Chol Ha’moed Sukkot 2023. We have a babysitter and decide to see a movie—“Golda,” the story of the Yom Kippur War. The cinematography and acting are excellent; the topic is heavy and leaves us with many questions and thoughts. We have no idea that mere days later, we will go through something eerily similar.
Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, my association with the IDF was posing for photos with soldiers while touring Israel. I did not grow up experiencing war, nor have a parent serving in the reserves, wearing a khaki uniform, carrying a gun, and disappearing for extended periods of time.
Simchat Torah. October 7, 2023. Yaacov goes to early minyan so he can then take the kids to dance in shul. The excitement is palpable as they get dressed and prepare their holiday flags. Suddenly I hear a siren. It takes a moment to register. Jerusalem is usually quiet, and the last siren I heard was of a very different nature on Yom HaZikaron. I quickly gather the three kids and tell them we need to run downstairs to the building’s safe room. Our brisk walk down the stairs is peppered with questions. “What’s a siren, Mommy?” “What is a miklat (shelter)?” “Why do we need to stay there?” “What are all those booms?” While we are still in the safe room for the requisite 10 minutes, Yaacov runs home from shul to make sure we are OK. A succession of sirens follow. Neighbors begin turning on phones; uncertainty and fear grip everyone as we begin to understand that something major is going on down south. We take out special “miklat snacks” for the girls, and try to mitigate the fear while hiding our growing anxiety.
When the fifth siren wails and we are back in the miklat, a neighbor turns to Yaacov and says, “Aren’t you a commander in the reserves? Have you not been called up?”
We run upstairs and Yaacov turns on his phone. He had already received the message, commanding his unit to be on base within an hour and a half. His army gear lies hidden away in the storage room; I don’t think the kids even knew it existed before October 7. He quickly takes off his Shabbat clothing and dons his uniform. We will later learn that this will be the last normal prayer service he attends on Shabbat for 18 long weeks.
Our neighbors watch as we tearfully hug and bid Yaacov farewell. Many of them remember the Yom Kippur War, and the images are jarringly similar. Young children crying, not understanding where their father is going, by car, in the middle of Shabbat, dressed in green. And, just like that, we become a “miluim family,” and I become an army wife.
The rest of the day feels endless. We hear rumors, snippets of information. It is only once Simchat Torah ends that we turn on the news and begin to understand the magnitude of what Israel is going through. Hundreds abducted. Many more killed. The Sderot police station under attack. The Nova party. Slowly, stories start to come together, building a puzzle of horror, dread and fear. By 5 the next morning, my sister, nine months pregnant, has joined us as her husband had been called up; my brother and cousins and almost everyone we know has been called up. Schools are closed, and the future seems scary and unknowable.
Within 24 hours, while we still had no idea how long a haul we were in for, we immediately felt the support and love of our family, neighbors, local community, workplaces, and the global Jewish community. Not used to being on the receiving end, I decided that mobilizing to action would be best for me, and quickly started raising funds and organizing meals for Yaacov’s army unit. People offered help with child care, meals, toys, phone calls checking in, and so much more.
Hours turned into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months. We got used to the new normal, as much as possible. With help from many wonderful people, and the ever-supportive AMIT community (both as a workplace and as a second family), we got through each day. However, there were constant reminders that this is not normal, and we are at war, no matter how happy a face I tried to put on for the kids and how much of a routine we tried to maintain.
The walk home from preschool where my 3-year-old daughter cried the entire way home, asking when Aba would come. The horrific news that a classmate’s parent was killed in action. Having to share with my 5-year-old that her friend’s father had died—and then her understanding that it was in the same war her own father was fighting. Waking up every single morning, after sleepless nights, to scan the list of names in the news while praying that nobody we knew was one of those killed. Not that it mattered—each person killed was an entire universe. A family shattered, a future cut way too short.
And yet, we kept going. First, there was no choice, and it is often in such situations that you discover your deepest strengths. Second, I kept thinking about my great-grandparents, whom I knew well and loved so much. They, along with my grandfather, fled Germany right after Kristallnacht. Refugees for years, they ultimately built wonderful lives for themselves, but had no homeland to run to, no army to protect them. When I wanted to cry and collapse at night, pulling out my many newly gray hairs, I reminded myself that if we don’t do this, nobody else will, and that we are building a future for ourselves and our descendants—and our People.
The unity felt across the country, the sense of mission I heard so clearly in the voices of Yaacov and his fellow soldiers, the vital support I saw AMIT giving to our evacuated students and to our educators and their spouses on the front lines and homefront—these silver linings kept me going.
I recognize that we are the lucky ones. Yaacov is home, healthy in body and mind. Too many lives have been lost. Too many soldiers have been injured; too many families have been affected; too much fear and uncertainty have been instilled in us. And yet, we are a People of belief, of resilience, of hope. We are a People who know that we are fighting, jointly, for justice, freedom, and the ability to live and flourish in our homeland. October 7 reminds us that even in the most difficult circumstances, we rally together and take major risks for something much greater than any one of us—for the timeless Jewish narrative.
When my grandchildren watch a film about the Iron Swords War, they will come home and ask me what we did on October 7 to protect our People. And I know that I will be able to proudly look them in the eye and say—in my American-accented Hebrew that is here to stay—that we said “Hineni,” here we are, playing our role in the history of Medinat Yisrael and Am Yisrael.
Chavi Becker is AMIT’s director of the Department of Organizational Strategy and Development.
