The Morning Everything Changed |
At dawn on October 7, 2023, when the unthinkable struck, I found myself not in the south, but just five miles from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Our family had gone north to celebrate Simchat Torah, a day meant for joy, song, and the simple happiness of being Jews together. On the surface, being far from Gaza felt like a stroke of fortune. Within hours, we understood how mistaken that assumption was.
We were far from Hamas, but dangerously close to Hezbollah. As news from the south grew darker by the minute, the north sat in an eerie, terrifying calm. For a brief window of time, we were able to move out of immediate danger. By the next day, that same region would come under rocket and drone fire. What we experienced in those first hours was not panic, but something worse, the slow realization that the ground beneath our assumptions had shifted.
The fear of that morning reminded me of only one other day in my life, September 11, 2001. On that clear Tuesday morning, I was traveling to work on the Number 9 train in Manhattan, headed for the World Trade Center station. The train halted unexpectedly at Christopher Street as service was suspended. Minutes later, the station further ahead would be buried in debris. I emerged close enough to watch the towers collapse, to breathe the acrid smoke, and to hear sirens that did not stop.
And........