It seemed to me that most of the programs on East to West in the last few weeks were personal, and this program is no different. Tonight’s program falls exactly on October 7, a date that Israel, the Jewish people, and so many people around the world will never forget. Three years have passed since that horrific and terrible day. For so many, October 7 is speaking in the same breath as September 11, not because the events were the same, but because the depth, the shock, the loss, and the fear, and the way one day changed so many lives forever.

I was not in Israel that morning. I heard the terrible news through the media around 6:30, 7:00 in the morning New York time. I did not see what happened with my own eyes. What I saw, what I heard, came through the stories of others, through friends, through family, through the news, and through my sister who worked with the families of the hostages. What an incredible, meaningful, and important job she did. I’ve heard the cries, I’ve heard the uncertainty, I’ve heard the waiting. I was part of all that, and slowly you realize that October 7 is not one story.

There were hostages. There were people who were wounded. There were families who lost loved ones. There were soldiers who went to fight. There were children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends. And there are tens of thousands of Israelis who are still carrying the emotional scars. Everyone knows someone. Everyone has a story. Everyone was touched.

Three years later, Israel is different, still divided, but there are things we have not left behind, even as life asks us to move forward and to heal. There are names that still echo. There are families whose lives are divided into before that day and after. And there is a kind of pain that does not disappear simply just because time passes.

But something else happening during these three years. People prayed. Hundreds of prayers were written by religious and secular Jews, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, soldiers and mothers, young and old, women and men, rabbis and even military officers. Lots and lots of prayers. All of Israel, in its own way, was searching for words.

Dr. Yael Ra’anan collected hundreds of those prayers in a book called ‘The Prayer is a Cry’, prayer for the wounded, prayer for the captives, hostages, prayer for the State of Israel, prayer for hope, prayer for never again, and many, many more. And perhaps that title said it all. Sometimes prayers is not about having the answers. Sometimes prayer is simply a cry.

So tonight, I don’t have any answers either. I don’t have the right words to explain the pain of October 7, but there’s one thing I do have: music. And perhaps music is what I can offer tonight. Music to help us breathe, music to bring a little solace, music to remember, music to remind us of love, friendship, family, and life.

Yes, that music that will give us for few minutes a lift from the weight of the day. Because remembering does not mean that we have to live only in sadness. And perhaps for the next two hours, we can be together, listen together, remember together, and allow the music to carry us forward. This is East to West, and this is Eitan Battat. Stay with me for the next couple of hours.”