Morning Has Broken: Faith After October 7th

by Erica Brown

In Morning Has Faith after October 7th, Erica Brown braids personal
reflections and Jewish texts about faith, unity, pain, and hope during this
war in Israel and in response to antisemitism everywhere.

268 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 14, 2024

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Milly Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

me parece un libro muy muy hermoso
un diario lleno de reflexiones profundas sobre la fe y el dolor y la pérdida y ser un judío en la diáspora durante la guerra
después del 7 de octubre se detonan estos vaivenes de emociones y sentimientos que van desde citar salmos y extractos de la Torá, diálogos con Dios, e historias de sabios, hasta perder la fe y recuperarla una y otra vez
se narran eventos de la guerra y se cuentan los días y los caídos y los que regresan mientras ella, dialoga con gente, con ella misma, viaja a Israel, sale de Israel
y siempre, con la constante de esa inteligencia emocional que caracteriza a los judíos, la de la esperanza de que una nueva mañana eclipsará la oscuridad de la noche, de que cada mañana es una nueva mañana

[Chava · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of books about October 7th, and when I was this one by Dr. Brown, a master teacher and expert in leadership, I was hoping for something erudite and scholarly, something inspiring and comforting at the same time. The book is a collection of her thoughts, no essays, more anecdotes and snippets and random thoughts.

There are several intersections in our lives:

I was also at the funeral for Lavi Lipshitz, a 20-year old killed in battle on October 31st. Besides being a talented photographer, Lavi was an avid reader and a fan of the TV show "Friends."

I feel the same way about those announcements about "this event is taking place on land that originally belonged to...". "As if mentioning who rightly has claim to this land, but will never have it, offers permission to proceed with business a usual."

I've also been to Sderot to the Police Station Memorial, to the Hesder yeshiva with the menora made of old rockets, to the park with the caterpillar that is really a big bomb shelter because those children have 15 seconds to get to a safe space before impact.

I paid a shiva call on the Perez family and learned from Daniel's sister that the army determined that Daniel was dead because of the amount of blood they found at the scene of his abduction.

I met Yossi Landau and heard his account of October 7th. At that point (January 2024), he said he was not ready to go to therapy, but I thought that sharing his story and those of the ZAKA volunteers was indeed a form of therapy.

So, for better or worse, Dr. Brown is as speechless as I am, and as challenged to finding meaning and purpose in a post-October 7th world.

[Irwin Weiss, MD · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of the author’s struggle with faith after the events in Israel of October 7, 2023. The questioning of how could God let such a thing happen? Children, elderly, and everyone else? And what of the soldiers who were forced to respond to those hellish people? What is the reaction to the campus protests and sit-ins in support of the terrorists and for the oldest hatred, anti-Semitism?

The book is constructed of sometime multiple brief thoughts per page. Sometimes they are rooted in the Bible or other Jewish texts, sometimes not. If one needs inspiration, one can read any page in no particular order, because every page is inspiration. Sometimes it will bring the reader to tears while others will bring the reader to deep thoughts or give perspective on the world that we live in post October 7.

A must read for anyone who has compassion and love for people.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. Reading it reminded me of Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier, which was the author's spiritual journal after the death of his father; this is Erica Brown's spiritual journal after Oct. 7. Both books are written in the same style, and in something of the same spirit, though I personally found Morning Has Broken both more wrenching and more comforting. It's not a book to rush through; I read it slowly, one section at a time, and I am sorry that there are no more sections to read.

[Cindy]

This is my second book by Erica Brown and I plan on working my way through her other books. She is a good author and has a lot to say. Her thoughts in this one resignated with me but I was disappointed as I was hoping to find more inspiration on faith and instead found myself profoundly sad while reading this book.