October 7, 2023 – A terrible day for Jews and the whole world. One year after the Hamas terrorist attack, Marko Martin, a frequent guest and close observer of Israel for over 30 years, attempts a seismography: How has Jewish life in Germany and Israel changed? How do we live with the pain, how do we talk about it? How to confront the new anti-Semitism? How to deal with the war in Gaza? A moving book and a plea for humanity.

October 7, 2023 changed Jewish life forever. How do Jews in Germany and Israel deal with it, apart from the charged debates in everyday life? What scares them, what gives them hope? Marko Martin talks to families and friends in Israel and Berlin. And tries to give as much space to their struggle with grief and despair as to their pain about how their suffering becomes the suffering of others in a new war. It tells of Israel’s vibrant heterogeneity and of its inner and outer vulnerability. It also tells of the loneliness of many young Israelis in Berlin, people who suddenly experience the primal Jewish experience of defenselessness in Germany – also and especially in a left-wing milieu that previously seemed so close to them. A book of in-between spaces and nuances, where clichés often dominate; of a society of ultra-orthodox Jews and occupying soldiers on the one side and Tel Aviv party people on the other.