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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
There is a phrase I keep hearing during the High Holidays: “return to yourself.”
It sounds beautiful.
It also incredibly ambiguous.
The Hebrew word teshuvah means return. But return to what?
For an individual, perhaps it means returning to the person we know we are supposed to be. It means examining the distance between the values we claim and the life we actually live. We say family matters. Does our calendar prove it? We say Judaism matters. Does our life prove it? We say we are courageous. Where have we allowed fear to make our decisions for us?
Teshuvah is not supposed to be an exercise in feeling guilty. It is supposed to be an exercise in becoming different.
And this year, I think the Jewish People need to undergo the same process collectively, because we are entering a new stage of Jewish life after October 7th.
The first year was shock. We watched videos we still wish we had never seen. We learned the names of communities most Jews outside Israel had barely heard of — Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Nova.
We watched families wait for news of kidnapped children, parents, grandparents, and friends. We attended vigils, put hostage posters on walls, and refreshed our phones compulsively. We discovered just how quickly an event in Israel could divide Jewish history into a before and an after.
There was little room for reflection because we were still trying to comprehend what had happened.
Then came the second year. The shock of October 7th was joined by another shock: the reaction to it. We watched celebrations of Hamas and Hezbollah on Western streets. We watched university encampments pop up bizarrely in unison. We watched Jewish students intimidated and Jewish institutions threatened. We watched Israelis become unwelcome in spaces that once considered themselves enlightened and tolerant. We watched the word “Zionist” increasingly used as a way to say things about Jews that many people would hesitate to say using the word “Jew.”
Again and again, Jews said some version of the same thing: “I cannot believe this is happening.”
I understand why.
But we cannot spend a third year saying it. At some point, disbelief becomes a luxury.
We know now. We know that antisemitism was not buried with our grandparents’ generation. We know that Jewish acceptance in the West is more conditional than many of us wanted to believe. We know that Israel’s enemies have become extraordinarily sophisticated at fighting a narrative war. We know that enormous numbers of young people know almost nothing about Jewish history, Zionism, or Israel. We know that too many Jews are confused or illiterate about Israel, and about what Judaism asks of them, or why Jewish continuity should matter.
None of this should surprise us anymore. So perhaps the question of this High Holiday season should no longer be: “How could this happen?” It should be: “What are we going to do about it?”
That is where teshuvah becomes uncomfortable, because teshuvah does not allow us to spend all our time examining everyone else’s sins. It asks us to examine our own lives. And the Jewish world has questions to answer.
If we say Jewish continuity matters, why have we tolerated generations of Jewish education that leave young Jews knowing more about antisemitism than Judaism?
If Israel matters to us, can we actually explain Zionism to someone who disagrees with us, or have we outsourced that responsibility to Israeli spokespeople and advocacy organizations?
If Jewish community matters, when was the last time we joined one rather than complained about one?
If we are worried that young Jews are becoming disconnected, how much time, money, and creativity are we investing in making Jewish life something they actually want to belong to?
If we believe the Jewish People are one people, why does an attack in another city or another country so quickly become someone else’s problem?
If we complain that the world tells our story badly, who among us is telling it better?
If we are horrified that anti-Israel activists are reaching millions of people on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where is the comparable Jewish investment in creators, storytellers, filmmakers, artists, and cultural figures capable of reaching the same generation?
If our children know what happened at Auschwitz but cannot explain what happened at Sinai, what exactly have we taught them Judaism is?
And perhaps the hardest question of all is the most personal one: “What have I actually changed since October 7th?”
Not what have I posted. Not what have I complained about. Not what have I become angry about. What have I actually changed?
Do I know more Hebrew? Do I understand Jewish history better? Have I studied Torah? Have I visited Israel? Have I supported an Israeli business? Have I joined a synagogue or Jewish organization? Have I invited people to Shabbat? Have I donated? Have I mentored a younger Jew? Have I learned how to defend Israel intelligently rather than emotionally? Have I built something Jewish? Have I helped another Jew feel less alone? Have I made Jewish continuity more likely than it was two years ago?
These are not questions for Jewish organizations alone. They are questions for every one of us, because there is a dangerous temptation after October 7th to define Jewish action entirely as fighting antisemitism. We absolutely must fight it, but survival cannot be our entire Jewish project. A Judaism built entirely around people who hate Jews gives those people far too much power over what Judaism becomes.
The answer to antisemitism cannot simply be better security, better lobbying, better crisis communications, and better responses on social media. It must also be more Judaism: more Jewish children who know what it means to be Jewish, more homes where Shabbat is actually experienced rather than vaguely remembered, more Hebrew, more Torah, more Israel, more Zionism, more relationships between Israelis and diaspora Jews, more Jewish creators, more Jewish institutions willing to experiment, more investment in Jewish culture, and more Jews who understand our history well enough that somebody with an infographic cannot erase it for them.
We need more confidence, more belonging and, above all, more life.
That may be one of the greatest lessons of Jewish history. Our ancestors rarely defeated hatred by persuading everyone to stop hating them. They defeated it by refusing to allow hatred to determine whether Judaism would survive. After destruction, they built. After exile, they built. After expulsions, they built. After pogroms, they built. After the Holocaust, they built.
After October 7th, we must build too.
And that requires moving beyond shock. The first year after October 7th, we were trying to understand what had happened. The second year, we were trying to understand what was happening around us. The third year has to be different. This year we should understand something much more important: We have agency.
The future of Jewish life is not determined exclusively by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its tentacles across the Middle East, or by antisemites, or by universities, or by governments, or by social-media algorithms, or by people marching through Western capitals. It is also determined by us: by what we teach our children, by what we fund, by what we build, by what we refuse to abandon, and by whether Judaism occupies the center of our lives or remains something we become passionate about only when somebody attacks it.
That is why the idea of return feels especially urgent this year. Perhaps returning to ourselves as a Jewish People means remembering who we were before we became consumed with explaining ourselves to everyone else.
We are not merely the people who survived Pharaoh; we are the people who walked toward Sinai. We are not merely the people who survived destruction; we are the people who rebuilt Jerusalem. We are not merely the people the world has repeatedly tried to eliminate; we are the people who repeatedly chose life anyway.
So this High Holiday season, the most important question may not be what the world will do to the Jews next. We have spent enough time wondering about that.
The more important question is what we Jews will do next.
Yes! This is exactly right. People talk about fighting antisemitism, but we've been down this road before. And we know instinctively what to do because we did it right after Oct. 7: cling harder to each other and harder to our traditions. It's what we've always done when faced with hatred and persecution, and it's the only time-tested method that works to ensure our survival and outlast our enemies.
👏👏👏🙌🙌🙌🔥🔥🔥I need add nothing you said it all here, Vanessa! I’m proud to be a Lutheran ally of the Jewish community!