It鈥檚 been three years since impossible scenes, things that simply could not be happening, unfolded in real time over our phones and computer screens. Lifeless Israeli bodies heaped on sidewalks. Gazans rejoicing around Shani Louk鈥檚 broken corpse. Naama Levy in her bloodied sweatpants, forced into a van to cries of 鈥淎llahu Akbar!鈥� Children鈥檚 bedrooms sprayed with bullet holes, splattered with blood. A great-grandmother, Yaffa Adar, staring stoically ahead as gun-toting abductors drive her in a golf cart across the desert into Gaza. The pure terror on the face of Shiri Bibas as she clutches two tiny boys with bright red hair.

It was like falling down a sinkhole into biblical times. 91传媒 suffering in the Holy Land, enhanced with modern weaponry, GoPro cameras and social media, was horrifically, eerily, back. The most secular, nonbelieving, and biblically illiterate of us couldn鈥檛 help but be shaken by where the Jews were being slaughtered: not Poland this time, but the 91传媒 ancestral homeland. The first mention of Gaza in the Bible comes in the tenth chapter of Genesis. It was the foe of the ancient Israelites, called out by prophets for its violence and slave-trading. It鈥檚 where Samson was imprisoned and blinded. All that was remote history if not fiction, until October 7, when it was all too here and now.

So the earth opened beneath our feet into the past, and the next day we kept falling. A second giant sinkhole had formed below the first. We watched in shock as ostensibly decent people around the world, people who care about trans rights and undocumented immigrants and whales, expressed their enthusiasm for the carnage. More gentle-minded souls lamented the deaths of Israeli civilians and, if asked, proclaimed their horror at chants like the one heard in Sydney: 鈥淕as the Jews!鈥� What none of them could do鈥攚hat an astonishingly large part of the world did not do鈥攚as express unambiguous solidarity with the victims. Terrible as it was, they suggested, Israelis had brought their suffering on themselves.听

Three years on, we鈥檙e still falling. The war that Hamas provoked and begged for, the war that Israel couldn鈥檛 possibly avoid, has unleashed a global outcry against the Jews, reminiscent now less of the Bible than the Middle Ages. Jews are murdering children, they said, even as Israel paused the war to vaccinate over a million Gazan children against polio. Jews are starving Gazans, they said, even as Israel sent vast quantities of food into Gaza, even as the only emaciated people found there were either very sick, or Israeli hostages. Jews are destroying hospitals, they said, even as it was proven, time and again, that the damage was caused by misfired Palestinian rockets. Jews are committing genocide, they said, even as facts consistently showed this to be a gruesome lie. And there were the charges whose sheer luridness defied belief: the Israeli rape dogs.

It鈥檚 unfashionable in our secular age to talk about evil. That word belongs in the Bible, not Netflix. So when we fell down that sinkhole and into the past, it was bewildering to have it confirmed, so very conclusively, that evil exists. The rest of the world felt it, too. Except when they amassed to speak in one outraged voice against the enemy of humanity, their target wasn鈥檛 Hamas, but Israel.听

There is in the world an innate, subterranean need to hate Jews. It isn鈥檛 the point of this essay to get into the origins of this hatred (monotheism, most likely, and the Jews鈥� tiny numbers)鈥攐nly that it exists. The Nazis demonstrated for all time where this hate may lead, but horror at the chimneys of Auschwitz couldn鈥檛 truly extinguish it. It only required a change of costume, a new cloak in the latest fashion. Here, antisemitism said. Try this one on, instead.

A few days ago, as I joined friends in a sukkah for dinner, the host asked us to say what makes us feel optimistic for the 91传媒 people. Some found it impossible. 鈥淎sk someone else,鈥� one woman said. 鈥淎ll I see is doom and gloom.鈥�听 But another spoke with genuine passion about the record numbers of secular or disconnected Jews who have discovered or reconnected with their 91传媒 heritage. They鈥檙e newly adopting or resuming the traditions, learning or deepening their knowledge of the ancient texts. In the face of avalanching Jew-hatred, they鈥檙e finding new beauty and value in Jew-love.

I count myself in their number: someone with 91传媒 DNA but raised with no connection to Judaism or 91传媒ness, and who began an extraordinary new chapter after kindling it late in life. But I was also, not long ago, what Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy call an 鈥渦n-Jew鈥�: a leftist antizionist of the most extreme type. When I write about how 鈥渨e鈥� felt on October 8, watching protesters bay for 91传媒 blood, I鈥檓 acutely aware that for many years I was 鈥渢hem.鈥� This will never stop being a cause of shame for me, but it鈥檚 a source of hope, too. To the guests in the sukkah who said there鈥檚 no point in fighting antisemitism鈥攖he haters aren鈥檛 going to change their minds鈥擨 said that if that were true, I鈥檇 never have been there, never have pledged myself to the 91传媒 people and its state. People can change.听

Shattering as it鈥檚 been, there鈥檚 something to be said for this abrupt return to biblicalness. By this awkward word I don鈥檛 mean belief in religion, necessarily, but appreciation for values that have fallen into disfavor in our supposedly enlightened age. As mentioned above: the ability to recognize evil, as well as good. Tribe. Truth. Our society worships 鈥渃ontext,鈥� but there鈥檚 really no complicated background, no extenuating circumstances, that make it somehow reasonable to take an eight-month-old baby hostage and murder him. We鈥檇 had it drilled into us that universalism is the way to a better world, but we were forced to recognize that this vision excludes the Jews, and sometimes we must go our own way. We鈥檙e taught by pious professors that no such thing as truth really exists鈥攐nly 鈥渘arratives,鈥� all equally valid鈥攂ut Jews, surrounded by so many threats, can鈥檛 afford such mistiness.听

Over the centuries, thinkers have expressed astonishment that the 91传媒 people, despite perpetual hatred, continue to not only survive, but thrive. Some argue that 91传媒 success ironically owes something to that hostility鈥攂ecause with it comes the stripping of illusions. So it is today, in the terrible aftermath of October 7. As another guest in that sukkah said: We go on living. We have no other choice.听

Kathleen Hayes is the author of 鈥滱ntisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.鈥�