COMFORT & OUTSIDE WORLD – 13.10.2023

Daily Entry of the War & Humanity Special Project

Inna Rogatchi (C). Winds & Silences. Hatikvah project. 2023.

I never knew that I would not know how to carry on Shabbes. The previous Shabbes was an explosion of horror, but many of us, observing people, did not know of what had happened until its end. I knew almost everything in real-time. I felt something bad might occur, and my telephone was on in a quiet mode. Still, most of the observing Jewish world have entered the previous Shabbes in a very celebrating, enlightening, uplifted mood of the peak of our High Holidays 5784 on the closing end of it, outburst of Simcha Torah. The end of a week-long Sukkot was also sunny, assuring and encouraging. Life was about to smile towards all of us for the just started  year 5784. So previous Friday October 6th, 2023, erev Shabbat, Shabbes eve, was an enlightened festive entering into the Shabbat, as we used to experience it all our previous life.

Week in, this ongoing erev Shabbat, October 13th, 2023, is not just drastically different. We are living in another world, on another planet. And I have no idea if we ever return to our previous world. In this new world, expectedly, almost all Jewish people have come together, forgetting disagreements. In this new world, unexpectedly, we have not many whom one would expect to be near, from our non-Jewish circles. Maybe, we all should be wiser, not expect a thing. Possibly. But as this is a widely-spread phenomena, it makes one think, even for a bit. Notice. Register, quickly. Just register. It is enough.

Another day, speaking with good real non-Jewish friends, those who took our pain close, I’ve heard, to a slight surprise of myself: ” Well, all these days, I am thinking of how odd, weird, inadequate has been (non-)reaction, that really deafening silence from the side of our Lutheran church here in Finland, and basically, all the other churches here”. And I was thinking: well, true, the church here, in Finland, also practices this incomprehensible deafening silence-mode. And the Vatican calls for Israel to restrain, of course. 

I hope, they all would be able to look and to see – because it is two different things – just three of many photo documenting evidences from Israel, just those three which today ( October 13th, 2023) The Daily Telegraph opted to publish, after special consideration, and of which CNN did show one, mentioning the other two as ‘unpublishable’. Well, they are publishable, my dear CNN friends and colleagues. I know that you meant well, and I’ve gratefully noticed your truly compassionate work for real victims, citizens of Israel, and also citizens of a high number of countries worldwide. Those photos are unwatchable, that’s true. More so, those who prefer silence-mode in the churches of different denominations, those who are so unanimously felt comfortably silent, should see them.

As for us, we are entering the first Shabbat after the October 7th, 2023 Catastrophe, and we are consoling each other all these hours preceding the Shabbes in our new reality, and teaching each other of how to make it. We will, no doubt about that. Because of what has happened, we will celebrate and value life and light during this Shabbes of Bereishit, when we start the new annual circle of the Torah, on an entirely new level of compassion. Our light is indistinguishable, and this fact commands everything and anything else. In our new reality, even more so.