As the fateful date of the seventh of October approached, it was clear that we needed to mark it in some way, but exactly how was not clear. As the Jewish people, we unfortunately don’t lack models for remembering tragedies, but which one this time? Is the format that of a yahrzeit, a year of the death of a close family member? Yom Hazikaron, for fallen soldiers and victims of terror? Yom HaShoah? Tisha B’av? To complicate all these, it’s not exactly – or not only – a memorial for an event that happened in the past. We’re still in it. How to mourn something, or process something, that we are still experiencing? It’s not only the dead that we are remembering, the thousands of innocent lives taken in the last year, but the living too. The names and faces of the hostages are engraved into our memories, and nothing can distract us from our prayers, from our demands, that they return to their families soon. And to add an extra dimension to this strange and difficult day, the seventh of October landed this year between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Yamim Nora’im, the days of awe but also, more simply, the terrible days. With all the parallels to other experiences in our collective memory, this day is unique.
I think I understood it already at the end of the seventh of October last year, that something historic had happened; a rupture in time that would rearrange my life into a before and after. Everyone here has their own set of memories from that day and the days that followed. For me, it was staying up all night writing to brothers and cousins and friends to check who was where. Seeing my former boss write that both his parents had been murdered. My pregnant sister-in-law telling me that at one of the funerals there was a siren, and she had to find a way to find shelter among the tombstones without hurting the baby she was carrying. Two of my cousins who were called to identify bodies, for weeks and months after the first attack. Reading the growing list of names of dead and kidnapped, hearing stories from friends and family, reading the news and understanding the death and devastation in Gaza. Everything we did here, donations and marches and prayers, felt tiny in the face of the violence that seemed out of control. But what else could we have done? And it’s true that there was also a wave of solidarity that only tragedy can bring, here in France but especially in Israel. If that outpouring of care is less visible now, it hasn’t disappeared
I don’t believe that memorials like this are a time for political analysis, nor for contextualisation, and not even to give hope. It’s to understand the loss, to feel it not just with our brains but in our souls. The music of Elkana, Kinneret, Peter and Yair is important because it touches us deeply, as do the poems and psalms, that give words for us in a time when we don’t always find the right ones. Again, maybe there is hope but not now. All we have is each other. In five years and in fifty years, the commemoration of the events of the seventh of October will be different. From all the thousands of dead being remembered tonight, I want to mention one name tonight. On October 28th 2023, Tamar Tropiashvilli, a nine-year old girl from Ashdod died of a heart attack as sirens sounded in the city, warning of incoming missiles. Her loss, her broken heart is a symbol for the entire tragedy of the last year. יהי זכרה ברוך May her memory be a blessing, may the memories of all those who died be a blessing, may the hostages be liberated soon, may the wars cease and the wounds heal, תכלה שנה וקללותיה תחל שנה וברכותיה may this year and its curses cease and a new year and its blessings begin. Amen.