For the past year, I’ve felt stuck in a moment—a moment frozen on Oct. 7, 2023, when the war broke out. It felt as if my world had split into two parallel tracks. One was horrifying, filled with the daily shock of war and devastation; the other was the life I had envisioned—a peaceful world that felt increasingly distant but had been so close just the day before.

On Oct. 6, I was happy and proud of myself. We had “survived” a long summer holiday where kids needed constant entertainment, a tough start to the school year with my first grader who had anxiety issues, and the never-ending line of holidays. I was looking forward to starting my new job at CJP’s Boston-Haifa Connection in two weeks. My kids were going back to school. We were entering a new phase—a year of beginnings, of much-needed routine. It was going to be a good year.

I spent that weekend with my daughters while my husband was hiking in the Negev desert with friends. We went to a festival in Bat Galim, meeting friends and enjoying the laid-back atmosphere of the neighborhood. Later, we attended our school’s Simchat Torah celebration. There was so much hope and anticipation in the air that evening.

On Oct. 7, everything changed. I was baking pancakes when my phone rang. My sister-in-law, sounding unusually stressed, asked, “Where is your husband?” I told her he was on his way back from a hike. Then came the words that shifted my reality: “Stay home. Don’t go anywhere. There’s a war.”

The following day, my husband was called up for reserve duty, and school was canceled. I was left fearful and uncertain in the middle of an unknown situation called “war.” Growing up in Hungary, war was something I only knew from history books. It was a concept, distant and unimaginable in real life. But now, I was living in it, trying to stay optimistic for my daughters while silently battling doubt and anxiety.

The atrocities that happened on Oct. 7 were worse than I could ever have imagined. The more I learned about the events, the more I retreated into denial. It was my mind’s way of coping—it was too painful to accept that such cruelty existed. I clung to disbelief, hoping it would somehow lessen the pain.

As the weeks and months passed, we settled into this new, unreal reality. We adapted as a society, as a community, and as a family to living amid shocking news and fear. We found hope in our unity, volunteering and helping wherever we could. I turned on autopilot, doing what needed to be done, all the while hoping I’d wake up and find it was still Oct. 7 in some parallel universe where things hadn’t gone off track.

But there’s no rewind button, and this is reality. So, I’m looking back over the year to see what I’ve learned. If not for Oct. 7, I might never have realized the strength of the community we live in—the unity that binds us in times of crisis. I used to see the different groups in Israel as separate: the Druze, the Russians, the Arabs. Now, I see how we’re all in this together, supporting each other in ways I never imagined.

But alongside this unity, I’ve also been forced to confront an ugly truth: the resurgence of antisemitism around the world. This has been one of the hardest lessons—watching hatred and ignorance spread while hoping that those misled by lies might one day awaken. This is something we’ll have to keep working to change.

A year has passed since Oct. 7, and it’s Succoth once again. We built our succah in the backyard, and I invited my daughter’s classmates, just as I did last year. But this time, I ended the invitation with, “Our building has a bomb shelter.” And yet, despite everything, we continue forward—because hope persists, even in the darkest times.

Anna Varsanyi is the Peoplehood Committee coordinator at CJP’s Boston-Haifa Connection. Anna made aliyah 12 years ago from Budapest, Hungary, and lives in Haifa with her husband, two daughters and an ever-changing number of cats.