sent to our bomb shelter that morning, as we heard the booms of rockets being intercepted overhead.
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Before dashing out of bed, I was in a state between sleep and awake, lying in bed, thinking I was dreaming and interacting intellectually with my dreams. In my non-dream dream, I heard booms in the distance, thinking to myself that it made no sense. For some reason, I thought it was tank fire which is all the more odd given that tanks are not deployed in our region. But I lay there, hearing the booms, thinking that something was going on but that I was in a dream.
It was no dream. What I was hearing were the sounds of rockets exploding over Jerusalem, only 10-20 kilometers away.
It was Shabbat, the Sabbath, the day of rest, and because we are Orthodox Jews, we did not turn on our phones or TV. We did not believe that we were in any particular danger. Bomb shelters are standard construction in Israel and ours is our oldest son’s room. The lights were off. Once pulling the steel shutters closed, we sat in the dark for several minutes each time, waiting for the sound of rockets being intercepted, or landing nearby, and the shrapnel to fall.
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My youngest son was so bothered at having to wake up and get out of bed each time, he decided it was easier to sleep in his brother’s bed and not have to be jolted out of his.
It’s not frequent, but it’s not impossible that rockets would be fired at us from Gaza. I would have loved to be a fly on my wall that day, listening to our conversation about what could cause terrorists in Gaza to fire so many rockets so far away from the border. The speculation was wide-ranging but none of it was right.
At about 4:00 p.m., my oldest son came into the house and informed us that his reservist combat unit had been called up. He was still dressed in more formal clothes as we do on Shabbat. He had 10 minutes to get all his gear together before being picked up to go. My wife and I scurried around to help him and send him off with food, not fully absorbing what was unfolding. He reported that about 20 people had been killed. That’s all we knew that first day.
Ten minutes later, not knowing where he was going or for how long, I stood on our seventh-story balcony watching him hop into a small black car and drive off. It sunk in then. My heart sank, knowing that something serious was going on. I choked up in fear.
Driving is also not something we do on Shabbat, with one exception: To save lives. That day, our mostly Orthodox town’s streets had significant traffic with hundreds of others being among the 300,000 reservists who were called to respond and serve that day.
Knowing that our son was on his way to battle, we quickly realized that my son-in-law might have also been called up. My wife and our youngest daughter walked 30 minutes to my daughter and son-in-law’s apartment in another neighborhood, expecting that she might need help with her three kids, ages 4 and under.
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Indeed, my son-in-law was also called up. But he had waited to report to his Gaza border base. Had he gone earlier, he’d have likely been killed along the way.
He took our old blue Nissan sedan. I silently wished it would be hit by a rocket (without him in it of course) as we need a new car anyway. We didn’t care about the car but for his safety. The roads leading to his base were littered with bodies, and even by the time he arrived, there was still active combat with terrorists. The shoulders of these roads were now shared by some of the 1,600 empty shot-up and burned-out cars of victims, and with hundreds of reservists who drove to the border in their own cars.
Only after Shabbat did we turn on the news and begin to learn the depths of the horrors that had taken place. It was days before the death toll (1,200) and how many hostages were taken (250+), and the vast destruction, and injuries were known. It was days until all the terrorists were eliminated. It was weeks before the depth of the barbaric crimes committed that day became clear: gang rape, sexual mutilation, beheading, burning people alive, executing children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children.
It was weeks before DNA and archeological specialists sifting through the ash that had once been a human being were able to find any way of identifying those incinerated.
When he was called up that day, my son was a newlywed, having been married for three months. He spent the next four months in the reserves, getting leave for a day or two here and there. Most of that time, he was inside Gaza and in combat with the terrorists. It took him months after discharge to relate much of what he saw and experienced.
It was eerie, sad, and demonstrated a loss of control when he would text that he was going into Gaza using a shorthand we had developed. It was too dangerous to say “Hey, I am going into Gaza now.” Soldiers were not allowed to bring their phones for their own safety. It was also a relief to receive a text message when he’d come out of Gaza, knowing that he was no longer under direct fire. But when he wrote “I’m giving up my phone now,” we knew what that meant and I feared that it might be his last. A parent always wants to know how their children are doing, but his service in Gaza brought not knowing to a whole new level. When he was “in” we rarely slept.
During those four months, I rarely left the house not wanting to leave my wife alone. If we were to have received the now well-known “knock on the door” that our son had been injured or worse, I could not leave my wife alone to deal with it. The cascading effects of that knock consumed my thoughts: Who would find and inform our five other children? Who would tell my daughter-in-law living, who was in her parent’s house? What was the protocol? I didn’t ever want to know, but knew that I needed to be available, just in case.
When my son did have his phone, he would ask that I buy flowers for his wife on Shabbat, a way to honor a Jewish tradition and let her know he was thinking of her. When he didn’t have his phone, I knew to do it anyway. On one Friday while delivering her flowers, my daughter-in-law’s sister saw me. She smiled initially, and then her face went white, thinking that something terrible had happened. Even something beautiful as buying flowers for your wife for Shabbat became imbued with fear.
This is true with many things since that day.
In Gaza, my son and son-in-law as well as all the other reservists were under fire from day one.
Gidon was a soldier in my son’s unit. One day, the unit family member WhatsApp list blew up with news of one of the soldiers being killed, creating terror among all until his name was announced. Gidon was a father of six who was killed right alongside where my son was fighting at the time. At their first release from Gaza following Gidon’s death, the entire unit went to make a condolence call to Gidon’s widow. The unit is now known as “Gidon’s Unit,” in his memory, and as a silent blessing that it wasn’t anyone else. Since that day, there have been hundreds of military widows and thousands of orphans.
We spent lots of time helping our daughter and grandchildren, as many grandparents did across Israel. Their neighborhood was virtually devoid of men as most had been called up, leaving young women to be responsible for the house, childcare, and work, all worried about their husbands’ safety.
On Christmas Eve, while distributing warm winter coats to soldiers in the Golan Heights, I met the rabbi of an artillery unit. Half an hour earlier, his commanding officer asked if he knew where they could get winter jackets. Four weeks later, we delivered 350 new jackets to the grateful soldiers and got to inscribe love notes on some of the shells being prepared to fire at Hezbollah. The rabbi was my daughter and son-in-law’s neighbor, and his son was my grandson’s playmate. Everything in our small country is two degrees of separation, in grief and in helping one another.
Since October 7, my grandchildren haven’t really known what is going on but they knew something was not normal. They experienced and displayed trauma, something that is still evident, and I believe will be with them to some degree for the rest of their lives. That day, and the war that has ensured, is now part of our DNA individually and as a people.
We have all been to multiple funerals and houses of mourning – all close to home and all taking their toll. As people here, and friends overseas, instinctively ask when greeting someone, “How are you?” my reply has typically been, “No worse off than most Israelis.” Not in the category of having an immediate relative or close friend killed or kidnapped, I pray that it doesn’t get worse for us.
My oldest son lost friends from high school, as well as a young man who he designated as an outstanding soldier from his unit when he was responsible for their induction. That hit hard and close to home.
One daughter has two friends, including a roommate, who each lost brothers. They are not the same. How can they be?
Israel has always been a country where two degrees of separation are the rule. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who was either killed, kidnapped, fought, or injured.
In the immediate aftermath of that day, there’s been a profound sense of unity. It reminds me of the few weeks following Sept. 11, 2001. But ours is a trauma that is still ongoing.
We still don’t know the depth of how the multi-system failure that allowed that day to even happen, and some of the unity has frayed into political divisiveness. There’s been lots of suffering and loss, but many miracles.
One year since that day, we’re still in the midst of the trauma with no end in sight.
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Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. Throughout his life and career, he has become a respected bridge between Jews and Christians and serves as president of the Genesis 123 Foundation (www.Genesis123.co). He writes regularly about Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He is host of the popular Inspiration from Zion podcast and publisher of www.IsraeltheMiracle.com. He can be reached at firstpersonisrael@gmail.com.
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