his week we marked the anniversary of the day that caused such devastation and has reshaped so much of the world.

One year on from the tragedy of October 7 2023, we have a series of searing images scored into our collective psyche. The deliberate but indiscriminate slaughter of people of all stages of life. The acts of heroism that saw ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things in defence of their loved ones or strangers. We will forever remember the fear etched in the faces of civilians being dragged across the border and the pain of relatives and friends mourning their loss at the wave of funerals that have occurred this year.

A year on and so many hostages are still not home. So many civilians have been displaced from their homes and so many students robbed of a year of schooling. So many families have been torn apart by death and hurt and by the terrible ways that war also casts its shadow over the innocents.

This has been a year of unrelenting war. This war is fought on many fronts. Militarily it has included Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. But it is a war that is also being fought at the United Nations, the European Union, the streets of our own city and around the workplace watercooler. We feel it on our university campuses, in letters to the editor and perhaps most insidiously in the sludge of social media.

Within an Australian context we have felt the emergence of the sleeping beast of antisemitism. We have seen exclusion, doxxing, demonisation and moments of violence. We have felt the frustration at attempts to delegitimise core aspects of our identities and discerned the rifts that have emerged within our own social groups and family settings.

Our confidence, our sense of safety and our hard-fought cross-communal relationships within our multicultural paradise have all been eroded. 

The commemoration of October 7 fell within the Days of Awe – the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur – where we meditate on the year that has passed, initiate t‘shuvah and strategise for how to move closer to our best selves in the coming year.

It is a truism that nobody wins a war. War changes us. We become more entrenched in our views, we can lose our compassion and succumb to cynicism, negativity and pessimism. It is hard to talk about healing in a time when the war is still raging but I do not want to enter the year ahead with the heaviness of some of these changes. Perhaps it is time to reorient ourselves in ways that cast off the byproducts of war that undermine our truest selves.

From the bleakest and most bruising of years, we need to find a way forward. I pray that we can find the glimmers of optimism for a better tomorrow. These Days of Awe, let’s take inspiration from Israel and our people’s anthem, Hatikvah, which orients us towards eternal hope. 

G’mar Chatimah Tovah v’ Am Yisrael Chai,

Marc Light