The calendar is linked to our present pain• By BATSHEVA SHULMAN
I’ve always loved the holidays, but growing up, I struggled to relate to them. While I enjoyed all the festivities, I always thought of them as being fun traditions, but not much more. After all, how were these archaic traditions relevant to my life?
Since making aliyah in 2022, I have definitely felt more connected to the Jewish festivals as well as to Israeli national holidays, as I am surrounded by Jews who are all celebrating together. Spirits are high, and there is a sense of togetherness; it is impossible not to feel uplifted and connected.
But since October 7, each holiday has suddenly become more relatable and – more importantly – its lessons more pertinent than ever. My whole perspective has shifted from childhood wonderment to a deeper understanding.
We began 2025 with Purim, a Jewish holiday marking how we defeated Haman. Several thousand years later, at the exact same time, we find ourselves fighting new enemies, in a multi-front battle against Hamas and its proxies – each with a different name – yet all with the same pervasive antisemitic ideologies and radical agendas.
A few weeks later, Passover rolled around. This year, I celebrated the holiday with my family in Cape Town, as I have done for the last three years since making aliyah. Pessah has always been my favorite holiday. I love the preparations leading up to it and the Seder in particular. The past two years, however, have felt significantly different.
As we read the Haggadah and tell the story of Exodus and Jewish slavery – the same story we tell every year – it suddenly didn’t seem so far off or distant anymore.
There I was, seated at a Seder table, an Israeli citizen living in Jerusalem, celebrating our freedom from slavery several thousand years ago, while our people are once again enslaved. Who would have ever thought that this would be our current reality? The parallels and timing are staggering. “Celebrating” freedom suddenly doesn’t seem so appropriate.
Last Passover, I printed a photo of hostage Ron Benjamin and placed it on a chair at our Seder table, praying for his release along with all the other hostages at the time. Sadly, it was discovered soon after, when his body was recovered by IDF troops on May 16, 2024, that Benjamin had been killed on October 7.
A year later,
another Seder passes, and there are still 59 hostages in Gaza.
Last week was Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the largest genocide against the Jewish nation in history and commemorating the six million Jews who were massacred 80 years ago. Almost eight decades later, Jews were once again attacked in the most horrific massacre in Jewish history since the Holocaust – in their homeland.
Like many other tragic and pivotal events in our history, the Holocaust has always felt so distant and incomprehensible to me. But commemorating the victims today suddenly takes on a new chilling meaning. Although 80 years apart, the murderous hatred that fueled both then and now is identical. Today, not only do we commemorate Holocaust victims, but also the murdered hostages, fallen soldiers, and many victims of Hamas’s brutal attack and the ensuing war.
This week, we celebrate Independence Day. Again, “celebrating” seems strange and inappropriate. How can we possibly celebrate a day that symbolizes the freedom and independence of the Jewish nation in its homeland when 59 of Israel’s citizens are still not free? This is counterintuitive, hypocritical, and frankly sickening.
As Shavuot approaches, I struggle to find the joy that I used to feel leading up to it. A holiday that marks receiving the Torah and becoming a unified Jewish nation, usually celebrated with jubilance, feels unnatural as we continue to suffer and fight among ourselves.
Again, the parallels and timing of each Jewish holiday are striking and impossible to ignore. These holidays are not just distant memories that we recall for enjoyment’s sake.
Each one echoes a chapter of our past that continues to shape our future, woven into the fabric of Jewish identity and telling a powerful story of survival and perseverance that is a testament to who we are as a people.
Just as the Jewish nation has survived the unimaginable, emerging from the depths of darkness every time, I have no doubt that we will thrive once again. I hope and pray for good news and better days, in which we can truly celebrate the Jewish holidays and calendar, together as a unified nation, with lighter hearts and better spirits.
This can only happen when all the hostages are home!
The writer is a copy editor at The Jerusalem Post. She made aliyah from London and now lives in Jerusalem.