This opinion piece by ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin was originally published in the Australian.

When Nobel Peace Prize lau­re­ate Elie Wiesel was a pris­on­er in Auschwitz, he observed a curi­ous scene. One night, three fel­low pris­on­ers, rab­bis, had decid­ed to put God on tri­al for what he had done or allowed to be done to the Jew­ish peo­ple. Wiesel even­tu­al­ly would turn the event into a play, The Tri­al of God, on the same theme but set in a Pol­ish vil­lage rav­aged by a pogrom, an anti-Semit­ic mob ram­page of rape, destruc­tion and mur­der.

In the play, the char­ac­ter pros­e­cut­ing God accus­es the Almighty of “hos­til­i­ty, cru­el­ty and indif­fer­ence” for allow­ing such hor­rors to occur: “Either He knows what’s hap­pen­ing to us, or He doesn’t wish to know! In both cas­es He is guilty.”

The rab­bis Wiesel observed in Auschwitz reached much the same con­clu­sion: guilty. Then they returned to prayer.

Octo­ber 7, sim­i­lar­ly, rocked the faith of the Jew­ish peo­ple. It wasn’t so much a loss of faith in God this time but of Israel’s role as guar­an­tor of Jew­ish sur­vival, and of the world’s abil­i­ty to look at an image of two men mirth­ful­ly drag­ging a ter­ri­fied young woman into cap­tiv­i­ty and dis­tin­guish vic­tim from aggres­sor, good from evil. Faith in Israel has been restored by the val­our and inge­nu­ity of its peo­ple. Faith in human­i­ty will take a lit­tle longer.

But, as with the hor­rors Wiesel observed and wrote of, the trau­ma has stayed with us.

The Jew­ish peo­ple are mas­ters of fac­ing trau­ma and emerg­ing on the oth­er side of it. In Jew­ish law, the bereaved are oblig­at­ed to sit shi­va for sev­en days after the loss of a loved one. They cease work, dis­con­nect from the out­side world, cov­er their mir­rors to avoid van­i­ty, sit on low seats and just grieve. The rit­u­al forces one to tru­ly con­front one’s loss, stare at it, inter­ro­gate it, because the worst thing would be to car­ry on as though noth­ing had hap­pened.

At the end of the sev­en days, the mourn­er is oblig­at­ed to ter­mi­nate the peri­od of intense mourn­ing and stand up. The stand­ing up is often the hard­est part. After one year, all signs of mourn­ing must cease and the bereaved is required to live ful­ly again.

Octo­ber 7 last year was a day of destruc­tion that Jews will com­mem­o­rate for­ev­er to remind us of the exis­tence of evil and what hap­pens when you allow a dia­bol­ic foe to entrench him­self on your doorstep, plot­ting against you in plain sight. This gen­er­a­tion of Jews will feel a duty to remem­ber the names of the slain and abduct­ed, and to tell their sto­ries.

Sto­ries, we have learned, are far more potent than num­bers, which sim­ply over­whelm. The sto­ry of the elder­ly vaca­tion­ers bound for the Dead Sea pos­ing mer­ri­ly at a bus stop in one pho­to, then pho­tographed min­utes lat­er lying in a pool of blood. The stripped and bro­ken body of Shani Louk being struck and spat on as she was parad­ed through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pick­up truck, held in place under the boot of a Hamas ter­ror­ist, as if to show own­er­ship.

Naa­ma Levy, with blood­ied track­ies, being led by her hair into a Hamas vehi­cle. The tes­ti­monies of first respon­ders who tend­ed to piles of corpses and restored dig­ni­ty to the remains of those whose lives end­ed in sex­u­al tor­ture. A boy of no more than three or four, squirm­ing in fear and iso­la­tion, being poked and taunt­ed by Gazan chil­dren. A migrant work­er hav­ing his head hacked off with a shov­el. The ecsta­sy etched on the faces of the Gazans as they praised their con­cep­tion of God.

As we con­sumed these images, Jews in Aus­tralia and around the world were over­come by two sen­sa­tions. A phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, a sick­ness and breath­less­ness as though our own lives were in dan­ger, a feel­ing sim­i­lar to hav­ing a great weight placed on one’s chest. And a meta­phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence that trans­port­ed us to the scenes of Wiesel’s play and the episode that inspired it.

We heard the Hamas ter­ror­ists give the same rib­ald cack­les as the sadists that filled our fam­i­ly sto­ries. And we saw on the faces of the vic­tims the same res­ig­na­tion that was etched in black-and-white pho­tographs of those who knelt on the verge of ravines and for­est pits a sec­ond before the bul­let struck.

What has made this year par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing is that we were afford­ed no time to sit and mourn. There were hostages to fight for, pack rapists and cold-blood­ed killers to hunt, our local com­mu­ni­ty to pro­tect from the assem­bled hordes in our cities who praised our vio­la­tion as their “day of pride”, our rape and muti­la­tion as their “day of courage”.

But on Mon­day, on the first anniver­sary of that day, we are com­pelled to remem­ber but also to end our mourn­ing. That means deep­en­ing our con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety, not with­draw­ing. It means work­ing with our fel­low Aus­tralians to ensure the ethics derived from our faith that have enriched West­ern cul­ture are pre­served and enhanced. And it means to be strong and of good courage in the fight against ter­ror­ism, as the Israelis have amply demon­strat­ed. The time to sit in sor­row has now passed. Now we are required to stand up.