As we begin 5785 and look ahead to a new Jewish year, we are also aware, one year later, of the effects of Oct. 7. After Hamas' attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, Zara Hai — a Pakistani-American Muslim high school senior in California’s Bay Area — felt sad and adrift. Her school avoided the topic of the war, and the news reports she read seemed divisive and unsettling. Searching for hope and common ground, Zara joined Writopia Lab’s “Connecting Across Cultures,” a creative writing program to connect Jewish and Muslim teenagers.
“This was a deeply moving experience that gave me a better understanding of the ‘other side.’” Zara writes in one of six essays we’re publishing from teenagers trying to make sense of our post-Oct. 7 world.
For Max Alperstein, who was born in Guatemala, Oct. 7 changed how he thought about both his Jewish and Latino identities. Ethan VanderWalde, who attends high school in Memphis, writes of how Oct. 7 made him more committed to his Judaism. Libby Raviv describes the horror and disbelief she felt hearing a coach defending the atrocities of Oct. 7. For Dania Bressler, this past year has inspired her to learn how to play a prayer on the violin. And, Anniyah Rizvi speaks eloquently of finding solace in “a community of thoughtful, curious and compassionate dreamers.”
In each of these students’ essays, one feels, amid the struggle and sorrow, a sense of optimism and curiosity. We hope that reading how the horrors of the past year and the discourse around it have affected these young writers will make us all a little more thoughtful, curious and compassionate.
Or, as Zara Hai puts it, “The lesson for all of us is to humanize suffering by listening to the other side.”
