THE SAME DIFFERENT STORY

Around the world a million people’s different stories are taking place at the same time. All completely separate. October 7th sends a shofar call to them. A message dispensed to every one. This clarion call. This alarm broadcast loudly through the pipes of each persons heart hits each of them in different ways. None can ignore it. But it hits them in different ways. Some freeze. Some propel into action. Some run away. Some run towards. It hits people in different ways. There is a private conversation that happens in each persons soul. In many ways it’s not even a conversation. The voice just springs up within them.

I just met someone who was living in America on October 7th. He was a junky. Twelve years taking heroin every day. He’d tried to quit countless times but always failed. When the grimmest, bleakest news of his People being massacred in Israel hit him, something switched inside. He decided there and then that he wanted to live. And that to live he must be in Israel. So he came. And he made aliyah. And he has been clean of drugs since.

There are a million and more different Jewish October 7th stories. Scattered in different parts of the world going about their business, the shockwave of that day trembled beneath the feet of Jews wherever they stood. It affected them in different ways. Some good. Some bad.

I will never say thank you to October 7th. I will never say thank you to horror. But in a world where horrors happen and will continue to happen, I’m glad that human beings are given a choice in how they respond, and that some choose to respond with good.

And furthermore, that the greater the evil, the more powerful the good that must come in response.