I’m Fine

Rabbi Diana Fersko reflects on the Jewish obligation to listen—and how, in Israel, she found the freedom to simply breathe.

Rabbi Diana Fersko

Editor’s Note: For many of us, our lives are divided into before and after October 7, 2023. This essay, from On Being Jewish Now, edited by Zibby Owens, captures that shift. In this piece, Rabbi Diana Fersko, author of We Need to Talk about Antisemitism (Hachette, August 2023), reflects on her role as a rabbi in Manhattan, where she listens to others' pain, and on finding space to grieve and breathe during a visit to Israel. — Howard Lovy

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I'm sitting with a friend in the common space of a Manhattan apartment building along with maybe twenty other New Yorkers. It’s November, or maybe December, just a few weeks after the attack. In front of the room is a woman, probably in her early thirties. To describe her as a woman isn’t the full picture. What she really is is a mom. Her kids aren’t in the room, but you can just tell. By her calm voice, by her inner confidence, by her body. And she tells her story.

On October 7, she didn’t know what was happening. She shows us the WhatsApp chats from her kibbutz. Terrorists inside kibbutz, one reads. Someone is calling for help. Someone else isn’t responding at all. Her family hides in the safe room. It doesn’t have a lock. She stands guard near the door with a kitchen knife and instructs her young children to watch episodes of SpongeBob over and over and over again on their iPad in order to keep them quiet. Her husband goes out and tries to save his friend. He can’t. The family of four survives. Most of their neighbors and friends are murdered in their homes.

I’m a congregational rabbi and the author of a horribly timely book on antisemitism. But mostly what I am is a Jew. And I like to think I’m a good Jew. At the very least, I’m a trained Jew. I know how to do Jewish things. I know how to keep kosher, how to light Shabbat candles, how to pray, and how to visit the sick. And I know something else: I know how to listen to survivors.

So, yes, post–October 7, I travel around the country with my book and I talk. I talk about the history of antisemitism and how what’s happening now is not new, but rather an update of something quite old. I talk about the fluidity of political parties and the Jews. I talk about the university system, about strategies to fight back. I talk about my unwavering commitment to Israel. I talk about the uncertain future of Jews in America and what might happen next.

But more than I talk, I listen. Because I know that listen- ing is a moral, religious obligation for Jews.

“You know why God gave you two ears, but only one mouth?” a rabbi asks a group of children rhetorically, lovingly. “So we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

Shema Yisrael, we say every day. It’s a commandment to the Jewish people instructing us to hear the truth. For Jews, the act of listening is a holy thing. So hearing the stories of those who were there is religious, but it’s also practical; it will help me fight the jarringly familiar onslaught of denialism about to come our way. And anyway, like many of us, I’ve been listening to stories of Jewish persecution and perseverance my entire life. So I tell myself I am going to listen, because I have to, because it matters, because it’s the right thing to do.

I listen to a jewelry designer, taken captive by Hamas from the Nova music festival, tell me how she tried to make herself as ugly as possible so her captors would not rape her.

I listen to a farmer who lives near the Nova music festival tell me how he found women, naked, tied to trees. He cut them off of the trees, closed their eyes, said the Shema, and moved on, saving hundreds of Israelis that day. I listen to a volunteer from ZAKA describe finding women mutilated beyond recognition. I hear a police officer describe witnessing the aftermath of the slaughter of babies and the murder of grandparents.

And I do the same with the situation at home. I man an unofficial but constant antisemitism hotline. My friends, my family, and my congregants call, text, and WhatsApp to share their outrage and concern. A lot of the messages are about our educational system: My child’s school removed Israel from the map; I’m a teacher and my students are repeating antisemitic conspiracy theories; my child has a moment of silence for Palestinian children in elementary school each morning and nothing for Israelis; my daughter is coming home early from college, she just can’t take it anymore. I try to provide support, validation, and education as best I can.

I carry the stories with me. I hold them in my heart. I pray for the return of the hostages. I think about them when I rise up, when I lie down, and when I’m on my way. All the atrocities, all the outrage and confusion, all the fear, all the survival. I keep it with me, trying to understand.

My friends text me: “Mental health check in,” they write. “How are you managing?” They are nice. I love them. Of course, I’m okay. This is a crisis and there is no time for my feelings, frankly. I have to listen and lecture and organize and strategize and I have to lead. And anyway, I’m a great coper and I do all the things. I exercise, I hug my children, I process. Yes, yes, I’m fine.

And then, in March, I walk off the plane and I’m in Israel. And for the first time in a very long time, I do something instead of listen. I breathe. I breathe and I cry and I smile. I feel relief and release. Finally, I have the freedom to not be fine. Because in Israel, the horror of that day doesn’t need to live within me; it’s out there for everyone to see. We can grieve, collectively, communally, publicly. I walk down the street in Tel Aviv. I see an art installation of bloodied teddy bears with black bands tied around their arms or heads. The vulnerability and the violence perfectly, horribly expressed. I don’t need to carry the pain inside because Israel is carrying it for me, with me.

When I walk out of my apartment in Manhattan, I see pictures of hostages, but they are all torn down or defaced. In Tel Aviv, I walk to Dizengoff Fountain in the center of the city, and all around the fountain I see pictures of teenagers, just like our teenagers. A girl in a sundress, a boy wearing a gold necklace, a child’s toy shofar. It’s all out there, documented and displayed for anyone to see.

In Israel, I am free. I am free to acknowledge how horrific October 7 was. How broken I feel. How afraid, how fortified, and how enraged I am. And I start to do things. I pick strawberries from a field so they don’t go to waste. I dance with strangers on Purim. I have drinks with my beloved friends in the middle of the night. I’m moving, I’m acting, I’m alive again. Staring out at the Mediterranean on the beach, overcome with gratitude, I hear the words of Hatikvah in my mind. Maybe I am starting to understand what it feels like to be a free people in our land.

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Diana Fersko is the senior rabbi of the Village Temple in downtown Manhattan. Before joining the Village Temple, Rabbi Fersko served as associate rabbi at New York City’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. She is a former national vice president of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the New York Board of Rabbis, and a board member of UJA-Federation of New York. Rabbi Fersko received her rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, where she also earned a master’s degree in Hebrew literature. A prolific writer, Rabbi Fersko is the author of the book We Need to Talk about Antisemitism (Hachette, August 2023). Her ideas and work have been featured in The New Yorker, Variety, Forbes, The New York Times, Time magazine, and widely in the Jewish press.

Five Tiny Delights

• Reading

• Moving

• Listening

• Sitting quietly

• Friendship 

Five tiny Jewish delights

• Going to the mikveh

• Eating Babka

• Talmud Torah

• Saying the Shema

• Sitting at the Shabbat table with my family