After October 7th, many Israelis described the same sensation: time stopped behaving normally.

Days blurred into one another. Nights stretched without mercy. Weeks felt both endless and impossibly short. People lost track of what day it was—not metaphorically, but neurologically. Trauma collapsed the ordinary markers that tell the body where it is in time.

This is not a failure of attention.
It is a symptom of shock.

Jewish tradition has always known how to respond when time itself breaks.

It responds with ritual.

Trauma overwhelms the nervous system. It floods the body with vigilance and fear, pulling attention into an eternal present where danger feels ongoing. In that state, the future becomes either unimaginable or terrifying, and the past presses in with unwanted force.

Reason does not fix this.
Explanation does not fix this.

Rhythm does.

Judaism does not argue with chaos. It interrupts it.

Shabbat arrives every seven days, regardless of how the week has gone.
Havdalah marks an ending even when grief resists closure.
The calendar insists that time is not random, even when life feels unmoored.

After October 7th, this ancient wisdom became lived necessity.

What many Israelis rediscovered was not theology, but regulation.

Lighting candles........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)