Sheryl Sandberg asked all the Jewish leaders in the hall at the General Assembly in Washington, D.C. to do an experiment. “Everyone, raise your hand as high as you can.”
They raised their hands, and then she said: “Now an inch higher.” Each person managed to lift their hand higher. “Look at that, when we think we’ve done all that we can we can do more, and we do and we have!”
If Sandberg symbolizes what is happening now to our brethren in the Diaspora, we are on the right path. This phenomenon has already been given a name: “The Jews of October 8,” the Jews who woke up the day after. She is a billionaire, former COO of Meta, responsible for the film “Screams Before Silence” that documented Hamas’ abuse of women on October 7.
“The silence [from the women’s organizations and the world in general] was deafening,” she said on stage. “All the work we did together for years for women, it was as if none of that had ever happened.”
The events of that Simchat Torah fundamentally changed her, not in a negative sense, but precisely positively. “In the past, I was often asked: Are you a Jewish-American or an American-Jew? Which part of your identity comes first? Since October 7, I sit on the stage as a different person, in the sense that Jewish is an important part of my identity as anything else. I sit on this stage as a proud Zionist and a proud Jew, in a way I wouldn’t have a year and a half ago.”
She asked the audience not to focus only on antisemitism, hypocrisy, and anti-Israel sentiment, not just on “what not” but on “what yes.” Sandberg quoted Bari Weiss saying that “our identity as Jews has to be more rooted in Sinai than in Auschwitz, and that is true, because being Jewish is a wonderful thing. It is a tradition of charity, of caring about other people, of knowledge, of study, of family, of community.
“Last January, I asked my daughter what she wanted for her birthday. She wasn’t particularly affiliated but she said she wanted a Jewish Star. She’s worn it every day since then, so have I and so have my two other daughters. My middle daughter is president of the Jewish affinity club in her school. She wasn’t a member a year and a half ago! I am born again, and that has had some beautiful moments. I am part of this community in a different way.”
Will October 7 be recorded in history not only as a disaster, but also as a day of global Jewish awakening? Will we all succeed in raising our hand just a little more? Thank you, Sheryl.
