The massacre and kidnapping at the Nova Music Festival has had a great impact on me. Perhaps it is because my children are the age of those who were there. It easily could have been my children and I could have been there with them. Perhaps it is because I spent 15 years running Hillel at The University of Florida and worked with tens of thousands of college students. It may even be the horror of what happened there. Watching the documentary and hearing the story of a survivor and twice hearing from Rami Davidian about how he rescued 750 people that night and what he saw and experienced only drove home the horror even more.

We are now hearing about survivors of the Nova Festival who are committing suicide because they can’t live with themselves after what they saw, felt, and experienced. This makes it even worse This is a suicide letter of a Nova survivor, published by his family. After miraculously surviving the October 7 massacre, the young Israeli man (his name is being intentionally withheld to protect the family and his memory) decided to end his life after witnessing too many horrors, including the gang rape of a girl. The overwhelming weight of everything he saw, heard, and experienced, along with his inability to save the girl being assaulted nearby, made him feel incapable of continuing his life. Here is the letter translated from Hebrew. May he rest in peace

“Hey you, please forgive me! It all started on Thursday, we were dancing and having fun, and come Friday – so much fun all around, seeing friends we haven’t seen in years – we all met to dance and celebrate life. Come Saturday morning, the sun begins to rise, it’s so beautiful as it starts to shine all over everyone. We’re dancing and happy, hugging, and some of my friends start to leave.

Suddenly, rockets start flying over us, I know this, this is my life -I’m from the South. But then there are paragliders- I hope nothing happens to them… Then starts the gunfire – what is going on? We see the truck coming, paratroopers dressed in foreign uniforms – they are killing everyone. They just killed Shay, they killed Adi. They’re kidnapping that girl, who is sitting there hugging her murdered boyfriend.

Suddenly you run to the bushes where I sit and hide, not uttering a sound from my lips. You’re in the bush next to me, so close, the cries gush out from within you. A terrorist is right above the bush I’m hiding in and I pray he won’t see me, I pray so hard, something I haven’t done my entire life… God can hear my prayer. But you won’t stop crying out loud because with every second, someone gets shot and murdered. They saw you, they’re dragging you out of the bushes. They’re four and you’re one. You scream for help. One of them punches you to silence you, and you try to fight them while looking towards my direction, for me to save you. But if I step out, we will both get murdered. I want to live! I sit there silently, they start undressing you! I’m crying, I feel like I need to scream but a hand silences me! Maybe it’s the hand of God, or I don’t know who… They turn you on your stomach and they start raping you, one by one. They turn you around again and they yell at you in English, they want you to see for yourself how they have defeated you. You try to crawl in my direction and I pray for something to happen, for someone to kill them so you can get out alive, but as you crawl towards me and they’re on top of you – the shot comes. They murdered you, but before they murdered your body they murdered your soul.

I sat there, in the bushes, for hours, I did not come out. I saw a bottle of water next to you and I was so incredibly thirsty, but I couldn’t bear the thought that I should have saved you, so how can I be so disrespectful and drink your water? I have reached rock bottom, I can’t live anymore. Your look follows me every single day – in the shower, in my sleep, in my room. I couldn’t go back to work, I wasn’t able to. I’ve been to your house. I didn’t tell your parents what you’ve been through, but they’ve been told that your body was abused.

I was a witness. I ask for your forgiveness. I am coming to you, to the next great world, I promise to save you there and protect you. Please forgive me! And don’t worry, I left a note for my family telling them how much I love them, and thanking them for the life they gave me. My sister is having a baby, I thought about sticking around to get to know my nephew, but I don’t think he should know the uncle that couldn’t save you. It’s okay, I’ll watch him from above.”

Each time I read this letter it hits a bit deeper and hurts a bit more. From those who deny any of it happened to those who share the horror, what happened on October 7th and at the Nova Festival is incomprehensible evil.

Rami Davidian, a farmer on a nearby Moshav, told his story to a group I was with on two different occasions. Near the end, he talks about what he did the day after. Listen as he talks about the women who were tied to the trees. Understand that they had been violated and when he mentions modesty, he is talking about covering up their naked bodies. Their naked bodies that were tied to trees, their legs spead open and left that way after being violated. You can hear the emotion in his voice, see it on his face, as he remembers the horror that he saw. I can’t imagine how many women he cut down from the trees, covered their naked bodies, said the Shema over their dead bodies, or how he sleeps at night after what he saw.

If you need more, watch the Sheryl Sandberg movie, Screams before Silence, You can see the pain in the women’s eyes. When the first responder shares the pictures he took to document the horrors he saw, watch Sheryl’s face and reactions.

I have been changed by October 7th. My tattoos on my forearms are dedicated to those murdered, kidnapped and who survived the massacre. It’s a visual change on my body and reminder to me of what happened to them and my responsibility to them and to make sure it never happens again.

The horrors of October 7th can never be forgotten. Having been to Kfar Aza twice, Nova twice, and meeting with families from Kibbutz Alumim as well as the people from the town of Shlomi in the north that have been living in a hotel in Jerusalem for nearly 11 months because of the bombing of Hezbollah, this is real for me. It needs to be real for you.

At the end of the day, there are lots of things that are important in life and in the world. But life is essential for any of them to have meaning. The Iranian regime, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and many others around the world have made it clear that our lives don’t matter. That they want our lives to end. Why build a world worth living in if part of that goal is for all of us to be murdered?

My heart breaks for the survivors of Nova and the pain they deal with every day. I can’t imagine the pain the family of the survivor who wrote that letter and then chose to end their life. We live a privileged life in the United States. Despite the rise of antisemitism and Jew hatred, the United States remains a place where Jews are safe most of the time (and that time is getting smaller). I saw a friend post that we are American Jews – American’s first. I disagree. We cannot be like the German Jews of the 1930s and think we are Americans first. We are always Jews first. Maybe not to our own identify but certainly to the rest of the world. We have historically forgotten that we are always Jews first. We thought we could be Germans first. We thought we could be Spanish first. We thought we could be accepted in whatever country we lived in as long as we dedicated ourselves to that country. Each and every time we have been proven wrong.

Every day I continue to say the Acheinu prayer for the hostages. After reading the suicide note, I also am now saying it for the survivors as well. While they may be physically free, it’s also clear that many of them are not mentally or emotionally free yet. I hope that every time I say the prayer, it will bring comfort and help in their recovery as well as the return of the hostages. As I wrote in my prior blog, we don’t need to stay in Mitzrayim, that narrow or dark place. May they and their families find comfort and relief and be released from distress and captivity, whether it is physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.