Grounding Myself in Tradition
The emotional see-saw of post-October 7 life
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
I have four kids: twins at different colleges and two younger daughters still at home. I go to the field hockey game, the dance practice, the grocery store. I sip coffee at the parent meeting, wine at the mixer. I help navigate friendship dramas and academic challenges. I try to parent well—to strike the delicate balance between offering help and leaving space for their burgeoning independence. The white noise of parenting is the background of my days.
But my attention is fractured now; grief has taking residence in my body. I feel exposed, always primed for the next frightening headline. Abruptly, my mind turns to the students holding a sit-in at my son’s campus library; to the missiles firing across the Middle East; to the hostages, the hostages, the hostages. These stray thoughts intrude on a morning walk, an afternoon errand, the carpool line. It’s jarring, this attentional ping-pong, this see-saw of energy and emotion.
Books by rabbis, journalists and Israeli authors are stacked high on my desk. I read intently, pen in hand, hoping that if I can underline just the right text, I can contain my grief, recover my agency. I listen to umpteen podcasts; I attend events at private homes, our Reform Temple and the Holocaust Museum. I’m one in a sea of Jewish faces, consoled by my community. Generations of assimilation left me unprepared for this reckoning—for being othered at institutions where I thought I belonged. Allyship, it turns out, is not always reciprocal.
The world is irrevocably different now, broken into before and after, our collective storytelling and memory profoundly altered by the inhumanity of October 7. I am reeling, still, and trying to understand how being Jewish now requires something fundamentally different. I read with urgency, almost desperation—probing for answers, grasping for hope. I visited Israel in February, a solidarity mission that felt like a shiva call; the anguished country beckoned like a wounded child cries for her mother.
My longing to center my Jewish identity feels primordial. Before October 7, I underestimated my connection to Israel, assuming both the country’s sovereignty and its irrelevance to my life. Now, I am humbled. I know that Israeli and American Jewry are indelibly bound by the same thread—a faith that extends backward in time and across oceans. The people of Israel are my people. Their grief surfaces in my nightmares, lives in my bones. I am newly aware of the ancient covenant that binds me to my ancestors: a precious inheritance.
I yearn to don the redolent splendor of my Jewish faith; to marvel at Torah, to learn Hebrew, to live out my connection to Israel. I am a student, a seeker, freshly rooted in the particularism of my faith. I will lean into my longing, my advocacy, my learning. This is what it means to be Jewish now.
Jennifer Wizel lives in Houston, Texas with two dogs, four kids, and her husband. She is a graduate of Emory University and Bank Street College of Education, and enjoys spending time with family and friends, travel, and reading.
Instagram: @jlcny
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.