In the Jewish story and in all human stories, joy often seems to mingle with pain.

We gather together for a holiday and we remember loved ones who are not there. We celebrate milestones and we think of how things could be or should be.

This year, we might be thinking of what flowers or greenery we’ll hang in our sukkah. We’re listing the ingredients for a special meal for Sukkot and thinking of friends to invite. But as the page turns on the calendar, it announces: October 7 is coming again.

Sukkot has become a heavy time for us in the last two years. Jewish people everywhere were preparing to enjoy the last day of the week-long holiday—then they saw the news.

With the first full day of Sukkot falling on October 7, we’re turning over our memories in our minds. Here’s what that looks like for four of our Jews for Jesus staff members.

Katie, Tel Aviv

When I think about that day, I remember that I was really excited to take a photo of our family all together. We were living on the second floor of a home in an apartment. We had this beautiful balcony that I had worked really hard on—I’d filled it with bougainvillea and palm plants.

This was the first year that we built a sukkah for our family. Firsts feel so meaningful. I took a few spontaneous pics on my phone as we were getting ready for the day. In one of my favorite pictures, my husband and our daughter are both grinning from ear to ear. He’s loaded down with a pile of palm branches that’s almost as big as himself! They’re too heavy to be lifted up over the balcony, so he’s dragging them through our kitchen.

The kids loved the chaos of preparing for the holiday. We hung the curtains, paper chains, fruit decorations, and solar lights, and enjoyed our mini sukkah with family and friends. I kept thinking about the family photo I wanted to take in the sukkah, but one thing after another popped up. And then on Simchat Torah, the news started coming in.

We were all plunged into a different reality. I watched my husband sitting on our patio furniture inside the sukkah, and I knew that he was ingesting all this uncertainty and horror coming through his cell phone. We were checking on our friends and family members—where were they? Who was okay, and who wasn’t okay? As the hours passed, the news grew worse.

This place that we were so excited about turned into a place of uncertainty and horror. The sukkah was supposed to be something cozy for my family. Now it was filled with fear.

Over the weeks that followed, I told my husband several times, “I don’t want to take the sukkah down, because if we take it down, it feels like we have to accept this reality.” I wanted to believe that our sukkah, our country, our neighborhood were still safe places. Taking it down would mean acceptance; taking it down would mean, this is our reality now. We are living through a war. We wanted to suspend it—couldn’t we just stay in Sukkot and not move forward with the year?

We lived in the flight path of a military air base. So for what felt like months, the roar of plane engines and the chopping of helicopter blades filled our home. Every ten minutes, another aircraft took off. We did take the sukkah down eventually, and there was no denying it: we were in war.

That was the last sukkah that we put up. We live abroad now, and it’s very cold here. We don’t have a plan yet for this year’s Sukkot, but I hope to find a way to celebrate together as a family for at least one night.

I do look forward to the day when we will set up another sukkah. And I’m so ready to celebrate somehow this year. There’s been so much antisemitism and so many difficult things that we’re working through. Sometimes it feels counterintuitive to celebrate. But God commands it over and over in the Torah, and there is a release in remembering everything he has carried us through.

We don’t know what the new year is going to bring. But I feel like we need to look at what the Lord has done and look at what he is going to do. We can celebrate whatever the circumstances are, because he is our safe place.

There is so much hope in what he can do moving forward.

Isaac, Los Angeles

I remember sitting at my dining table staring at my phone. I saw the first glimpses of the news, but I needed to piece together what the magnitude of the attack was. Sadly, being used to receiving reports of attacks on Israel, I already had a mental list of those whom I needed to check on. When they reached back to me, it became quite clear that the scope of this attack was unlike anything we’d ever seen.

My friends sent me pictures of their families in the shelters. And as some of the more graphic images and videos started circulating on social media, I began to understand that nothing would ever be the same again. I didn’t want it to be true, but no matter how hard we hoped, we couldn’t make it untrue.

Later that evening, my team and I were set to host the reception of a new art exhibit called “Monument.” It was connected to the themes of Sukkot. There were two friends of mine who were scheduled to play live music during the reception; they are both Israeli. I wondered whether they would even show up. When they did, they looked so somber that I asked, “Is this something you still want to do?” They said yes—they needed to get their minds off what was happening.

So we continued with the reception. My friends played some beautiful traditional music. One of the artists (my friend Jake) showed his custom mural which featured a quote from King Solomon: “But will God indeed dwell with people on the earth?” (2 Chronicles 6:18). His painting depicted the darkness of humanity asking that question: considering all the chaos and darkness in the world, is this still a place that God wants to dwell?

He’d been working on it all through the High Holidays—weeks before October 7. While we’d watched him painting, none of us had known how apropos his question was about to become.

Then Jake spoke a traditional prayer for peace, Oseh Shalom. I looked around the room—none of us felt very “peaceful.” None of us could be where we wanted to be: helping in Israel. But we’d found a way to connect, a way to help each other, and a way to hold in our hearts those who were far away by praying for them. It was a small dose of healing.

In moments when time and space prevent us from sitting with the people we love who are experiencing tragedy, the most important thing to do is pray.

Rebekah, New York City

October 7, 2023, was a weirdly miserable, pouring-down-rain kind of Saturday in New York City. I had signed up to attend a one-day conference on mentoring youth. I almost cancelled, but left early instead to head for the train.

Everything was off about the day from the moment I left my apartment. All my normal trains were out of service because of repair work, and all my backup trains were running strangely due to the deluge of water. I arrived drenched and cold, but on time.

As the emcee started orienting us to the day, he asked us to silence our phones so we could be present and focused. I went to turn my phone off, but first noticed a screen full of alerts. My phone had been deep in my raincoat pocket; I had missed it buzzing.

I started scrolling through the messages in a panic. What was happening? Something horrible had happened—was still even happening—in Israel. Nothing made sense. Moments of that day are a blur, but one thing that was certain was that I needed to not be in Queens. I needed to be home. I needed to see and hold my children.

During my ride to the train station, I kept watching news alerts. My brain glitched; surely events had been wrongly reported; surely this was all a bad dream. Israel doesn’t get overwhelmed. Israel doesn’t get surprised. Israel isn’t vulnerable. If Israel is vulnerable, is there anywhere in the world that Jewish people aren’t vulnerable?

In the weeks following, we let our Kindergartner know that there were some very bad things that had happened in Israel, and we were going to be talking and praying about them as a family. We told him that we were sad but that he was safe. One night at dinner, he asked to pray, and I remember him saying, “God, you’re God. And I know that you know that what is happening in Israel and in Gaza isn’t ok. So if you know that it isn’t ok, I think that you should stop it. Amen.” I still don’t have better words than his.

Approaching another high holiday season and another October 7 is really hard. Sukkot is called Z’man Simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. Rejoicing at times feels like obedience—at other times, I feel myself resisting it. I read this question from Psalm 137: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” and I think I understand the psalmist’s sense of wrestling.

How can we rejoice when so much is wrong, specifically that there are still hostages so far from coming home? And yet, I will choose to rejoice that God is the one who makes the rain fall and the plants grow. I will remind him and remind myself that he is God and he is the one who can and must make the wrong things right.

Simon, Jerusalem

I remember the morning of October 7 with startling clarity. The sun rose gently over Jerusalem, casting a calm light on what should have been a peaceful Shabbat. We had waffle batter ready in the fridge, and our family planned to enjoy breakfast together in the sukkah. It was a crisp autumn morning, full of promise.

But moments later, serenity shattered. Sirens pierced the air, warning of incoming rockets. My wife shouted for our son, my daughter scooped up our golden retriever puppy, and together we rushed into her bedroom, the reinforced room that doubled as our shelter. I sealed the heavy steel door and shutters, bracing for what might come next.

The explosions rattled the city and shook us to our core. As we huddled close, I finally looked at my phone. Messages and videos revealed the unthinkable: This was not another cycle of rocket fire. Hamas terrorists had crossed the border. Families were being murdered in their homes, women assaulted, and children dragged away as hostages. It was a massacre unlike anything I had witnessed in two decades of living in Israel.

In our small shelter, dark thoughts churned in my head. Were the terrorists already in our neighborhood? Would someone break through our front door with an assault rifle or a knife? How could I protect my wife and children? Would neighbors I had trusted suddenly turn against us?

Thankfully, those fears never became reality. As the day unfolded, I learned that many of my Arab neighbors were just as shaken, angry, and afraid. They too worried for their children’s safety. For many, the violence felt like yet another step backward from peace, which used to feel so close at times, yet remains painfully elusive.

The rest of the day blurred together. We tried to steady ourselves with bites of waffle between the dining room table and the shelter, but we never made it to the sukkah. The beauty of the morning had been replaced by the grim realization that life had changed in an instant.

October 7, 2023, is etched into my memory. What began as a day of family and rest became a defining moment of loss and fear. It was the day all Israelis awoke to the reality that the unthinkable can happen, and the day I saw with greater clarity than ever how fragile and precious our shared longing for peace truly is.

Promises of Peace

A sukkah is a fun and beautiful thing by itself. But it’s also a symbol. It reminds us of tents in the desert, of what it was like to trust God when we were in the middle of nowhere with no roadmap, no timetable. It reminds us that he was with us when we were on our way to somewhere.

And while we were on that path, he promised peace. He promised a destination. So, sometimes we wonder—where is the peace we’ve been promised? Where is the safety we all long for?

It is okay—even healthy—to ask God those questions. To share our stories of Sukkot and October 7. He is there with us in the asking.