I Can Never Wash What I Saw Out of My Eyes
You can deny deny deny deny and deny
But I can never wash
What I saw out of my eyes
I am a teacher and mother of six
We live in the town of Kfar Aza
Gail Wasserman
December 30, 2024
Tag: October 7
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The Silver Star
Before October 7, 2023
I was an ordinary Chevy pickup truck,
But after that day everything changed.
No one or thing will ever be the same.
This is my story: My owner is Moshe Sati.
He’s a devoted husband and father.
Gail Wasserman
December 30, 2024
The Family That Loves Together
October 17, 2023
Families stay together
They learned when they were little
On holidays, on weekend trips
Because alone we’re just too brittle
Families stay together
They all continued saying
Miriam Roskind
December 15, 2024
Simchat Torah Morning 2023
This time last year it’s early in the morning and I am suddenly roused from sleep.
Could it be…? Is this a siren? We are usually warned about red alert sirens, indicating that we are being shot at by missiles, but this morning it came unexpectedly. No sign at all.
Through my confusion, I dragged myself out of bed.
Hila Bar
October 7, 2024
Writing from the warfront
October’s Ashes
Through smoky dawn,
a soldier stands,
in Israel’s land.
Courage demands,
he treads on ashes,
October’s ashes,
the fallen’s remains.
Estee Olga Shapiro
September 27, 2024
Reverberations of October 7th: Musings of an American Jew on the Fourth of July
the July 4th rat a tat tat
fireworks finale sounds
no holiday hotdogs here
only a fusillade of bullets
our porch door
creaking
no longer a sign
of lazy summer
now suspicion
is all it brings
Jessica Ursell
August 7, 2024
Writing from home
10/7
I could be you could be me.
Washing my body privately in the shower
feeling safe and protected/violated and
ripped apart.
I could be you could be me, cooing
my baby to sleep in a safe and protective collective settlement/butchered, beheaded bleeding corpses piled up
in sacred living spaces.
Michele Hirsch
July 28, 2024
Writing from work
Yom HaZikaron 2024
I live in Canada, many miles away from Israel and Gaza. I am a committed Jew however, ensconced in thought everyday about my fellow Jews fighting a war for our people.
I’m very much aware, and repeat this regularly, that our Israeli brothers and sisters are on the frontline for all Jewish people, everywhere. On Yom HaZikaron, we are extraordinarily thankful for that reality. My boy is going off to university at 18. Yours is going into the laneway and hollowed out buildings of Gaza.
Avrum Rosensweig
May 18, 2024
Writing from home
Freeze
I’m not brave.
I have never offered to check if there’s a burglar or terrorist outside in our garden when the dog growls and barks at night.
I take a tranquillizer before I visit the dentist.
I don’t live in a town or a kibbutz five minutes from a border. When I worked in the community school on a deserted, badly-lit road, I recited the Shema as I drove home at night from staff meetings. I clutched the steering wheel, my body hunched forward, tailing the headlights of the driver in front of me.
Fran Levin
April 15, 2024
Writing from home
The Forgotten
You don’t care when our soldiers are killed.
You don’t care when our elderly are murdered.
You don’t care when our women are raped.
You don’t care when our men are brutally slaughtered.
You don’t care when our children are tortured.
You don’t care when our babies are executed.
Ash Glenville
February 23, 2024