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 mid-Jan­u­ary of this year, while stay­ing with friends on the North Shore of Kaua’i, I was invit­ed to attend an inter­faith gath­er­ing held beneath a tent just across the high­way from Kealia beach. Host­ed by Pukas Min­istries, there were at least two more church com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing, along with sev­er­al mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty from the island, maybe about forty peo­ple alto­geth­er. Every­one brought food to share, includ­ing pork fried rice, veg­an lasagna, coconut fish stew, hum­mus, home­made cook­ies, and import­ed hal­vah. A fierce wind whipped at the tent, and the dark­en­ing sky kept threat­en­ing to burst with rain. Pas­tor Jason and his wife, Malia, sang togeth­er, accom­pa­nied by a gui­tar and ukulele; the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty was rep­re­sent­ed dur­ing this musi­cal ser­vice by Tehi­la, Lau­ren, and my friend Denise, who sang in Hebrew and Eng­lish; and there were two guest speak­ers who took my breath away. By the end of the night, I felt trans­formed in more ways than I can explain.

And yet, I want to try. I want to find words to cap­ture the mag­ic of that night in hopes of keep­ing it alive for myself, and in hopes of offer­ing oth­ers some of the con­so­la­tion and ele­va­tion I experienced. 

At the start, Pas­tor Jason offered an invo­ca­tion wel­com­ing all of us in fel­low­ship and a shared meal; Lau­ren Miller, the Pres­i­dent of the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Kaua’i (JCK), added her open-heart­ed grat­i­tude for the gath­er­ing; and then came the first speak­er, Uri, an Israeli now run­ning a small Kaua’i busi­ness (Shakalafel, a food truck com­bin­ing Israeli food with Alo­ha spir­it, locat­ed in near­by Kapa’a). Uri began by acknowl­edg­ing the many val­ues and beliefs shared by Jews and Chris­tians, espe­cial­ly the fun­da­men­tal com­mand­ment to treat oth­ers as you would wish to be treat­ed, to hon­or the inher­ent dig­ni­ty of all beings, and to uphold the sanc­ti­ty of life and indi­vid­ual free­dom. Then he told his sto­ry about Octo­ber 7th. As soon as he heard about the mas­sacres unfold­ing on that day, Uri made his way to the air­port, aim­ing for John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in order to con­vene with his quick­ly-recon­sti­tut­ing army reserve unit. He described the chaos at the El Al tick­et counter at the air­port, the dis­cov­ery of an un-uni­formed woman qui­et­ly work­ing on a lap­top to ensure flights for reservists, and his arrival in Cyprus, still wear­ing his shorts and flip-flops. 

Uri explained that his unit was sent to the north of Israel, to the bor­der with Lebanon, antic­i­pat­ing more attacks by Hezbol­lah; he empha­sized that Hamas, Hezbol­lah, and the Houthis are all part of a mas­sive ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion fund­ed by the regime con­trol­ling Iran. He didn’t say much more about those months he spent going back and forth between Israel and Kaua’i, except to add men­tion of a woman who was con­tin­u­al­ly van­dal­iz­ing his food truck. ​“She comes two or three times a day,” he said, shrug­ging with what I imag­ined was fatigue and exas­per­a­tion. ​“Some­times I get a call from a voice demand­ing that I say ​‘Free Pales­tine’ before they order food. I just hang up on them,” he said.

The next speak­er was a blond-haired Chris­t­ian woman named Don­na Jol­lay, who stepped up to the micro­phone say­ing ​“Shalo­ha, y’all. You can take the girl out of Ten­nessee, but you can’t take Ten­nessee out of the girl.” She was the rea­son we were all there that night, gath­ered under the canopy of the tent as it flapped in the wind. We held plates in our laps on fold­ing chairs, and we listened.

Don­na told us about hav­ing worked in Oak Ridge, Ten­nessee with the depart­ment of defense, and her uncan­ny his­to­ry of being ​“in on things” dur­ing their ear­ly days. For instance, she worked with very ear­ly ver­sions of AI. Don­na want­ed to explain this as her back­ground for how, hav­ing moved to Kaua’i, she end­ed up being an ear­ly sub­scriber to a newslet­ter cre­at­ed by an Ortho­dox rab­bi in Israel who was focused on dai­ly con­nec­tions between the Old Tes­ta­ment and break­ing news. With­in the first year he had acquired 100,000 sub­scribers — half of them Chris­tians — and because she was a notable ear­ly sub­scriber, the rab­bi asked Don­na to help him under­stand this huge por­tion of his fol­low­ing. Although she loved her com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice work on Kaua’i, she felt called, about eight years ago, to move to Israel to con­tin­ue work­ing with the Ortho­dox rab­bi. She is learn­ing Hebrew, with her unmis­tak­able Ten­nessee accent, and leads tours of the Holy Land for Chris­tians and Jews.

There is so much more to sum­ma­rize, and I wish I could make sense to you the way Don­na made sense to me that night. She apol­o­gized for two thou­sand years of Chris­tian­i­ty hav­ing done harm, express­ing her aston­ish­ment that Jews would nev­er­the­less be will­ing to for­give them. ​“You all are so com­pas­sion­ate!” she said, her face and eyes radi­ant with what I can only call joy. She spoke of her pro­found admi­ra­tion for what Israel has man­aged to cre­ate dur­ing its brief exis­tence. ​“And when 300,000 reservists were called up in response to the atroc­i­ties of Octo­ber 7th, more than 400,000 showed up,” she said, clear­ly in awe of that lev­el of devo­tion to pro­tect­ing their home­land. She insist­ed, emphat­i­cal­ly, that good will pre­vail, eventually.

“I see you,” Don­na said. ​“And I see your light.” 

It sounds hokey to quote her now, and I’m sure­ly get­ting some things wrong in my mem­o­ry. But here’s the thing: she was so whole­heart­ed­ly lit up, so sin­cere. I have nev­er heard any­one express their faith and sense of fel­low­ship with such hum­ble pas­sion. ​“I’m not here to con­vert you,” she announced, hold­ing up her hand like she was mak­ing a holy vow. ​“Jews don’t need Chris­tians, but Chris­tians need Jews.” After she fin­ished speak­ing, Lau­ren asked her what it was like to be a mem­ber of a Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty among a Jew­ish major­i­ty. And Don­na said, ​“What amazes me most is to see the incred­i­ble capac­i­ty to grieve and be joy­ful in almost the same moment. I mean, I went with an ecu­meni­cal group to vis­it Auschwitz, where I wit­nessed the huge­ness of their mourn­ing. And then the Jew­ish mem­bers of our group began to dance.” 

When I tried to thank Don­na for her words, she looked me in the eye. ​“I came here to thank you!,” she said. ​“And here you are bless­ing me.” Pas­tor Jason asked us to stand togeth­er in a cir­cle hold­ing hands, and to pray togeth­er. ​“Even if we don’t always use the same lan­guage,” some­one said, ​“we echo each oth­er.” Pas­tor Matt Higa, of New Hope Kaua’i, said he want­ed to apol­o­gize for not doing bet­ter, as Chris­tians. ​“Kaua’i is the old­est of the Hawai­ian islands. That means we are the old­est son, respon­si­ble for show­ing oth­ers the way; we must make amends for our mis­takes and lead by exam­ple.” His voice grew even stronger. ​“We stand with Israel,” he said. ​“And in my con­gre­ga­tion, if any­one doesn’t agree with that, they are wel­come to leave.” 

I thought of one of my favorite Hebrew folk songs about wel­com­ing strangers into our tent, sit­ting togeth­er in peace, but I was too choked up to sing it. Because I real­ized that all of this was what I would have imag­ined the world would choose as the most obvi­ous response to what hap­pened on Octo­ber 7th. This adamant and col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to stand up for human dig­ni­ty, free­dom, and the beliefs we hold in com­mon. To renounce vio­lence, hate, misog­y­ny, destruc­tion, and ter­ror. To make vows of com­pas­sion and uni­ty. I saw tears in the eyes of many oth­ers in our cir­cle. And I felt my heart lift­ed up in ways I can­not ade­quate­ly describe, as though I were being embraced, and bathed in lov­ingkind­ness. On a small island sur­round­ed by the wild blue Pacif­ic Ocean, I heard so much of what I need­ed to hear, and I didn’t even know how much I need­ed it until that moment.

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

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