JERUSALEM. A long time ago—though it now feels like a different world—I woke up one October morning to the news that Hamas had crossed into Israel, murdered hundreds of civilians, and abducted 251 people into Gaza. What initially registered as shock soon revealed itself, for Israelis, as catastrophe. A foundational assumption—that the state could protect its people—collapsed in a single day.
That catastrophe reached a formal conclusion this week with the return of the last hostage.
I was fortunate to be here in Israel for the moment. Thousands gathered in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, where a giant digital clock had stood for nearly two years, counting the days, hours, and minutes until every captive was brought home. The clock had become a national symbol of grief and hope. Week after week, Israelis rallied beneath it, demanding that their government do more. The country was plastered with faces and names. The nightly news became a liturgy of anguish, as parents, spouses, and children spoke to a nation holding its breath.
While this unfolded, Israeli soldiers moved through Gaza—house to house, room to room—fighting men who had nothing left to lose. Many did not return. Beneath the ground, the hostages endured what we now know to have been systematic physical and psychological abuse. Cut off from the world, they lived with questions that no human being should have to carry alone: Is my wife alive? Are my children alive? Will I ever leave this place?
Outside Israel, life went on. The world absorbed the war as news: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran. Some stood with Israel as it prosecuted an impossible fight; others aligned themselves with its enemies. But almost no one grasped what it meant to live as an Israeli during these two years.
Being here this week, I was struck by how deeply that period shattered—and reshaped—the Israeli psyche. I am not sure Israelis themselves recognize it yet, but they are different. The country is different. Assumptions that once anchored daily life have died. Sources of confidence long taken for granted have been set aside. Even the meaning of Israel as a Jewish state has subtly but decisively shifted in the minds of its citizens—sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better.
Israelis remain resilient, even optimistic at times: about a future beyond Iran’s regime, about expanded peace with the Muslim world, about the courage of a generation that pulled itself back from the abyss. But the change is undeniable.
This week, as the hostage clock finally went dark, thousands gathered to mark the closing of a grim chapter. There were cheers and tears, relief and exhaustion. The moment coincided with the IDF’s recovery of the remains of Ran Gavili, a hostage whose body was discovered after a painstaking process of exhumation in Gaza. In a video that spread rapidly online, the soldiers who found him stand in a circle and sing Ani Ma’amin—the ancient declaration of Jewish faith in God, in the people of Israel, and in ultimate redemption. The sight of a diverse unit, many not outwardly religious, singing those words over recovered remains spoke more eloquently than any speech.
It pointed to one of the most intriguing developments in Israel since October 7: a quiet but unmistakable turn toward tradition and spirituality. Israel has always been more traditional than outsiders assume, even among its secular population. But something new is happening. Some who were secular have become traditional. Some who were traditional have become religious. At the same time, others—wounded by loss and disillusionment—are more convinced than ever that Israel’s God is an illusion. The ferment beneath the surface is palpable.
What is emerging is not consensus, but confrontation—with mortality, meaning, and identity.
As an outsider, I am struck by another reality: Israelis are living with a kind of collective post-traumatic stress disorder, and in large measure have not yet had the chance to acknowledge it. Part of the reason is simple. The war is not over. Soldiers are still fighting and dying in Gaza. The army and air force continue daily operations in Syria and Lebanon. Even as Israelis gathered to close one chapter, the threat of new dangers—from a destabilizing Iran—hovered in the background. There has been no pause in which to grieve. No space in which to rest.
The darkness of October 7 has begun to recede, but the light has not yet broken.
History suggests that great struggle brings great clarity—that catastrophe burns away illusions and clears the ground for new growth. Something new is indeed taking shape in Israel. But what it is, and what fruit it will bear, remains uncertain.
One thing, however, is clear. The people of Israel remain, as they so often have, on the forward edge of history. Political upheaval, moral fracture, and spiritual reckoning tend to reach the Jews first, who absorb these shocks like the prow of a ship cutting through the sea; only later do those shocks diffuse outward into the wider world. What is now forming within Israeli society—under the weight of trauma, war, and unresolved questions of identity—will not remain confined there. To watch this society closely is not to observe a distant conflict, but to glimpse the kinds of challenges that are likely to confront the rest of us in time.
