(October 7, Two Years Later)
Two years after October 7, the test is no longer just for Israel’s survival, but for the soul of the Jewish people — whether we still stand together when the world looks away.
Two years ago this week, the gates of hell opened on a Saturday morning. It was the day after Simchat Torah, a day meant for dancing, and instead the music stopped and horror ensued. What began as a massacre became a test: not only of Israel’s defenses, but of the world’s conscience, and of Jewish faith itself.
Now, as we approach the second anniversary of October 7, there is a peace deal on the table. We all pray it succeeds. But prayer, as the families of the hostages know too well, is not a strategy. And hope is not a plan. Hamas has broken every ceasefire it has ever agreed to, and no one should doubt its willingness to use this one, if it happens, to inflict more psychological torment on the people it already brutalized.
Still, the greater test this year may not be on the battlefield. It may be that the greater test is in the hearts of Jews everywhere, Jews who are staring down unbearable questions about loyalty, justice, and identity.
For me, that test has been personal. I began The Jew News Review to rediscover and reclaim my own Jewish identity, a part of myself that had gone quiet. By sharing that journey here, I hoped to celebrate and pass forward that Jewish DNA to family, friends, readers, and future generations. That goal has not changed. But as the Gaza war grinds on, as Israel grows more isolated and Jews around the world face rising hostility, the questions have grown heavier: questions of faith, of morality, of spirit. On that test, I still believe in the righteousness of Israel’s cause, in the courage of our people, and in the unbreakable spirit that binds Israelis and Jews in every corner of the world.
For me, and probably for many of you, the second anniversary feels less like a commemoration than a reckoning. We are not just remembering what happened to us, rather, we are questioning who we have become since.
In synagogues, on campuses, and across family tables, I fear there is a quiet crisis of faith unfolding, not just in God but in Israel itself. Among Jews who grew up believing in tikkun olam, universal justice, and coexistence, the prolonged war and how Israel is conducting it, has strained that idealism to the breaking point. It is one thing to fight a just war; it is another to live in one that kills so many and refuses to end.
And yet, this is the moral hazard of the moment: that Jews, in the pursuit of moral comfort, will abandon Israel and the hostages during a war Israel did not ask for. That we will confuse compassion with complicity, and distance with dignity.
Because that’s what’s happening in real time. Too many mistake performative empathy for moral depth — as if mourning loudly for Palestinians while whispering about Hamas somehow makes one more humane. And too many believe that staying “neutral” or “balanced” in the face of barbarism preserves their dignity, when in fact it only preserves their comfort.
You can see it in Hollywood’s red-hand brigade, those actors who pinned on fake bloody hand pins at award shows to show how deeply they “care,” while remaining silent about the real blood spilled on October 7, or the hostages still enduring it every day. That kind of moral theater isn’t courage. It’s camouflage. A way to look righteous without risking anything real. Silence may look dignified from a safe distance, but it feels like betrayal to those still under fire.
But Israel cannot move on. Not from children burned alive. Not from women raped and paraded. Not from families still waiting for a knock at the door that could mean death or deliverance.
Even more disturbing, a recent Washington Post poll found that nearly 40 percent of American Jews believe Israel has committed “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. This is beyond absurd; it is obscene. Jews, of all people, should know better than to casually weaponize that word. To accuse the one Jewish state on Earth of genocide is not just ignorance, it is moral betrayal. To compare Israel’s fight for survival to the machinery of annihilation that murdered our grandparents is to desecrate memory itself.
The age of post-Holocaust sympathy has faded under the bright lights of mainstream media misinformation, social media algorithms feeding Hamas propaganda to the TikTok generation, and real atrocities being committed in Gaza. The world’s brief reverence for Jewish suffering has given way to its old reflexes – suspicion, resentment, and moral inversion. The Jewish People are once again being tested, not by whether we can assimilate, but by whether we can withstand.
As Dara Horn wrote in The World Loves Dead Jews, the world has always found comfort in Jewish tragedy but discomfort in Jewish survival. It applauds our suffering but resents our strength. It builds memorials to our ashes but condemns our defenses. October 7 reminded us that Jewish power is not a moral flaw. It is a moral necessity. Because the lesson of our history, from Egypt to Europe to Sderot, is that Jewish survival has never depended on the world’s approval.
The war in Gaza has made one truth unavoidable: the Jewish story has never been about comfort. It has always been about courage. It’s about showing up for one another when the world turns away. That is the test within the test. Not whether Israel will survive, but whether we, scattered and weary as we are, will remember who we are and why we endure.
To be Jewish after October 7 is to hold fast to faith even when faith feels impossible. It is to long for and weep for peace and still stand for justice. It is to know that the world may never love us for surviving, but to survive anyway.
Stay safe out there everyone.
Brad out.
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