The Jew­ish tra­di­tion of ​“sit­ting shi­va” — of observ­ing a rit­u­al mourn­ing peri­od fol­low­ing a death — is derived from the Hebrew word she­va, mean­ing ​“sev­en.”

In the Book of Gen­e­sis, Joseph ​“mourned with a great and very sore lamen­ta­tion” for sev­en days after bury­ing his father, Jacob. In the prophet­ic Book of Job, Job los­es his wife, his sev­en sons, and his three daugh­ters, fol­low­ing which his com­pan­ions sit him down on the ground — down in the dust — and attempt to com­fort him for sev­en nights and sev­en days.

Mil­len­nia lat­er, in Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties world­wide, the rit­u­al still fol­lows the ancient for­mu­la. The sev­en days of mourn­ing com­mence with the day of bur­ial, as the imme­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­bers are com­pelled to ​“sit.” Dur­ing this time, any sem­blance of dai­ly rou­tine is for­bid­den: a mourn­er may nei­ther work nor cook, clean the house nor bathe. They must remain in the home of the deceased, sit­ting as close to the ground as pos­si­ble, embody­ing the low­ness of their sor­row. The door must be left open to any com­forters who wish to vis­it; their role is to help car­ry out the family’s every­day tasks. Through­out this peri­od, the mourn­ers must abstain from plea­sure. They must tear their clothes to demon­strate both the rip in their souls and the unim­por­tance of ter­res­tri­al trap­pings. They must also cov­er their mir­rors, so as not to be dis­tract­ed by appear­ances as they turn their gaze inward. 

Greet­ing mourn­ers with any word con­tain­ing the root shin-lamed-mem, the Semit­ic ori­gin of the Hebrew shalom (and of the Ara­bic salām) is for­bid­den; no peace should be sought dur­ing the mourn­ing period.

On the sev­enth and final day, those who’ve come to offer con­do­lences are asked to ​“wake” the mourn­ers and help them rise. Grief, that most con­trol­ling of emo­tions, must have a for­mal end.

But sev­en full days, the span it took God to cre­ate the world and all liv­ing things, is bare­ly enough time for us humans to mourn one sin­gle life, to rise above our lamentation.

Judaism, which has com­mand­ments that gov­ern every aspect of the human expe­ri­ence from birth to death, offers lit­tle guid­ance on how to hold the kind of shi­va required fol­low­ing a mas­sacre such as the one that occurred on Octo­ber 7th, 2023—shi­va b’October in Hebrew — or the war that came in its wake. 

If one has lost one’s son, daugh­ter, moth­er, and hus­band all on the same day, should they be mourned col­lec­tive­ly, or is there a cer­tain order? Should one sit sev­en days of shi­va for each indi­vid­ual or sit col­lec­tive­ly for one week­long stretch? What does one do with­out a body to bury? Or if the body is held in cap­tiv­i­ty — should one start mourn­ing with­out a bur­ial or wait for the corpse’s return? What is the role of the com­forters if they them­selves are in mourn­ing? And how to mark shiva’s end, with­out a rou­tine, or even a home, to return to, in the midst of war?

Since the first weeks of this now year­long shi­va, I have been search­ing for answers to ques­tions like these — for a way to mourn and a way to rise, for a way to say ​“shalom” once again. I have inter­viewed hun­dreds of bereaved par­ents and chil­dren, along with sur­vivors and first respon­ders. I’ve spo­ken with left-wing kib­butzniks and Burn­ing Man – esque partiers, Bedouins and Israeli Arabs, peace activists and orga­niz­ers, Holo­caust sur­vivors, refugees from Ukraine and Rus­sia, and more.

In 10/7, I tell the sto­ries of one hun­dred civil­ians — moth­ers, fathers, chil­dren — who lived and died on the Gaza bor­der. I inves­ti­gate not only their final moments, but also their lives, beliefs, com­mu­ni­ties, and fam­i­ly his­to­ries, going back two to three gen­er­a­tions to when the Israel/​Palestine con­flict start­ed. Their per­son­al sto­ries are woven into the larg­er polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal narrative.

In the first week of Decem­ber, I was in the mid­dle of an inter­view with a moth­er who lost her son and daugh­ter-in-law when I received the news that one of my dear­est friends, Gal Eizenkot, had been killed in Gaza dur­ing a hostage res­cue mis­sion. I found myself on the oth­er side of grief’s divide, among the mourn­ers I’d been documenting.

As I suf­fered the pain of his loss, it was par­tic­u­lar­ly trag­ic to see how he was made into a polit­i­cal sym­bol, his indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and unique per­son­al­i­ty lost in the process. This book, ded­i­cat­ed to Gal, aims to pre­serve the human­i­ty of these vic­tims — to restore to them the human­i­ty that was stolen from them.

I believe this is where lit­er­a­ture dif­fers from media. It keeps them alive, at least on paper.

In a way, 10/7 is a first line of defense — a defense against dis­tor­tion, a defense against for­get­ting. As I wrote it, as I inter­viewed the bereaved, I thought often of those I couldn’t inter­view — among them, the young women who sat keep­ing watch at the border.

This job, called spot­ting, is giv­en only to female sol­diers. There’s a misog­y­ny at work here — a mil­i­tary-grade misog­y­ny — a male upper-ech­e­lon belief that Israeli bor­der tech­nol­o­gy is infal­li­ble and that these women are mere­ly back­up, less capa­ble than sophis­ti­cat­ed sen­sors and state-of-the-art computers.

But the truth has since come out: it was these young women who first spot­ted that Hamas was con­duct­ing exer­cis­es and test­ing Israeli defens­es on the bor­der. A num­ber of them spoke up, weeks and months before Octo­ber 7th, and report­ed sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty to their supe­ri­ors. But like the Tro­jan princess Cas­san­dra, their reports were ignored, their con­cerns dis­missed. No action was ever taken.

Spot­ting is a thank­less job — the spot­ters sit alone for hours and hours on end, star­ing out into space. But these women must remain vig­i­lant, no mat­ter what.

On Octo­ber 7th, Israeli bor­der defens­es were over­whelmed. Six­teen spot­ters were killed, and sev­en were tak­en hostage. They were among the first to be harmed that Sabbath.

As we mark the one-year anniver­sary, I fear we’re trapped in per­pet­u­al mourn­ing, an end­less shi­va. Many — Israelis, Pales­tini­ans, and more — have stopped lis­ten­ing to each other’s wail­ing. Each tragedy only serves to expand the walls between us.

In our polar­ized times, these human sto­ries — these human­iz­ing sto­ries — are more nec­es­sary than ever. To enable ris­ing above, to allow for any diplo­mat­ic solu­tion, the ini­tial step must be a human solu­tion: empathy.

I believe that lit­er­a­ture, sto­ry­telling, is the best way to achieve this.