Dozens of books about the events of Octo­ber 7 have been pub­lished so far, includ­ing sev­er­al that com­mem­o­rate the lives lost that day and in its after­math. If You Read These Words by Shlo­mo Kavas and Rache­li Palant-Rozen, trans­lat­ed from Hebrew by Sara Daniel, has an ambi­tious premise: bring­ing the unmedi­at­ed voic­es of fall­en sol­diers in the form of the let­ters they left behind ​“just in case” they did not come back from the bat­tle­field. Forty-nine let­ters are fea­tured in this col­lec­tion, rep­re­sent­ing bare­ly 5 per­cent of the sol­diers and mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces killed on Octo­ber 7 and the ensu­ing war.

Try­ing to grasp the extent of the fall­en, espe­cial­ly in a war that has not offi­cial­ly end­ed, can be dis­ori­ent­ing. To pre­vent their read­ers from feel­ing over­whelmed, Kavas and Palant-Rozen have inter­spersed essays by pub­lic fig­ures among the let­ters, cre­at­ing breath­ing room for the read­er. This also helps to turn the book into an almost col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence by simul­ta­ne­ous­ly show­ing the let­ters and allow­ing read­ers to see how some­one else — an artist, a social activist, a rab­bi, or even Pres­i­dent Her­zog — expe­ri­enced them. 

Design choic­es also play a key role in the impres­sion this book makes on the read­er. Instead of the offi­cial army pho­to, each chap­ter fea­tures an artist’s ren­di­tion of the soldier’s por­trait. And because type­set text lacks the imme­di­a­cy of a hand­writ­ten let­ter, the let­ters also fea­ture a phrase in the soldier’s own hand­writ­ing. If the orig­i­nal let­ter includ­ed emo­jis, doo­dles, or hand draw­ings, these too are repro­duced in the book. 

But prob­a­bly the most help­ful design fea­ture in the book is the explana­to­ry text on each page, which func­tions as the ​“Rashi com­men­tary” of the let­ter. While not strict­ly nec­es­sary for under­stand­ing the text, the com­men­tary illu­mi­nates dif­fer­ent aspects of the let­ter, and helps uncov­er lay­ers of mean­ing: sud­den­ly, the names of child­hood friends become famil­iar, a ref­er­enced grandparent’s ill­ness is explained, and inside jokes make sense. 

Thanks to these design choic­es, and to the authors’ exper­tise in curat­ing a vari­ety of let­ters and arrang­ing them to res­onate with one anoth­er, the book is not mere­ly an aggre­ga­tion of voic­es from the dead, but also a por­tal into the rich lives of for­mer strangers. Read­ers get a glimpse of others’person’s fears and dreams; their sense of duty, frus­tra­tion, and grat­i­tude; their con­tra­dic­tions; and even their dark humor. At the same time, this inevitably makes the loss more poignant, and the tragedy of the cur­rent war even more painful.

Ques­tions about trag­ic events and the impor­tance of bear­ing wit­ness expand into ques­tions about shared respon­si­bil­i­ty and mean­ing. What insights from this book do we want to car­ry for­ward into our own lives? What respon­si­bil­i­ty do we share in keep­ing the lega­cy of the deceased alive? This is a book that allows read­ers to mourn. But it’s also one that allows read­ers to walk away with a com­plete­ly new perspective.