More than eight thou­sand miles sep­a­rate Israel from Aus­tralia, but the events of Octo­ber 7, 2023 cre­at­ed a new real­i­ty for Jews liv­ing on the island con­ti­nent. This is cap­tured in a col­lec­tion of thir­ty-six essays by as many dif­fer­ent Aus­tralian women, each of whom reflects on how her own small world— her fam­i­ly and friend­ships, her work and pro­fes­sion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, and her rela­tion­ship to Israel and/​or Judaism — changed in the after­math of the attacks. 

Con­trib­u­tors to Rup­tured include pub­lic fig­ures and estab­lished authors, but also a psy­cho­an­a­lyst, a human rights lawyer, a female rab­bi, a food crit­ic, and an Olympic medal­ist, among oth­ers. The women range in age, lev­el of reli­gious obser­vance, and eth­nic and cul­tur­al back­ground. Some live in cities; oth­ers in small com­mu­ni­ties. And they write in very dif­fer­ent styles. The result is a cho­rus of voic­es, not always har­mo­nious and cer­tain­ly not uni­form, that allows for an ongo­ing dia­logue between the dif­fer­ent pieces and also with the reader.

In their essays, some of which take uncon­ven­tion­al forms like the recre­ation of a police report or the script for a play, many of the writ­ers wres­tle with pre­vi­ous­ly held beliefs. Oth­ers reassert their iden­ti­ty and their com­mit­ment to a way of life that encour­ages mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. For many, there is fear, and a sense of per­se­cu­tion. As might be expect­ed, ref­er­ences to the Holo­caust abound — in the form of sto­ries from sur­viv­ing grand­par­ents, or about echoes of pho­tographs that seem to come to life. But so do ref­er­ences to rit­u­als, such as those around food, which rep­re­sent not just tra­di­tion and com­fort, but also self-reliance and resilience.

Anoth­er com­mon theme is a deep sense of being betrayed by the world at large and by those in their close cir­cles, includ­ing friends and cowork­ers, fel­low activists and schol­ars, and offi­cial insti­tu­tions such as gov­ern­ment offices and uni­ver­si­ties. As Lee Koff­man says in a piece about how she was unable to write in the peri­od fol­low­ing the attacks, ​“I lost faith in writ­ing because I lost faith in writ­ers.” Look­ing back, she real­izes that the signs were there all along, a feel­ing echoed in sev­er­al oth­er essays in the book. This, how­ev­er, did not make it sting less.

Still, Rup­tured is a col­lec­tion that not only doc­u­ments the sense of dis­ori­en­ta­tion and insta­bil­i­ty, but also the strug­gle to mend it. There are clear calls for rec­og­niz­ing our com­mu­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty and sto­ries of dis­cov­ery or strength­en­ing of con­nec­tions to a com­mon past, along­side a revived sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty amidst the chaos. There are also impor­tant ques­tions about pri­vate vs. pub­lic per­sonas, as well as dilem­mas about what we’ll choose to trans­mit to the next generation.

Because the essays were writ­ten in the first year fol­low­ing the attacks and pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2025, Rup­tured is not a com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey of the cur­rent expe­ri­ence of Aus­tralian Jew­ry or a his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the after­math of Octo­ber 7. But because it wres­tles with com­plex issues and doc­u­ments the spe­cif­ic ways in which Octo­ber 7 rat­tled almost every aspect of the con­trib­u­tors’ lives, this book is both an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to Jew­ish his­to­ry and a thought-pro­vok­ing read for any­one try­ing to make sense of their own shift­ing iden­ti­ties dur­ing these tur­bu­lent times.