I am writing this post on October 7, 2024, the first anniversary of Hamas’ pogrom. In the world as a whole, and, within that, in the Jewish world, and, within that, in the State of Israel, we are all very familiar and very comfortable with the marking of anniversaries and commemorative days. This anniversary, however, is like no other I have ever experienced.

First, it started on Saturday. Shabbat marked Day 365 of October 7, and everywhere this was being spoken of as “marking the year”. Of course, 2024 is a leap year, and so, technically, the first year was completed yesterday, on Sunday, and not on Saturday. However, we normally mark anniversaries on the same date as the event, and so it is today that is being marked nationally, in official and unofficial ceremonies, in the streets and the cultural centres and in the media, as the first anniversary.

This marking of Day 365 that completes a simple year, and of Day 366 that completes the leap year, and of Day 367 as the anniversary of the date, is not something that we do in other circumstances. It has happened here, this week, I believe, because every single day since October 7 2023 is another day that 97 children, women and men abductees have been surviving in sub-human conditions in Gaza; another day that their wives, husbands, children, parents, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, wider family and friends have suffered the constant pain of not knowing where they are, what state of physical health and state of mind they are in. It also marks another day for the four hostages who have been held in Gaza far longer. Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two soldiers who crossed into Gaza in 2014; Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu, who crossed into Gaza separately in 2015: all are still held captive in Gaza, bringing the number of hostages to 101.

The hostages, their loved ones, and, to a lesser but not negligible extent, the nation, are all marking not a year, as a single block, but a year of days, on each of which we wake to the renewed realisation that our captives are not yet redeemed. Every single day brings its unique burden. Every day, every single day, the mainstream media bring us interviews with more bereaved families and families of hostages.

This is another feature of this year. We are not marking the anniversary of an event whose magnitude, whose nature, whose multi-facetedness we understood in real time. We are marking the 367^th day of an event whose details are still being uncovered.

This morning, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum announced that Idan Shtivi, 28, had died at the Nova festival and his body had been abducted to Gaza, where he is still held. “On October 7, Idan arrived at the Nova Festival in the early morning to document his friends’ performances and workshops,” the forum said. The IDF spokesman later referred to the announcement, and stated that the decision to determine his death was based on intelligence information and was approved by an expert committee of the Ministry of Health in cooperation with the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Israel Police. This is the reality of a year ago that is still being painstakingly, and paingivingly, unearthed.

And of course, Idan, like every single one of the 101 hostages, alive and dead, is an entire world. Some worlds are more dramatic than others, some more prosaic; but each of them is an entire authentic world to those who inhabit it with the hostage. Here is the Instagram entry of Idan:

“Idan Shtivi is a loved child, a family man, a loving partner to Stav, and a loved son to Dalit and Eli. Idan is a true gentleman, a genuine and generous soul, always putting others before himself and caring for everybody’s best interests. Idan was about to start an exciting new chapter in his life: moving in with Stav. The couple even adopted a dog together. “We talked about how our home would look, and in the end, I entered the apartment alone and hoped every day that he would return to me.”

Here is the poetry and nobility of what we call an ordinary life, lived with integrity.

In addition, of course, we are not marking the anniversary of an event that was completed in the past. The war of which the pogrom was the opening salvo continues today, on multiple fronts, and every day of the 367 has brought its own stories both of bravery and of suffering and loss.

This morning, the death was announced, in battle in southern Lebanon, of IDF Staff Sergeant Major Etay Azulay, aged 25. This raises the total number of Israeli soldiers killed on or since October 7 of last year to 727. If, on average, two of your nation’s fighters are falling every day, then you count the passage of time in days, and not in years.

As I write, I know no details of Etay’s life, other than the fact that he was 25 when he fell, and that, judging from his picture in uniform, he had a warm, infectious, and slightly mischievous smile. May his memory, may all their memories, be for a blessing.

One of the many women widowed by this war, speaking on the radio this morning, drew attention to another sense in which this anniversary does not mark something completed in the past. Ordinarily, she explained, when a person suffers bereavement, 90% of their life continues as normal.

In her case, a year ago, on October 7, when she lost her husband, she also lost so much more. She lost her home on the kibbutz, destroyed by Hamas. She lost the kibbutz as a place to live, since it was uninhabitable, and she and her children were compelled to move from a pastoral, small-community life to an anonymous apartment in a big city, a way of life unlike anything she had ever known. Her children all had to switch from attending a small school with the children who had been their neighbours and closest friends all their lives, to attending a large school where they knew nobody. She lost her job and was unable to find work. When she suffered bereavement, her entire life was completely uprooted in a moment. A year later, a year of 367 days later, she still has no roots.

The survivors of October 7 live every day with their trauma. Every day that the war continues, the emotional burden on our fighters grows heavier. Every day that the hostages are not returned, each one of them grows inexorably weaker and closer to death, and so, in a different way, do their loved ones. Every day that the nation does not grow together, it grows further apart. Each one of these 367 days has made the path back to a normal life that much longer and more choked with weeds.

My prayer, today, is that we may be able to commemorate the second anniversary of October 7 in a single ceremony, united as a nation, looking back on a cataclysmic past event. Until then, we are compelled to continue to observe that today is Day 367 of October 7, and tomorrow will be Day 368.