Episode 48: Two years to October 7
Ask Haviv Anything
Haviv Rettig Gur
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The two-year anniversary of the October 7 massacre falls on the joyous holiday of Sukkot. The Hebrew calendar anniversary will fall on the holiday of Simchat Torah, literally "the Joy of Torah."
How do we deal with the juxtaposition of these painful anniversaries, of wounds and anxieties and pain that are very much still with us, and the demand to be happy, to celebrate - or even just to try to find release from the pain?
The sages of the Talmud, who lived through great and abiding traumas of their own, show us how.
This episode was sponsored by an anonymous sponsor who asked to dedicate it to all our fallen soldiers and to the sacrifices of the reservists and their families from October 7 until today.
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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everybody. |
| 0:07.0 | Welcome to an especially somber episode of Ask Haviv Anything. |
| 0:12.9 | I'm recording on October 6th. |
| 0:15.2 | Tomorrow is two years to the October 7 massacre. |
| 0:19.0 | It's also the holiday of Sukkot when we're supposed to be with family, |
| 0:23.2 | happy and joyful and living outside underneath the stars to remember that life is fragile. |
| 0:30.4 | The Hebrew calendar anniversary of the two years will be in about a week's time, a little more, |
| 0:39.6 | on the holiday of Simchat Torah, which is literally called the joy of Torah. One of the happiest holidays in the Jewish calendar, we are |
| 0:46.3 | pretty much commanded to be happy. And it's the anniversary of the massacre. And of everything |
| 0:52.7 | that has flowed from the massacre. |
| 0:55.0 | The agonizing and terrible war in Gaza. |
| 0:59.0 | Yes, obviously, terrible for Gazans most of all, |
| 1:04.0 | as we've discussed at infinitum and needs to be understood. That war requires a great rebuilding, and it requires |
| 1:15.8 | that Hamas never be allowed to be in control of Gaza afterwards, or it will come back again |
| 1:21.0 | because it's all Hamas ever does for four decades of its existence. But also there is a debt that the Israelis owe Gaza after that war, |
| 1:30.3 | just like the Allies owe Germany a debt after the great destruction. |
| 1:34.3 | But the trauma of the Jews is my subject here today. |
| 1:41.3 | And it's far larger than the massacre. The massacre was the tipping point. |
| 1:47.5 | It triggered, it awakened, vast, latent, structural bigotries. Yes, it matters that Gaza has produced a whole |
| 1:59.8 | new Western identity and consciousness in a way that Sudan never |
| 2:04.6 | did. You raise this point in the United States and they tell you, well, America supports, funds, |
| 2:10.2 | arms, the Israeli military. It has more of a right to have a say than any relevance to the conflict in |
... |
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