This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

In Israel, Watch­ing the News

For Katie

She doesn’t have the smash instinct, says my sister.

The crush-your-ene­my-at-all-costs rage.

As she watch­es the news at home in Israel,

she sees the path to peace grow steep­er, rockier,

more slip­pery. It is cov­ered in a haze

so thick it is bare­ly visible.

She lis­tens, weighs pros and cons.

One thing is clear to her:

war is bad, no one ben­e­fits from it.

She is not a fight­er — unless it’s to protest 

for peace. For human­i­ty. For the hostages.

As we find our­selves mired in a black or white

world of good ver­sus evil,

she might begin with a question:

What do we do when the more ter­ror­ists we kill,

the more hate we cre­ate, gen­er­a­tion after generation?

She believes in dia­logue, compromise.

In one day liv­ing beside neigh­bors — Palestinians—

who want to be our friends.

Yafeh Nefesh is what some Israelis call my sister

and oth­ers like her, spit­ting the words out like a curse.

I look it up in the dic­tio­nary: sen­si­tive, noble, gentle.

Dan­ger­ous­ly soft-heart­ed is what they mean.

I cringe at the hard­ness in their tone.

Beside my sis­ter, wher­ev­er we are,

I breathe in the scent of possibility,

her pres­ence soft as peace.

After the Mas­sacre on Octo­ber 7 

All day long, from the moment we open our eyes

to the moment before we close them at night,

we check our phones for break­ing news,

for updates on the fate of the hostages, the war.

More rock­ets, bombs, death, destruction.

Our hearts fill with the sto­ries of the survivors,

wit­ness­es to mur­der, rape, burn­ing, beheading.

I feel the hor­rors, atroc­i­ties, noise, chaos

become a knife dig­ging into my low­er back, 

the pain so bad I can bare­ly bend down

to tie my shoes. For a week, more,

I car­ry it around with me, walk­ing with it,

eat­ing with it, sleep­ing with it.

I take it with me to meet my friend.

We sit in her daugh­ter’s backyard,

talk about the war, about the hatred

spilling out in our cities, crowds chant­i­ng threats

we thought we’d nev­er hear in America.

Still, some­thing in me responds to this moment:

the cush­ioned chair, cof­fee, cin­na­mon biscuits.

My pain begins to loosen, melt, dissolve

in the pres­ence of the lemon tree in the corner,

the tod­dler toys scat­tered about.

I want to sit here for­ev­er with my friend and

her daugh­ter, warmed by the sun, fill­ing and filling

with the qui­et of this yard.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

Sup­port the work of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and become a mem­ber today.