Against the Date-ification of Oct. 7

September 11.
January 6.
October 7. 

Date-ification occurs when the date on which a catastrophe took place becomes a synecdoche for the event itself. 

We reserve date-ifcation for the only most horrifying and singular events in the life of a nation.

There’s a good reason for this. Imagine if every pogrom, every wicked milestone of the Nazi’s genocide, or every terror attack in Israel was forever associated with its date on the calendar. The entire year would become a minefield of pain and trauma. 

There is no doubt that Hamas’ massacres meet this high bar for date-ification. That said, I fear that the date-ification of Oct. 7 has been a mistake. 

For one, events that are date-ified are events which began and ended in a single date. This is the wrong way to think of Oct. 7. This was not a terrorist attack — a singular, spectacular display of barbarity. Rather, it was the opening salvo of a war against Israel’s existence.

Hamas has been fighting this war every day, week and month since Oct. 7. They refuse to surrender, refuse to return the hostages, and continue to mount attacks on Israel every chance they get. The more cornered they become, the more cruel, as evidenced by their decision to execute six young hostages as the IDF drew nearer to their position in Rafah. 

The date-ification of Hamas’ attack is a gift to Israel’s enemies who seek to minimize Hamas’ culpability and portray Israel’s war as an overreaction. “Twelve months of war in Gaza in retaliation for a single day?” they ask. “How is that not disproportionate?”

Date-ification occurs when the date on which a catastrophe took place becomes a synecdoche for the event itself.

But this war is not ”in retaliation for a single day,” but rather a response to what that single day signified for the future, which is that Hamas has no intention of ever living in peace with Israel, and that they will continue trying — at every opportunity — to kill and maim as many Israelis as they can get their hands on. 

The date-ification of Oct. 7 also comes at the expense of Oct. 8, the day that Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel’s northern towns. 

For Israelis from the north, it was Oct. 8 when everything changed. That was when Hezbollah decided to get in on the carnage and began pummeling Israel’s north with rockets. 

Whole towns have been destroyed. Entire communities displaced. Parents have lost children. Children have lost parents. In one case, mother and son were killed together when a Hezbollah rocket crashed through the roof over their heads. 

Finally, the date-ification of Hamas’ attack now leaves us in the awkward position of trying to figure out how to memorialize a catastrophe that is still unfolding. 

Only when this war is over will we be able to memorialize it. Only then will we be able to start understanding how we got here and what comes next. Only then, when the hostages are (I pray) home, will we be able to mourn the dead and begin rebuilding a country that has already been pushed to the very limits of its morale, its capabilities, and its humanity. 

Rather than date-ification, we should follow the lead of those who, like Rachel Goldberg-Polin, start each day by counting.

Today, as I write these words, it’s day 352. 

Not 352 days since Oct. 7. 

Not 352 days since anything. 

Just 352 days, each one of them filled with unbearable pain and stubborn hope—undate-ified, undate-ifiable, and without end.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.