The October 8th Jews

Let's start with the phrase itself, The October 8th Jew.

What happened? Now, on October 7th of 2023, something happened to us, right? Pretty big deal.

But for some Jews, something different happened the next day, on October 8th.

It was the day after.

Uh, it was the day when the shock started to become personal, when people started to look at their lives, their communities, their politics, their relationships, their assumptions, and realized that some of the things they had believed about being Jewish no longer felt quite right.

I had a baby naming on October 8th.

So that's something to think about.

The term October 8th was coined by Brett Stevens in November of 2023.

His original use was particularly about Jews who had been comfortable in progressive spaces and, and suddenly found themselves questioning whether those spaces actually had room for them as Jews.

And maybe you're one of those people, but that's not how I want to use that term.

For me, an October 8th Jew is someone for whom October 7th smashed a sense of Jewish stability and comfort, the ability to be Jewish without having to think very much about it and what it means.

And that's the heart of what I wanna talk about.

For a lot of American Jews, and, and people in the diaspora, I as- assume broadly, Jewish identity is remarkably comfortable.

Now [laughs] now you're probably gonna be like, "Wait, comfortable? Now, come on.

Let's be honest." Right? You can be the kind of Jewish that doesn't require much of you.

"I'm Jewish, but I don't really think about it," or, "I'm a diaspora Jew.

Israel's important, but, like, that's not my thing," or, "I'm culturally Jewish," right? "I'm like a lox and bagels, matzo ball soup Jewish." Or, "I'm Jewish, but I'm, like, kind of neutral about Jewish as a political topic," right? "I'm more interested in healthcare, housing, the minimum wage, taxes, gun control," whatever your hap- thing happens to be.

Or I'm Jewish, but I'm also in this kind of like progressive, secular, intellectual, uh, cosmopolitan person of the world type of identity, and Jewish is, yeah, part of who I am, but like I'm also someone who's into Native American drumming or Italian food or, or whatever, right? And none of those identities necessarily require a tremendous amount of engagement, right? You don't have to know Jewish history.

You don't have to have been to Israel.

You certainly don't have to have gone to synagogue or read Jewish books.

You didn't have to have an opinion about antisemitism other than you didn't like it, right? [laughs] You can simply just be Jewish, right? Uh, sort of being a Jew as just a normal state of being in the way that there is diversity of all different kinds of people.

But October 7th happened, and it made Jewish identity harder to leave in the background.

Suddenly, being Jewish meant something.

Now, not necessarily the same thing for everybody, but it meant something.

You might have been asked about Israel.