Today marks three years since October 7, 2023. For many Jewish people, the date does not arrive as a simple marker on a calendar. It can bring back the shock of that day, the names and faces that have stayed with us, the worry for loved ones, and the feeling that something fundamental shifted. It can also bring up what came after: difficult conversations, strained relationships, fear in public spaces, and the exhaustion of trying to explain why it still hurts.
There is no single Jewish response to this anniversary. Some people feel raw. Some feel angry, numb, distracted, or unexpectedly tearful. Some want to be with community, while others need quiet. All of those responses can make sense. Grief does not move in a neat line, and collective trauma does not ask permission before it returns to the body.
An anniversary can bring the past into the present
Anniversaries can act like emotional landmarks. Your body may remember before you have words for what is happening. A headline, a video, a social media post, a familiar date, or the beginning of the High Holy Days can make the past feel suddenly close again. You may notice sleep changing, an increased need to check the news, tension in your body, difficulty concentrating, or an urge to withdraw from people who do not feel safe enough to talk with.
For Jewish clients, that response can be layered. There may be grief for people who were killed, injured, taken hostage, or displaced. There may be fear for family and friends in Israel. There may be grief for a sense of safety or belonging that once felt more reliable. And for many, there is the pain of seeing antisemitism, denial, or celebration of violence in spaces that once felt familiar. The American Jewish Committee’s 2024 State of Antisemitism report documented that many American Jews felt less secure and changed how visibly they expressed Jewish identity after October 7. That context matters when a client says, “I do not feel safe,” even if they cannot point to one immediate threat.
You do not have to prove that an event was traumatic enough before allowing it to affect you. Connection can be geographic, familial, religious, cultural, historical, or deeply personal. It can include the knowledge that Jewish communities have carried collective memory across generations. The intensity of a response is not a competition, and it is not a political statement. It is information about what has been touched.
The toll of feeling unseen
One of the deepest injuries can be the feeling that your grief is treated as inconvenient, conditional, or open for debate. A client may carefully test whether it is safe to bring up October 7 in therapy, at work, with friends, or even within their own family. They may worry that naming fear for Jewish safety will lead to an argument, a lecture, or a demand to account for suffering elsewhere before their own pain is allowed to exist.
That kind of self-protection is tiring. It asks people to scan conversations before entering them and to decide, again and again, how much of themselves is safe to reveal. Over time, this can create isolation. Someone may stop wearing a Jewish symbol, avoid a familiar community event, leave a group chat, or keep a meaningful part of their identity out of a relationship that once felt close. These choices are not always dramatic from the outside, but they can carry a quiet emotional cost.
A therapeutic relationship can be one place where the client does not have to make their grief legible before receiving care. The work is not to tell someone what their Jewish identity or connection to Israel should mean. It is to listen closely to what it does mean to them, and to take their fear, sorrow, anger, and confusion seriously without making them defend any of it.
What Jewish clients may need from therapy right now
Many people do not need a therapist to have the perfect language. They need to know that the room can hold the truth of their experience. That may begin with a simple question: “What has this period been like for you?” It may mean asking whether an anniversary, a news cycle, a campus incident, or an interpersonal rupture is making old fear feel newly present.
Good support makes room for the full weight of what Jewish clients may be carrying: devastation over October 7, fear for family and friends in Israel, grief for those who were killed or taken hostage, and the exhaustion of facing antisemitism at home. Therapy does not require a person to simplify their inner life into a position. It can help them sort out what is theirs, what feels overwhelming, and what support is actually useful.
It can also help to come back to the present in small, concrete ways. Limiting doomscrolling, stepping away from accounts that leave you flooded, spending time with people who do not make you explain your humanity, attending a service or gathering, or making a plan for the anniversary can all be forms of care. None of these erase grief. They can create enough steadiness for grief to be carried rather than fought alone.
The particular weight Jewish therapists may be carrying
Jewish therapists are not outside this experience. They may be holding their own grief and fear while also making room for clients whose feelings about October 7, Israel, Gaza, antisemitism, or Jewish identity are intense and varied. They may be deciding how much to disclose, whether a professional space feels safe, how to respond to antisemitic language, and how to keep showing up with care when their own nervous system is activated.
That is a real form of emotional labor. A therapist may notice that certain sessions require more preparation or recovery, that a news event changes their capacity for the day, or that professional relationships have become less secure. It is not a failure of professionalism to recognize that collective trauma touches the clinician too. In fact, naming the impact privately and seeking support can protect the quality of care.
Consultation, supervision, trusted Jewish colleagues, personal therapy, and clear limits around media exposure can all be important. So can an honest look at capacity. The goal is not emotional numbness. It is enough support and room to stay present without asking yourself to carry every client’s pain, every headline, and every fear by yourself.
Care that does not require you to leave yourself behind
On an anniversary like this one, it can help to decide what you need before the day carries you away. You might choose one meaningful ritual, one person to speak with, and one boundary around media or social conversations. You might choose to work, pray, gather, rest, donate, volunteer, or do nothing public at all. There is no morally superior way to feel or commemorate.
If you are supporting someone else, resist the urge to rush them toward a more comfortable emotion. Grief may sound like anger. Fear may sound like vigilance. Numbness may be the only available protection for a while. Listening without minimizing is often more useful than trying to solve a pain that has no quick solution.
And if you are a Jewish person who has felt alone since October 7, it is okay to seek a space where you do not have to translate every part of the experience. You deserve support that understands identity as part of your mental health, not as a topic to avoid. Lisa offers therapy for Jewish adults and virtual therapy that can make room for trauma, grief, anxiety, and the complicated realities you are carrying. If you are looking for a Jewish therapist who understands this context, you can begin with what feels most present, without needing to have a clear story or a plan for what comes next.
A gentle way through today
- Name what feels most present: grief, fear, anger, loneliness, numbness, or something else.
- Choose one person or community space where you do not have to explain why the day matters.
- Set one boundary around media, social media, or a conversation that feels likely to overwhelm you.
- Give your body one cue of safety: food, water, movement, rest, prayer, music, or time outdoors.
- Let the day be what it is. You do not have to make your feelings useful, polished, or understandable to anyone else.
Three years later, the impact is not measured only by what happened on one day. It is also measured by the ways people have had to adapt, protect themselves, grieve, and keep going. There is no requirement to be “over it.” There is only the ongoing work of finding care, connection, and enough room to remain fully yourself.