At this time three years ago, I was not yet living in Israel for the second time. In fact - I hadn't even visited in 11 years, and the years I had lived here happily had receded into the background...into a place in the attic you forget about, when things in the forefront become too overwhelming for too long - that you simply forget - a time when you had found yourself, and a time when you had been happy.

This will not be a long read. Instead, I want to share the story of one family in an under-five-minute video I made. On Wednesday, October 7th, I will be volunteering at the site where the Nova Music Festival occurred. It is the site where hundreds of young people went to dance and celebrate peace, and where 376 were brutally slaughtered either at the festival, during their attempts to escape, or where they were hunted - hiding anywhere they could find.

I filmed as I walked home on the dark unfamiliar streets with no cars in sight. Doing this actually caused me to walk in completely the wrong direction. When I eventually arrived home, I turned on Kol Nidre, and I broke down in a way I have done many, many times - but for the first time in a long time, and only about my mother. I could feel her presence deeply - and her lack of presence - and I allowed my many questions for her that have burned my soul for more than a deca

So many things can be true about a person at the same time: that she was wonderful and lovable - but also that this wasn’t a “moment of psychosis," but a decision where she was criminally aware and responsible; and that the system is deplorable and deserves to be called out and taken down. They don’t listen. They don’t track. They don’t care. They don’t check up. They don’t communicate with each other. They guess. They experiment, and if you don’t follow up - neither do they

Today was absolutely exhausting - and I don't mean because I painted my bedroom alone for at least eight hours, climbing over my bed, lifting the chair to do the high parts over and over again...with 80s love songs blasting in the background. I mean it was mentally taxing...

There is a massive blind spot on behalf of the West when it comes to Islamic Terror Regimes - THEY DON'T THINK LIKE YOU - BUT THEY KNOW HOW YOU THINK.

Just imagine the look on my face a week ago tonight when I went to prepare myself an actual Shabbat dinner, took the chicken out of the fridge and was met with a stink to high heaven! For ten minutes, I tried to convince myself that I was imagining it and that the chicken was just fine...but eventually I checked the date and even the day we bought it, it was expired - the date read May 4th!

After 11 months and 27 days of relentless struggle in a very difficult language, an even more challenging culture, a bureaucratic system that makes little sense even to those born here - all in the most expensive country on the planet - a young guy who lives in my building decided not to charge me the 150 shekels ($50) we'd agreed on to go and get me a clothes dryer from across town and carry it into my apartment.

Because just like in the early days when your grandparents came here from all over and built these communities that bring you so much pride - that is us, now. The world is squeezing us out - we felt it out there - the hatred of us and the hatred of you and the hatred of this tiny but incredible little country, the land of which is taking the impact of ballistic missiles - and we came - and we are staying.

There were 100 party goers whose fate did not become death and did not become enslavement - and that is because they crossed paths with a 24-year-old man named Ran Gvili - a man who was lying at home injured that morning when the worst attack in modern Israel's history broke out.

The hunger to hate Jews was SO great - that the second this attack happened the lid flew off the pot - a pot I hadn't known was boiling - and I watched in horror as the world erupted in a lava of evil, held in for 80 years, that might have been left simmering on some long-forgotten stove, but had been metastasizing all along.

Actions speak louder than words is the theme of this post, both in our personal lives as well as in war and politics, as sadly what Israel has had to learn from decades of "negotiating" with terrorists only to then be fooled is that one cannot trust a partner who does not operate in good faith, as our enemy does not empathize with our situation the way many of us did with the plight of the Palestinians.

It can be hard to breathe - when the trucks upon trucks upon trucks of AID - ARE SENT - INTO GAZA - ALL THE TIME - and are LOOTED ON CAMERA - BY HAMAS TERRORISTS - the ones who RAPED us, MURDERED us and continue to TORTURE us. The ones who are LYING to you. USING you. LAUGHING at you. And yet - they've won.

"You can feel the death here," said my roommate of a few days, as we passed each other at the Nova Festival site, after each exploring it on our own for about fifteen minutes. A casual remark said without any emotion, on a beautiful sunny day at around 5pm - the time of day where you have to be careful which side you take a picture from, as one way will face the shining sun as it gets ready to set, and the other will give your shot exquisite lighting.

To imagine mastering a practice with such grace, that you could be stolen by a terrorist group and manage to not just sustain your own light but spread it - teach it - bringing light into the darkest tunnels of horror - that is nothing short of holy work.

Our hearts break and bleed blood orange, yet our screams are heard and scrolled past.

Out of 250 faces of strangers all over Tel Aviv, Itay's was the one that leaped off the page and straight into my heart.

"So much for 'Never Again,'" said Lena Kosinovsky in a text to me last Saturday, as we shared the thoughts so many of us did about how...

It must take a minute to digest that he is home – that after 16 months of horror and agony – that her father came back to her family alive.

I imagined IRAN listening to this, and my blood went cold. My heart stopped beating.