Before October 7, I was a Hellenist Jew.

a piece read at our Community of Caring program 12/22/25

Piece by Sarah Tuttle-Singer

Before October 7, I was a Hellenist Jew

Not in the literal, academic sense — but in the way many of us were without ever naming it.

I believed, deeply, in universality. In porous borders of identity. In the idea that if we were enlightened enough, ethical enough, generous enough, we could dissolve the old tribal walls. I trusted language like shared humanity and both sides and context. I believed that culture could soften brutality, that reason could tame fanaticism, that progress bent — if not automatically, then at least eventually — toward justice.

I loved the world. I loved Athens and Berlin and Brooklyn. I loved conversations that braided identities together until no one quite knew where one story ended and another began. I believed that Jewish particularism was something to be held lightly, even suspiciously — that power, especially Jewish power, needed constant moral interrogation. I was proud of being uncomfortable. I mistook discomfort for righteousness.

Then Hamas invaded Israel.

And something in me shifted — violently, irrevocably.

Not my values. My illusions.

October 7 didn’t just shatter bodies and families and communities; it shattered the fantasy that history had moved on from us. It exposed how thin the veneer was — how quickly the language of human rights curdled into blood libel, how easily Jews were recast as metaphors instead of people, symbols instead of parents, villains instead of victims. How fast “never again” became “well, what did you expect? You brought this on yourself?”

I didn’t become more extreme. I became more awake.

I understood, in my bones, something I’d previously only known intellectually: that there are forces in the world that are not confused, not misunderstood, not acting out of grievance — but are animated by annihilation. And that pretending otherwise is not compassion. It is negligence.

And now I live in the world between both.

I haven’t abandoned the universal.

I haven’t stopped believing in dignity, in restraint, in the moral burden of power. I still flinch at cruelty, including our own. I still believe Palestinians deserve safety and self-determination and freedom. I still believe empathy matters.

But I no longer believe that Jewish survival is something to take for granted.

Which brings me to Hanukkah.

We tell ourselves a gentle version of the story: light in darkness, miracles, oil that lasted. Children’s songs and candles in windows. A holiday that looks fantastic on Instagram.

But Hanukkah is also the story of an extremist group.

The Maccabees were not liberal pluralists. They were zealots. They fought assimilation as much as occupation. They smashed idols — including Jewish ones. They insisted on Jewish sovereignty, Jewish practice, Jewish continuity, at swordpoint if necessary.

And yet.

Had they not done so, we would not be here.

That is the unbearable tension at the heart of Jewish history: that our survival is often secured by people whose methods make us deeply uncomfortable. That the same story can be both morally troubling and existentially necessary. That light does not always arrive clean-handed.

So what does this mean for us?

It means we stop twisting ourselves into pretzels to fit other people’s moral frameworks.

It means we learn to hold complexity without dissolving into self-erasure.

It means we reject the lie that to be ethical Jews we must be defenseless Jews — or worse, self-accusing ones.

It means acknowledging that particularism is not the enemy of morality; it is the precondition for responsibility. You cannot be accountable for a people you are not allowed to defend.

Hanukkah doesn’t ask us to choose between light and power. It asks us to sit in the discomfort of both. To kindle flames knowing they cast shadows. To remember that survival itself is not a sin — even when it comes wrapped in histories we wish were cleaner.

I light the candles now with fewer illusions — but more honesty.