Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 48: Two years to October 7

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

The two-year anniversary of the October 7 massacre falls on the joyous holiday of Sukkot. The Hebrew calendar anniversary will fall on the holiday of Simchat Torah, literally "the Joy of Torah."How do we deal with the juxtaposition of these painful anniversaries, of wounds and anxieties and pain that are very much still with us, and the demand to be happy, to celebrate - or even just to try to find release from the pain?The sages of the Talmud, who lived through great and abiding traumas of their own, show us how.This episode was sponsored by an anonymous sponsor who asked to dedicate it to all our fallen soldiers and to the sacrifices of the reservists and their families from October 7 until today.If you like this podcast, please join us on Patreon to support our work: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to an especially somber episode of Ask Haviv Anything. I'm recording on October 6th. It's tomorrow as two years to the October 7 massacre. It's also the holiday of Sukkot, when we're supposed to be with family, happy and joyful and living outside underneath the stars to remember that life is fragile. The Hebrew calendar anniversary of the two years will be in about a week's time, a little more, on the holiday of Simcha Tora,

which is literally called the joy of Torah. One of the happiest holidays on the Jewish calendar. We are pretty much commanded to be happy. And it's the anniversary of the massacre. And of everything

that has flowed from the massacre. The agonizing and terrible war in Gaza. Yes, obviously, terrible for Gazans, most of all, as we've discussed at infinitum, and needs to be. understood. That war requires a great rebuilding and it requires that Hamas never be allowed to be

in control of Gaza afterwards or it will come back again because it's all Hamas ever does for four decades of its existence. But also there is a debt that the Israelis owe Gaza after that war, just like the Allies owe Germany a debt after the great destruction. But the trauma of the Jews is my subject here today. And it's far larger than the massacre. The massacre was the tipping point. It triggered, it awakened, vast, latent, structural bigotries. Yes, it matters.

That Gaza has produced a whole new Western identity and consciousness in a way that Sudan never did. You raise this point in the United States, and they tell you, well, America supports, funds, arms, the Israeli military. It has more of a right to have a say. than any relevance to the conflict in Sudan. Okay. But then why is the identical kind of protest,

the identical kind of reorganizing of politics, the identical kind of new danger to the Jews happening in Holland? Does Holland arm and fund the Israeli military? Does Holland consider itself an ally of Israel? Or Italy? Or everywhere in the West? Canada is no patron of Israel, no ally of Israel?

Why is it happening exactly in the same way in Canada? It has nothing to do with American military aid, and if American military aid goes away, not a thing would change. It has to do with ideology, and the Jews place in ideologies, in the academic progressive ideology, the Jews as totems of Westernism that has to be hated because Westernism itself is a bad thing. in Muslim world ideology where conspiracy theories about Jews are the mainstream view.

Every poll of the Muslim world tells us that. It has to do with ancient ideas, deeply rooted at the heart of Islam and of Christianity, about superseding the Jews, about the insult to their revelation that the Jews clinging to their own, Tucker Carlson's favorite historian who thinks Hitler is deeply misunderstood. tweets that the Jews don't accept Christ because they hate humanity. Because if you don't cling to the tradition of your forefathers, the only possible explanation is that you hate everybody else's forefathers. That sounds like a crank. It sounds stupid, but it's millions and millions of followers.

These are mainstreamed ideas now. insane, crazy, vicious, bigoted conspiracy theories about Jews. You want to tell me that's an answer to the Gaza War? That happened in Bosnia, that happened in Rwanda. Let's imagine actual genocides, nothing like it ever happened. And in Rwanda, the West had an enormous role. That's the French about their responsibility in Rwanda. And in Bosnia, everybody watched for four years uncaring.

And on and on it goes. Nowhere has the world ever awakened like this. They are larger and more painful with actual mass starvation, genocidal conflicts right now underway, right this minute, in the Muslim world with many countries involved in Western weapons. Sudan, for example, and not a word. This is about Jews. And what does that mean? How do we deal with it? How do we handle it?

How do we think about it? The hostages aren't home yet. Hopefully they'll be home. Hopefully you'll hear this only in a week's time, and you'll already know that this ended well. And the rebuilding is already underway. And an international force, which for the very first time in the history of international forces is actually capable of fighting and stabilizing a place, will be in charge in Gaza and smashing the last remnants of Hamas.

I know. I know how that sounds. I don't believe it either. But why not hope? But what if it doesn't happen? What if the trauma is not allowed to end? What if the rage and anxiety whose fundamental purpose is to put Jews back in their rightful place in the cosmological scheme of things Christian anti-Semitism and Muslim anti-Semitism that was their fundamental purpose from day one

to explain to Jews that they are subservient to the new revelations? The revelations that learned from theirs but also superseded and corrected all the great terrible evils of their own? What if that's what's going on? and the trauma is not going to end any time soon. And Jews will live in fear for a long time now.

In history, when this happened in the Middle Ages and the turn of the 19th century, a lot of Jews left. A lot of Jews sought every path out of Jewishness. And some are doing that today. And a lot of Jews stayed. Those who stay, what do we do? Before I try to answer this question as well as I can, to try and give us tools to handle this moment,

this dichotomy of joyful holidays that are coming up and the pain of the anniversary and the trauma of this never-ending moment. Let me just tell you that this episode was sponsored beautifully by a sponsor who actually asked to remain anonymous and to dedicate the episode to all the fallen soldiers and to the sacrifice of all of all.

the hundreds of thousands of reservists who have fought our enemies against Hezbollah in Lebanon, against the regime in Iran, and against Hamas in Gaza. Thank you for that dedication. Folks, this is a Dvar Torah, a word of Torah, basically a homily. I once wrote exactly about a moment like this. Once what happens when trauma and joy, have to somehow be managed in our psychology all at once. The Talma deals with this a great deal. The Jewish tradition deals with this far too much because it happened far too often.

How do you celebrate when your heart is still in bitter tears for living, starving hostages, still held by the maniacs in Gaza who have carefully engineered the destruction of their own polity on the altar of our polity's destruction. How do you celebrate a holiday when you know that soldiers are still in danger? How do you celebrate a holiday when you know the costs, just to children on the other side? Never mind all the rest of it.

Our hearts harden in war, every human, every society for all time. But just the kids. How do you celebrate when there's so much pain? And you know me. exactly where the blame lies. I don't think Israel is blameless, but it's 90-10 on the kind and character of this war, and Hamas cannot survive it in Gaza. And yet the kids, that doesn't go away, that doesn't change. How do you celebrate when you've lost friends personally, as I have and as everyone I know has? And now we are supposed to celebrate. Happiness in the middle of pain can seem fake.

unfeeling, forced. And the Talmud deals with it. It deals with it very deeply. In the tractate called Bavabata on page 60, you can go to the Safaria website. There's a translation of this, beautiful translations of it. The rabbis tell the story of a debate that happened

after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. The trauma of the destruction, drove a lot of Jews at the time to asceticism, to renouncing the things of this world. People stopped eating meat and explained that meat was sacrificed at the temple, which made it sacred. And now that there was no temple, how can we eat meat? How can we drink wine, which was sacrificed at the temple? Rabbi Yeshua, one of the great sages of the Talmud, was asked, them what they're doing and they told him, shall we eat meat from which offerings were sacrificed upon

the altar now that the altar no longer exists. Shall we drink wine which was poured upon the altar now that the altar no longer exists? And this argument disturbed Rabbi Osuah terribly. He said to them, then we will not eat bread because bread was also brought as an offering to the temple. Or fruit. The first fruit were brought as an offering to the temple. The first fruit were brought as an offering to the temple. But the ascetics in this moment of trauma when their whole world was destabilized, agree with him. Yes, the fruits of the seven species, the iconic species of the land of Israel. Those fruit, we don't eat as long as the temple remains destroyed. That's what they tell him. And then Rabbi Yeshua said, but we also used water, offered water at the temple. We're not going to drink water?

And then the ascetics were silent, the Talmud tells us. My children, Rabbi Yeshua says, come, not to mourn at all is impossible, but to mourn too much is also impossible. We don't shatter. We don't fall to pieces. He offered the instruction of the sages, and this is the Talmud's answer to trauma. build the pain the Talmud teaches into the happiness, into the joy.

The Talmud gives us specific instructions. A person may plaster his house with plaster, but must leave a small area without plaster to remember the destruction of the temple. Your home is not perfected. Your home is a little bit broken as long as the temple is gone. And the corner, Rabbi Histda adds, should be opposite the entrance of the house so that it is visible to all.

Don't hide it away. Put it front and center. Anybody who's ever met the parent of a child who died, of a child who's kidnapped, of a child who was murdered, of a child who was a soldier who fell in Gaza. They're not. You approach with trepidation because you don't want to hurt. this person who's been terribly hurt. And invariably, you discover that you don't remind them that their child is dead.

They know. They live with it. It's reality. It's right there front and center. What they need from you is presence and companionship and to smile and to be mundane. That child is never going away. That child is always right there in front of them.

You're not going to remind them of it. Put it front and center and then live your life. How do we celebrate? How do we build? How are we happy in the midst of pain and mourning and adversity and fear? We add the brokenness of things into our joy. At every Jewish wedding, you break a glass. Why do you break a glass at a Jewish wedding? At the height of the wedding, right at the moment when you are actually married, to remember the fallen temple and the fallen state of the Jews in exile. You leave a visible blood. You leave a visible blood. on well-plastered walls, you leave a piece of a meal unprepared.

A piece of a meal should be unprepared on the side. These are all instructions the Talmud gives us to incorporate mourning, sacred, ancient, traditional mourning, but also immediate morning, into our joy. People in actual mourning in Judaism tear their shirt, and then wear that shirt in mourning. It is a way to make sure we don't forget. But of course, you can't possibly forget.

So it is more than just a reminder. It's a way that by acknowledging the pain we clear a space for pockets of happiness, of real joy. It's permission for happiness by acknowledging the grief. And there's one more way that Judaism teaches us to manage trauma and happiness, trauma and moving forward, trauma and resilience. This is the old way. This is Judaism most basic and fundamental impulse in teaching.

If you got this, you got the core. And if you don't have this, doesn't matter how many mitzvahs you do, you don't have the core. Judaism's most basic and fundamental impulse is gratitude. Endless, boundless, thanksgiving. In a Vot de Rabbi Natan, which is a midrash text, it's an extension of the Mishnah, which is the core of the Tarmud. you had the gamaar, you have the Talmud. An extension of the Mishnah's chapter called Pirke of Vot,

chapters of the fathers. It's sometimes translated as the ethics of the fathers or the ethics of the elders. One extension of that, they didn't make it into the canonical Mishnah, but was nevertheless preserved a series of stories and debates and discourses from that same period is called Avot de Rabinatan. It tells us a story about the great heroes of rabbinic literature, I mean the greatest heroes.

all trying to console their own great teacher. This was a very special generation that produced a lot of the Jewish sense of what the Talmudic sense, of what it is to be a Jew and of the mystical world that they believed in and of the legal and religious world they believed in. Rabbi Ohan bin Zaki, the great mystic of his age, was the teacher, and his students were all trying to console him because his son had died. And they all tried to comfort him by comparing his loss of his son to other terrible tragedies of the past,

to other heroic figures who were comforted despite having those terrible tragedies. Rabbi Eliezer tells his teacher, Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zaki, about Adam, the first man who lost his son Abel. Rabbi Yeshua, another student, talks about, who we just talked about, Job's loss of his children and Rabbi Yossi talks about Aaron Moses's brother his grief for his dead sons

which the Bible tells us about and Rabshimon talks about King David's grief everybody brought in a different example of this terrible trauma of the loss of a child among the heroes of the biblical story other people had it worse but they were comforted

so comfort is possible and with each one Rabbi Yohanan's pain grows worse is it not enough that I have my own pain he says to Rabbi Yashua you have to remind me of Job's pain as well it's a bitter cry that have these people constantly trying to comfort him

stop already it wasn't working and then came the final student Rabbi El Azar Ben Azaria one of the great ethicists ethical thinkers of the Jewish bookshelf and probably the greatest psychologist of the Talmud

El Azar Ben Azaria for example ruled that prayers of contrition, prayers of apology on Yom Kippur only absolve your sins if you committed them against God failing your rituals, for example, putting on Tfilin, or, you know, breaking holidays or things like that, things that are sins against God's word.

Sins that you commit against other people, you don't ask God for forgiveness, you have to go and ask those people, and you've reconciled with the people you have hurt. Then it's relevant to come and ask forgiveness from God on Yom Kippu. There's a whole psychological system there for what forgiveness is and how it actually heals. Rabbi El Azal bin Azaria tells his master, let me give you a parable, he says, the king gave someone a deposit to hold. And every day that person would cry and wail

and they would say, oh, when will I be free of this deposit? This deposit is an onerous responsibility. So it is with you, Rabbi. You had a son who was great, who was great, who was astonishing, he essentially tells him, who was a scholar, who was beautiful in all the ways that matter to you. He read from the Torah, the prophets and the writings, the Mishnah and the law and the Agada.

And then he was taken from this world free of sin, meaning too young to have fallen or broken. Rabielazar, my son, the master replies, you have comforted me as people are supposed to. The full story, by the way, is on Safari, which also has the entirety of the Vod of Rabin-Natan translated. It's a wonderful website. I am a donor.

I urge you to be as well. Friends, there's no comfort to be found in minimizing our loss, in minimizing our pain, in ignoring our anxiety and fear, in dramatizing the pain of others so that ours feels smaller. There's no comfort there. comfort, real, permanent, resilience, and overcoming is in the immensity of what we have lost.

It is the opposite of reducing it or of magnifying the loss of others. It is in the understanding of the immensity of what we have lost, of what we face, of the pain itself. It's in gratitude because the immensity of what we have lost is also gratitude for what we were given. Great pain is a function of great love.

Maimonides, the great 12th century sage, probably the greatest rabbi who ever lived, the great eagle, Maneshire Gadol. Explain that suffering is the gap between expectation and reality. You expect X, you get X minus 2. That minus 2 is a gap that is experienced as suffering. If you expect very little, you suffer less. If you expect a great deal and get the same amount, you suffer more.

That gap between expectation and reality is suffering. But the key to overcoming the gap doesn't lie in lowering your expectations. It lies in deepening your understanding of the immense gift of the reality, what that reality actually is, that it is far more than we are actually noticing. Our lives, this world, the people around us. the fact that atoms in your body hold together moment to moment, the great gift of being, and the great gift of being here and now, pain and all,

then reality is elevated to so much higher than your expectation could possibly ever have reached. You actually know what you have, and that is gratitude, and that is a kind of end to so much of the suffering. We don't forget our loss. We incorporate our loss into our happiness in this additional way, not just that we acknowledge the pain in the joy

so that we create a space for the joy by having the pain be something that is acknowledged, but also the pain itself is a sign of how great and beautiful the world is. It wouldn't be pain otherwise. Our happiness is therefore acknowledged also as something both deep-seated, profound a function of the grandeur and greatness and beauty of reality, and also imperfect and fragile, and so precious, because we incorporate our loss into the happiness by understanding that the greater the loss, the more we actually were given, and therefore that's a signal, a sign meant to raise our eyes to notice just how much we really have. Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad with her,

All who love her. Isaiah teaches us, implores us, instructs us. But then he says that instruction again, this time for people who are in pain. Rejoice with her joy all you who mourn for her. Rejoice with her joy. All you who mourn for her. There would be no mourning without love.

and that is the source of joy. We don't stop dancing on Simcha of Torah and we don't stop celebrating Sukkot and we don't fall into sackcloth and ashes quivering under our chairs in anxiety and fear. We do not forget our joy because of great pain and great calamity because of the hatred of others that surrounds us and can sometimes, if you know your Jewish history, envelop us totally.

We are happy not despite our great loss, but because we know how much we have to lose. Only people who lose know what they have. Every last bid is a gift, and all life is Thanksgiving. Happy Sukkot. Happy Simchat towa.