There is light, but the air is thick with grief

“How dark is it there today?” a friend asks from Australia.

"Strangely the sun is shining,” I say, having expected that somehow there would be a total eclipse on October 7.

There is light, but the air is thick with grief.

Around me, everyone is struggling, inhaling smoke and ash of that day and of this day, in a climate wet with never-ending tears.

I am stunned by the resilience of ordinary people. But are we ordinary?

Grief is encoded in our genes, but these double helix strands are also wired with compassion and hope. And we feel pain for the suffering of the innocent women and children amongst the Palestinian people too.

The DNA of three thousand years of suffering has not extinguished our light. Contrary to the lunacy of the global collective of hatred we face, we are a people for whom peace and love are the centre of every prayer.

The cognitive dissonance of life in Tel Aviv is other worldly. The strong bodies pumping weights and volleyballs on the beach, the laughter of children, and the loud old people debating over coffee – all while helicopters fly overhead transporting the severely injured from countless war fronts.

I sing Avinu Malkeinu with a full heart in synagogue on Rosh Hashana, and fifteen minutes later say farewell to my son as he travels back up north to a base, I don’t know where.

Taking it ‘day by day’ does not work here. Neither does ‘hour by hour’. It is ‘minute by minute’.

One minute I am outdoors about to eat a falafel. The next I am crouched in a stairwell with others, as the first siren warns of approaching rockets.

I’m strangely calm until I am deafened by the sound of a blast, suggesting that perhaps the iron dome didn’t intercept this one of the 200 Iranian missiles. Someone reassures me it’s only exploding shrapnel.

But today on October 7, the dissonance has fallen away.

In the silent streets and in the faces I pass, mourning is all pervasive.

Finally, I understand the Tisha b’Av custom to not greet anyone. With grief of this magnitude, there is no way to say hello.

Memorial services are everywhere. My nephew has gone south to the gravesite of his murdered sister.

I walk out of the apartment, checking for missiles and keen for news.

The news is that one more hostage, Idan Shtivi, has been declared dead. His family found out this morning that his body is still in Gaza, and that he died a whole year ago on October 7.

In the courtyard I see scores of people sitting and crying. As I get closer, I see the huge ‘Bring him home’ poster with the face of Idan Shtivi. How can that be? I just heard about him and here his family is sitting shiva, in this same building.

I sit and join them.