My first memory of this day last year, a day that shall go down in infamy, is walking to the synagogue. It was Shabbat and the holiday of Simchat Torah, a happy holiday, where the sacred Torah scrolls are taken from their honored, sheltered places in the Holy Ark and people – ordinary people, members of the congregation – show their love for this great gift that, according to our tradition, came directly to us from God Himself. The scrolls are embraced, danced with, kissed. In certain egalitarian congregations, women too dance with the Torah scrolls, as do young people. It is not considered demeaning to the Torah. Quite the opposite. It shows the deep, passionate connection of the Jewish people to their heritage, a heritage that is at the foundation of Western Civilization and every monotheistic religion, which has pillaged its wisdom shamelessly, and without acknowledgement. This Torah of which we have been made the guardians and disseminators amidst all of mankind, is literally taken to our hearts with joy.

I was looking forward to joining my grandchildren in this happy event. But half-way to the synagogue, I met my grandson going in the opposite direction. Why was he going back home, I asked him, when the service had just begun? And this is what he told me: “There has been a terror attack in the south. Hundreds are dead. We are at war.”

A terror attack and hundreds were dead? It made absolutely no sense. In all my many years in Israel even the worst terror attacks counted casualties in at the most two-figures. More than that was unprecedented. I thought: “He’s a child. He misheard.” But when later that morning the sirens went off in Modi’in, and the congregation poured into the bomb shelter, I realized that unprecedented was going to be the descriptive word we would be using for the rest of the events of this terrible year.

The knowledge of what happened on October 7 unfolded slowly for most of us over the course of the year. The violence. The hundreds kidnapped. The barbaric sexual crimes. The cruelty and barbarism of how women, children and the elderly were treated. The sheer horror of it all changed us, all of us. Every Israeli. Even the most Left-wing optimist and believer in humanity and the ability to turn an enemy into a friend through kindness. It opened our reluctant eyes to a reality that for decades, Israelis didn’t want to acknowledge about the people who were throwing bombs at us. The “few bad apples” theory bit the dust when it was clear how many ordinary Gazans – including their women and children – had crossed the border to destroy and kill. That those who had ferried sick Gazan children to Israeli cancer treatment centers were also brutally murdered. That those who had employed Gazan workers on their kibbutzim had been mapped out and targeted by their workers for death.

We will never be the same as we once were.

Sometimes I think that’s a good thing. It’s self-preservation. But often I mourn those Israelis who held on so hard and for so long to the hope of peaceful coexistence with their neighbors in a New Middle East. Now, we’ve been taught in the cruelest way possible that there was no room for compromise. This was about racial hatred. But most of all, it was about land. Our land. They didn’t want “two states.” They wanted all our land. From the river to the sea. And all of us dead.

And so now we know, that to have real peace we must get rid of all the people who call themselves Palestinians. In Gaza. In Lebanon. In the West Bank. We must have defensible borders with real countries: Jordan, Egypt, and a terrorist-free Lebanon. I’m not talking about Muslims, or Israeli Arabs who live with us and have actually been quite loyal through this entire war. But those who claim our land. From the river to the sea, we must be free of Palestinians. The one Israeli Arab who has been involved in a terror attack which happened yesterday in Beersheva, killing a young border guard and injuring many, was a Bedouin criminal whose father was also a terrorist who killed a soldier. He and his family should never have been allowed to remain in the country. We must find a way to see that happens.

Today, the Israeli government and private individuals tried to do the impossible: create a ceremony we could all share in to collectively mourn our losses. It turns out, it really was impossible. I wanted to watch, really I did, but just couldn’t stomach it. Sometimes something is too big, too ineffable to get your head around. Like the Holocaust. Trying to show videos of what happened, hear the words of the bereaved, listen to the sad songs… it was all well-meaning but in the end infuriating for everything it couldn’t possibly say. It was reductive.

Besides, we are not done yet. We are in the middle of a war in which causalities are announced on a daily basis among our citizens and military. Bombs continue to explode in our cities despite the Iron Dome.

But let there be no question that we have spent the year decimating our enemies. A year ago, Hamas fired over 4,300 rockets into Israel on this day. And today, they fired 5 and immediately afterwards IDF planes bombed the launchers, and expelled the people sheltering in Khan Yunis from where the missiles were launched.

Hezbollah, which was a mighty Iranian proxy army overshadowing our north, is all but destroyed. Instead of thousands of rockets, they try a few here and there with little success. And Iran, which seemed so menacing and invulnerable, has been humiliated time and again, and shown up for the primitive, backward people their leaders are, who rule them brutally in the name of their primitive, backward religious beliefs.

That is not to say this day should not have been commemorated. Everyone who died was a hero or a martyr. I think one could reasonably argue that October 7 saved the country from a disaster looming in Lebanon that we would not have survived. So it could be said that every Israeli who lost their life on October 7, saved ours.

But perhaps we didn’t need an extravaganza to do this. Perhaps what we should have done was honor them in the way we Jews have always honored our heroes and martyrs: With a moment of silence, followed by a lifetime of remembering. We will never forget what our enemies tried to do to us. We will never forget the heroism and holiness of those who died. But most of all, we must spend our lifetime, each day, every day, trying to be worthy of the sacrifices they made for us. As Captain Ethan Isaac Oster said as he went into battle in Lebanon, a battle from which he did not return: “A true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

May all their memories be a blessing. And may we all succeed in being worthy.

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