Can you have a highlight on Yom Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar? Well, I do.
It’s the prayer L’dor V’dor, “from generation to generation”. Every year, it is sung by one of the men in our shul choir with the sweetest of voices. Never did I think I would be able to say that you could hear a pin drop in a synagogue, but as he is singing, the chattering stops, the rustling ceases, coughs - and possibly even sneezes - are stifled. I and the rest of the congregation hold in a collective breath, as if even the sound of our own exhalation would be enough to sully the exquisiteness of the music.
This year, I looked through the mechitzah to see the singer’s father-in-law and son standing together. (In our most progressive – with a small “p” – of United Synagogues, our partition is fortunately transparent.) As he was watching his son-in-law, the grandfather wrapped his arm around his teenage grandson, the three of them an embodiment of the words of the prayer.
L’dor V’dor is about passing on the Torah and its teachings, but, this week, as we mark the first yahrzeit of October 7, that phrase has made me think about the more recent memories of the Jewish experience and how we will convey those to our children.
The anniversary falls shortly after the Jewish Museum London put out a call asking the the Jewish community and wider UK public for contributions reflecting how we responded – and are still responding – to the terrorist atrocities of October 7.
For now, this valuable institution, which is a “museum without walls” since the closure of its Camden building in 2023, is considering a digital exhibition. But, one day, our children and grandchildren may be able to peer inside glass cabinets and see hostage posters, yellow ribbons and “Bring them home now!” slogans while visiting a new exhibition space.
But the reactions to October 7 will only make any sense if they truly understand what actually took place that day.
And there is no shortage of evidence, some of which has already been included in documentaries, installations and online archives. This isn’t, as writer Naomi Klein suggested in her appallingly judged and appallingly timed Guardian article, because Israel “has made trauma a weapon of war”, to “stir support for limitless violence” – which the paper chose to publish on the eve of the first anniversary of October 7.
It is because preserving and sharing memories is part of our collective DNA; it is how we tell – and how we write - the story of the Jewish people.
In one of his essays, the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks quotes Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s book Zakhor, where the latter writes: “Jews were the first people to see God in history, the first to see an overarching meaning in history, and the first to make memory a religious duty.”
Indeed, The word “Zachor”, Hebrew for “remember” appears no fewer than 169 times in the Hebrew Bible, including in Deuteronomy, when G-d commands the Israelites: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your way after you left Egypt...”
The Holocaust forced us to remember our persecution at the hands of a 20th century Amalek and October 7 by an Amalek of the 21st century.
But how can we – and our children and grandchildren - remember something without having been there? Scientists have found that having an emotional response to an experience means that we are more likely to recall it later on. Hence the effectiveness of first-person accounts, be they from Holocaust survivors like Lily Ebert, who sadly died earlier this month, or those who were at the Nova festival, so many of whom have been courageously sharing their stories.
Despite my work, which means I am surrounded by reminders of October 7 on a near-daily basis, I have only cried a handful of times in the past year. Sure, I have teared up a lot, but the kind of crying that Hollywood actors like to call “ugly crying”, when your face contorts so your features no longer look like your own and primal noises you didn’t think were humanly possible emanate from somewhere deep within, has only happened about three times.
One of those occasions was after watching the documentary Surviving October 7th : We will dance again with my teenage daughter. It felt like we had just spent an hour and a half hiding alongside festival-goers in bomb shelters and giant rubbish containers as they watched their loved ones getting slaughtered right next to them. Afterwards, we just held each other for a long time, sobbing.
While seeing the horrors unfold through the screen of a survivor’s iPhone (or a Hamas terrorist’s GoPro) will be too distressing for some, it will ultimately be the first-hand testimonies from survivors that will ensure – L’dor V’dor – that the memories of October 7 are passed on to future generations, so that the words “Never again” will, hopefully, one day, come true.
