THREE YEARS AGO TODAY, on the morning of October 7th, 2023, the Jewish people awoke not to the songs of Simchat Torah but to the sound of sirens, gunfire, and screams. On a day meant for dancing with the Torah, Hamas terrorists poured across the border from Gaza and murdered some 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Young people were slaughtered at a music festival. Families were butchered in their homes. Around 250 people were dragged into captivity. It was the deadliest single day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
We pause today to remember them. We remember the murdered, the fallen, the hostages who endured the darkness of the tunnels, and the families whose lives will never be whole again. May their memory be a blessing, and may all who suffered find comfort.
But as we mourn, we are forced to confront a chilling pattern, one which is definitely just as old as our people and as fresh as last week’s headlines.
A Sword Raised Over the Festival
If you take a look closely at the calendar of Jewish suffering, you will notice something that is no accident. Most of the time, our enemies have a terrible habit of striking precisely when we gather to rejoice during festivals.
In 1973, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched a surprise invasion on Yom Kippur, the holiest and most vulnerable day of the Jewish year, when the nation stood in prayer and fasting. In 2023, Hamas chose Simchat Torah, the day we celebrate the completion and renewal of the Torah, to unleash its massacre. Last December, on the first night of Hanukkah, as around a thousand Jews gathered on Australia’s Bondi Beach to kindle the first light, two gunmen opened fire from above, murdering fifteen people, among them a ten-year-old girl, a Holocaust survivor, and a rabbi.
The message of our enemies is always the same: they cannot bear to see Jews alive, and they despise most of all the sight of Jews rejoicing.
The Miracle in the Sky
And so we come to the event that nearly became another entry in this bitter chronicle, only days ago, during the festival of Sukkot. But Baruch Hashem, that the heavens forbade it!
On Wednesday, September 30th, FlyDubai Flight FZ1073 lifted off from Dubai, bound for Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, carrying 174 souls. In the cockpit sat a co-pilot, an Omani national named Hamam al-Hammami, who, it would later emerge, had already been flagged over extremist concerns and even barred from flying by his country. Mid-flight, he seized an emergency axe and turned on the captain, Smit Machchhar, striking him and attempting to take control of the aircraft. His plan, according to investigators, was to crash the plane into a building in Tel Aviv, in the heart of Israel, during a Jewish festival.
It was to be another October 7th from the sky.
It did not happen. The wounded captain, bleeding, fought with everything he had, long enough to unlock the cockpit door. And then ordinary passengers, Israelis and crew, together with two off-duty pilots who happened to be aboard, rushed forward and overpowered the attacker. The plane squawked the hijack code, diverted, and landed safely in Saudi Arabia. Not one passenger was lost. Again, Baruch Hashem!
The world has rightly called it a miracle in the sky. The wounded captain who fought back has been hailed as a hero. But let us not miss the deeper meaning. Once again, the enemy chose a festival. Once again, he sought to turn our joy into mourning. And this time, he failed.
Why We Are Not Afraid
Some will ask why this pattern persists. Why is it that in every generation, as our ancestors said at the Seder table, they rise up against us to destroy us? We do not have a full answer to the mystery of such hatred. But we know the truth: the hatred is real, it is ancient, and it adapts to every age, from the swords of Amalek to the axe in a cockpit.
And yet we also know how the sentence ends. In every generation they rise against us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers us from their hand. The Yom Kippur War was won. The surviving hostages have come home, and we grieve those who never made it back. The plane bound for Tel Aviv landed safely. We bend, we bleed, but we are not broken.
Here in Africa, far from Israel and Sydney, we feel these blows as our own. We feel these blows as our own because we are one people. When a Jew is murdered on a beach in Australia, a Jew in Uganda mourns. When a plane is saved over Tel Aviv, a Jew in Nigeria expresses gratitude. The enemy wishes to see us as scattered and alone. We answer him by standing together.
Some will ask why this pattern persists. Why is it that in every generation, as our ancestors said at the Seder table, they rise up against us to destroy us? We do not have a full answer to the mystery of such hatred. But we know the truth: the hatred is real, it is ancient, and it adapts to every age, from the swords of Amalek to the axe in a cockpit.
And yet we also know how the sentence ends. In every generation they rise against us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers us from their hand. The Yom Kippur War was won. The surviving hostages have come home, and we grieve those who never made it back. The plane bound for Tel Aviv landed safely. We bend, we bleed, but we are not broken.
Here in Africa, far from Israel and Sydney, we feel these blows as our own. We feel these blows as our own because we are one people. When a Jew is murdered on a beach in Australia, a Jew in Uganda mourns. When a plane is saved over Tel Aviv, a Jew in Nigeria expresses gratitude. The enemy wishes to see us as scattered and alone. We answer him by standing together.
Am Yisrael Chai
Three years after October 7th, the lesson is not that we should stop dancing. It is that we must dance anyway, with our eyes open and our hands joined. They attacked us on Simchat Torah to steal our joy. We will keep rejoicing with the Torah. They struck on Yom Kippur to break our prayer. We will keep praying. They aimed for the sky over Tel Aviv. The sky is still ours.
To the memory of the fallen of October 7th, we bow our heads. For the miracle over the skies of Sukkot, we lift our thanks. And to every enemy who waits for a festival to strike, we say what our people have said for three thousand years: Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live.