This is what I posted on October 7, 2023:

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2258613

At the time that I wrote that, I had no idea about the raid on the ‘State of Israel’ until evening, when a friend on the telephone told me about the incident. At the time, I naïvely believed that the worst that was likely to happen was the IOF bombarding Palestine for a few days as retaliation. As we all know, the full aftermath was even worse than that, to put it mildly.

Yet it is having this context in mind that this otherwise mundane thread feels so much differently than it could have: there I was, talking about the differences between two Torot with an almost youthful fascination, blissfully unaware of what was going on in the Levant and the atrocities that would plague the region for two years. I almost envy the simplicity that our lives had back then. I could easily talk about the mildly interesting features in Judaism or Jewish cultures without feeling like I was neglecting anybody.