Three years have passed since 7 October 2023.
I will not use this anniversary to describe what happened that day. I will not recount the atrocities. I will not reproduce the photographs, repeat the testimony or catalogue the barbarity of the Arab terrorists who murdered Jews.
We know what happened.
More importantly, our enemies know what happened.
And therein lies a problem that the Jewish Community needs to confront.
We have developed a habit of commemorating attacks against Jews by publicly returning to the scene of our suffering. We gather. We lament. We light candles. We repeat the names of the dead. We display photographs of the murdered. We tell ourselves and the world: "Never Forget."
There is something honourable in the intention.
But we should ask whether the result is always honourable — or wise.
For our enemies, 7 October is not a day of mourning.
It is a day of triumph.
The people who celebrated while Jews were being murdered do not look upon our annual anguish with remorse. Those who glorified the murderers, excused them, marched for their cause and transformed their symbols into badges of political identity are not chastened when they see Jews mourning.
They see evidence that the wound remains open.
Why should we provide that spectacle?
Stop Giving Hatred Our Attention
Our sages understood something about hatred that the modern Jewish world too often forgets.
It is a rule that Esau hates Jacob.
That teaching is not an instruction to spend our lives studying Esau's hatred. It is precisely the opposite.
Hatred exists. Jew-hatred exists. It has existed in one form or another throughout our history. Recognising that reality is necessary for our protection. Making it the organising principle of Jewish consciousness is something entirely different.
We should know that the enemy exists.
We should defend ourselves against him.
Then we should return our attention to being Jews.
There is a profound difference between vigilance and obsession.
Every hour spent asking why they hate us is an hour in which they have succeeded in occupying Jewish thought.
Every public spectacle centred upon their hatred gives that hatred another audience.
Every anniversary upon which Jewish identity is presented principally through murdered Jews allows our enemies to define the subject of the day.
They committed the atrocity.
Why should they also determine what occupies our minds three years later?
Jewish Memory Is Not Victimhood
Jewish memory is sacred.
But Jewish memory was never intended to turn us into a civilisation of victims.
We remember Egypt, but Judaism is not about Pharaoh.
We remember Amalek, but Jewish life is not built around Amalek.
We remember those who sought to destroy us, but our calendar is overwhelmingly concerned with G-D, Torah, mitzvot, repentance, liberation, holiness, family and the continued life of Israel.
Our enemies are incidental characters in the Jewish story.
We must stop promoting them to leading roles.
That distinction matters particularly now.
There are young Jews growing up in a world in which an extraordinary amount of Jewish public discourse concerns antisemitism, security, attacks, hostile demonstrations and people who despise Israel.
We risk teaching them, unintentionally, that to be Jewish is principally to be hated.
It is not.
To be Jewish is to belong to an ancient covenant between G-D and Israel.
That is the story.
Our enemies are merely interruptions.
Remember The Murdered — Not The Murderers
None of this means forgetting those who were murdered.
Quite the contrary.
We should remember them as Jews remember our dead: with dignity, prayer and acts of goodness performed in their memory.
Families should remember their loved ones.
Communities should pray.
Individuals may give charity, learn Torah or perform a mitzvah in the merit of a departed soul.
Those are acts of Jewish remembrance.
But there is no requirement that we transform the anniversary of an enemy attack into an annual public spectacle of Jewish suffering.
There is certainly no obligation to provide our enemies with images of Jews once again crying over what they did to us.
Security is another matter.
We must study how attacks occurred. Governments, security services and Jewish institutions must learn from failures. We must protect synagogues, schools, communities and the State of Israel. Lessons that can save Jewish lives must never be ignored.
But security analysis is not commemoration.
One prepares us for tomorrow.
The other can imprison us in yesterday.
We Are Still Here
Perhaps the most powerful Jewish response to 7 October is therefore not another public lamentation.
Perhaps it is simply to live.
Learn Torah.
Build Jewish homes.
Have Jewish children.
Strengthen our communities.
Support Israel.
Perform mitzvot.
Celebrate our festivals.
Pray to G-D.
Live openly and unapologetically as Jews.
Our enemies have spent thousands of years attempting to make Jewish history about them.
It never was.
Empires disappeared. Kingdoms collapsed. Ideologies came and went. Those who persecuted Israel eventually became chapters in history books.
And the Jewish people continued.
That is the message worth proclaiming on the anniversary of 7 October.
Not that they murdered us.
Not that they hate us.
Not that we remain wounded by what they did.
But that despite everything they have attempted throughout history:
We are still here.
Let the families mourn privately.
Let Israel remember its dead, privately.
Let us pray for the souls of those murdered, privately and in our synagogues.
Let us learn every lesson necessary to protect Jewish life.
But let us stop giving our enemies an annual festival of Jewish grief.
They do not deserve the attention.
Jewish life is greater than Jewish suffering.
Our covenant is greater than their hatred.
And our future is infinitely more important than their past.
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Two Years on: We Remember, We Wait, and We Resolve (2025)
Reflections on 7 October 2023: Faith, Suffering, and Service to G-D (2024)