This Yom Kippur, we carry with us a heavy mix of emotions.

Despair for the lives lost, the families broken, and the hostages still in captivity.

Disbelief at a world that dares to accuse us of crimes while ignoring the evil of our enemies and the truth of our history.

And yet, beyond the despair and the disbelief, there is Resilience — the deep, unshakable resilience that has carried Am Yisrael through centuries of exile, persecution, and distortion, and still enables us to rise, to pray, and to hope.

This reflection is a journey through the three stages — despair, disbelief, and resilience — woven together with the prayers of Yom Kippur and the words of the parashiyot we read during these days.

Despair

We come into this Yom Kippur carrying so much heaviness. It’s our second since the horrors of October 7th. The hostages are still in captivity. Our soldiers are still away from their families, risking their lives every day. Too many chairs at Shabbat tables will remain empty. Too many wounds will never heal. And behind every uniform is a story — a mother waiting for a son’s return, a wife raising children alone, parents holding their breath at every phone call. These sacrifices are not abstract; they are woven into the daily life of Am Yisrael, carried quietly but heavily into this Yom Kippur.

Despair is that sinking feeling that whispers: there’s no way forward, no end in sight.

PTSD sits silently in the homes of soldiers. It creeps into the night, into sleepless hours, into sudden flashes of memory that won’t let go. Sadness lingers in too many homes — in the eyes of lighting Shabbat candles alone, in the faces of parents who buried their children, in kids growing up without a father’s hug or a mother’s embrace.

And you see it in the everyday parts of life. Careers and studies are on hold. Businesses half-open, shuttered or bankrupt as owners spend days, weeks, even months away on miluim — reserve duty — leaving families and employees to cope alone. Shabbat is quieter, weddings and bar mitzvahs carry an empty chair, and family gatherings feel incomplete. The Country lives in limbo, waiting endlessly for the return of hostages. Others adjust to life with a wheelchair, prosthetics, or injuries that will never fully heal. Even those who look strong on the outside carry invisible wounds, hearts heavy with grief and anxiety.

This isn’t just news headlines. It’s the daily reality of Am Yisrael. The quiet suffering we all carry into Yom Kippur — bringing it before God in honesty, in brokenness, in prayer.

Disbelief

And then there is disbelief.

Disbelief at the horrors and cruelty of October 7th  and our failures to let it happen.

Disbelief that the world can accuse Israel of genocide, even dare to compare us to the Holocaust, when it was our people who were slaughtered, raped, burned, and kidnapped. Accuse us of genocide while ignoring the facts and their own skeletons in the closet: colonialism, slavery, wars of choice, and silence during the Shoah.

And disbelief too at the hypocrisy: the refusal to understand the evil of Hamas and the meaning of the River to the Sea— The PLO, Hamas charters and textbooks around the world openly call for the replacement of Israel by Palestine, and the murder of Jews.

The atrocities on October 7th were not accidents of war but deliberate acts of cruelty.

To equate Israel’s fight to protect life with genocide is obscene. It is the moral inversion the Torah calls a “crooked and twisted generation.”

Disbelief that nations rush to recognise a Palestinian state while ignoring the facts, history, our Bible and connection to the land.

The other day, I was on a bus overlooking the Mount of Olives, gazing at the ancient stones that covered the hillside. And it hit me: the world has just recognised a Palestinian state that now claims the Mount of Olives is Palestine!!

How ridiculous. How false.

This is not some random hill. This is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, where prophets, sages, and ordinary Jews chose to be buried facing Jerusalem, believing redemption would begin there.

And yet, with a straight face, the world redraws maps and declares: “This is Palestine.” They ignore that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan controlled the Mount of Olives, more than 40,000 graves were desecrated. Tombstones were smashed, used to pave roads, even to build latrines. They forget that the 1949 Armistice Agreement promised Jewish access to the cemetery — a promise never honoured. They prefer distortion to truth.

And now once again, we hear talk of peace for Gaza, quick fixes, foreign plans dressed up as hope. But haven’t we been here before? Promises made, promises broken. Hope raised, hope shattered.

Didn’t we withdraw from Gaza in 2005, gifting the Gazans a chance for a better life in the future, and only to be accused that Gaza was an open-walled Prison, was an occupation, justifying October 7th. How crooked and twisted is this generation? The Gazans, led by Hamas, chose to build terror tunnels, rockets, and arms instead of peace and prosperity

The Mount of Olives reminds us that history is full of promises from nations that were never kept, which is why our true hope cannot rest in their words, but only in our covenant with God.

When the world denies our covenant, our heritage, and our connection to this land, it’s not just politics. It’s the defilement of history, of memory, of faith itself.

But sitting there, looking down from the bus, I realised: no declaration, no recognition, no map can erase the truth. The Mount of Olives still looks over Jerusalem as it has for thousands of years. The stones are still here. The prayers are still here. The covenant is still here. We, the Jews, are here, living in our ancestral home and not going anywhere.

Ha’azinu: The Rock and a Twisted World

Right after Yom Kippur, we read Ha’azinu, a song that cuts through the noise.

It begins with praise:

הַצּוּר תָּמִים פָּעֳלוֹ כִּי כׇל־דְּרָכָיו מִשְׁפָּט
אֵל אֱמוּנָה וְאֵין עָוֶל צַדִּיק וְיָשָׁר הוּא
The Rock — His deeds are perfect, all His ways are just; a faithful God, never false, true and upright indeed. (Deut. 32:4)

But then comes the mirror:

שִׁחֵת לוֹ לֹא בָנָיו מוּמָם
דּוֹר עִקֵּשׁ וּפְתַלְתֹּל
But His children dealt corruptly with Him — a crooked and perverse generation. (Deut. 32:5)

As Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz z”l taught, atrocities are not the work of God — the Rock is perfect. They happen because mankind becomes a crooked and twisted generation, distorting reality to justify its corruption.

That’s exactly what we see today. God is upright. But mankind twists truth until it becomes unrecognisable.

Vayelech: The Call to Resilience

The Torah doesn’t leave us in despair or disbelief. In last week’s parsha, Vayelech, Moshe turns to Yehoshua and says:

חֲזַק וֶאֱמָץ… וְאָנֹכִי אֶהְיֶה עִמָּךְ
Be strong and resolute… for I will be with you. (Deut. 31:23)

And to all Israel:

חִזְקוּ וְאִמְצוּ אַל־תִּירְאוּ וְאַל־תַּעַרְצוּ מִפְּנֵיהֶם
כִּי ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ הוּא הַהֹלֵךְ עִמָּךְ
לֹא יַרְפְּךָ וְלֹא יַעַזְבֶךָּ (Deut. 31:6)

Resilience is not denial. It’s movement. The very word Vayelech — “he went” — reminds us: we keep walking. However heavy, however slow, we go.

From Yom Kippur to Ha’azinu

Yom Kippur teaches us how.

In Unetaneh Tokef, we tremble: “Who shall live and who shall die…” — but also affirm: “Teshuvah, tefillah, tzedakah” can soften the decree.
In Avinu Malkeinu, we admit: “We have no deeds” — and still God listens.
In Neilah, we cry out “Hashem Hu HaElohim” — seven times, louder each time, a final declaration of faith in the Rock.

And then comes Ha’azinu, reminding us: God is perfect. Mankind may distort, nations may twist, enemies may rise — but covenant stands.

The Covenant of Strength

So as we leave Yom Kippur and step into Ha’azinu, we carry all three:

Despair for what we have lost.
Disbelief at the world’s hypocrisy.
But above all, resilience — to stand upright in a crooked generation, to live with faith, to proclaim covenant.

And when the shofar blows at the close of Yom Kippur, it is never a cry of defeat. It is the sound of a people who, against all odds, are still here. Even when the British during the Mandate tried to ban the blowing of the shofar at the Kotel, young Jews risked arrest to sound it anyway. The same contempt shown then — the attempt to silence Jewish faith, ownership, and connection to the land — is still shown today in different forms. Yet the covenant endures, the shofar still sounds, and the people of Israel still live.

Am Yisrael Chai.
חֲזַק וֶאֱמָץ — Be strong and resolute.

May this new year bring peace, healing, protection, and resilience to all of Am Yisrael