This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

Yes­ter­day in the car I said I feel like a failure.

Almost a year watch­ing the war and I’m exhaust­ed. As if it is just a rainy

day and not a 9 month long night­mare, I spend my nights curled up like a baby

in front of the TV with a hot drink, pro­tect­ing my soul

and pre­tend­ing the vio­lence is hap­pen­ing some­where far away.

In a way it is. If I was clos­er to the war I wouldn’t have been laughing

by the time we got home from the self-effac­ing car ride. I’m good at laughing

twen­ty min­utes after cry­ing. Rather, my boyfriend is good at mak­ing my pity ses­sions fail. 

At the start of it all he’d tell me don’t let the ter­ror­ists win! Imag­ine you’re in a faraway

place, some­where safe, danc­ing in the rain. 

Do I have a right to laugh, or even to pan­ic, when the sole 

dan­ger I still face is the one in my mind? Com­pared to a baby

in a raid­ed Kib­butz, or a trapped baby in Gaza, or to the baby

hostage who has spent longer a hostage than free, my laughter

feels offen­sive. I’m doubt­ful if civil­ians in Gaza have time to be hap­py. If pan­ic is the sole

feel­ing you have for a year, you will just die. Like Yos­si Jan, whose heart failed

a day before his hostage son Almog was res­cued. I couldn’t under­stand how it wasn’t raining, 

how the sun could dare to burn on that bit­ter­sweet morn­ing. Though the war feels far away, 

every time a sol­dier casu­al­ty is announced I still wor­ry I’ll see a friend’s face. Far away

is a rel­a­tive dis­tance. Every­thing feels rel­a­tive right now, apart from time. A baby

still ges­tates for 9 months. The weath­er in Israel is still absolute, too. It nev­er rains

after Shavuot. Rarely does it rain until after Sukkot, though I remem­ber laughing

and danc­ing in the Octo­ber show­ers when the weath­er app failed 

to pre­dict the rain on Sim­chat Torah. It was like a wave from God to our sil­ly souls

who always pray about rain but nev­er expect it to come. My soul

is tired of prayer. It tired long before the war began. My days with God are a faraway

dream, clung to in a time of cri­sis until my brain wrote faith off as anoth­er failed

cop­ing mech­a­nism. Dis­trac­tion still works. Instead of think­ing about the night­mare of babies

that could have grown in vio­lat­ed bel­lies of 13 female hostages still in Gaza, I laughed

on the phone with a friend who lives abroad. At her house it was raining.

Even when I’m hap­py, there’s a cor­ner of my mind where it’s always raining.

It floods over when I’m cut by a jagged thought or when I look at a poster of a trapped soul,

and I try my best to play as a cheer­ful civil­ian, part of a cho­rus of grate­ful, des­per­ate laughter,

but tears of mis­placed guilt and hor­ror and pain are nev­er far away.

The war is right here. A full term of vio­lence. A breach­ing baby.

9 months on from that night­mare day and all I can think is we have failed.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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