Reading the news, and watching the videos of the events of October 7 from Jerusalem, Daniel Kane was reminded of Hayyim Nahman Bialik’s famous poem of the Kishinev Pogrom, “In the City of Slaughter,” and the long history of Jewish vulnerability. With this in mind, Kane reflects on Israeli society’s response to the same events, which he has witnessed in the weeks since:
In my life, I have never seen anything that can remotely compare to the transformation of Israeli society in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Overnight, military-age men disappeared from civilian life. A relative of mine who serves as a logistics coordinator in the IDF told me that, within a day, reserve battalions were overwhelmed with the numbers that had reported for duty. An avalanche of reservists who had not yet been mobilized showed up anyway, offering to fight in whichever deployed unit would take them.
But it wasn’t just our soldiers who mobilized. Without an order being given, Israeli civil society—and, really, the entire Jewish world—rallied en masse to support the Jewish state and its military.
What was, just weeks ago, a deeply divided nation has emerged more unified and collectively resolved than at any point in recent history. In September, the highways were littered with political banners accusing each and every political faction of “betraying the nation” or “destroying democracy.” But the banners that fly today carry only one message: B’yaḥad N’natseyaḥ—“Together, we will be victorious.”
Jews can readily imagine what it would mean to become homeless and stateless. We still remember a world in which, as today, many greet the enthusiastic slaughter of Jews with indifference or celebration, but also, in which we lacked a Jewish state that could respond and retaliate. In being forced to recall the world before Israel—to confront the enduring possibility of national tragedy and a return of Jewish vulnerability—we can no longer take our shared home for granted.
Read more on Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/12/92041/