Welcome to What Came After, a podcast that shares the stories of individuals whose lives were forever changed by the horrific massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. This podcast explores how people from all walks of life—in Israel and around the world—have navigated the aftermath of such profound trauma.

On October 7th, 2023, I was asleep in my home outside Chicago when the violence began to unfold in Israel. My family and I are traditionally observant Jews, so we don’t use phones on Shabbat or during Jewish holidays. Despite this, we quickly learned what was happening. Even before fully understanding the scope of the disaster, I was horrified and devastated. These feelings only intensified as my family, community and I  learned not only the extent of the violence, but of its sheer brutality—and as we waited, largely in vain, for solidarity from communities beyond our own.

In retrospect, it seems naïve to have expected allies from around the world to rush to condemn the violence. Instead, I witnessed rising hostility towards Israel, its supporters, and ultimately, towards Jews. My husband, Matt, and I even had to tell our young children not to wear their yellow pins—meant to raise awareness about the hostage crisis—on their backpacks or jackets. The world felt like a haze of surreality, and- like so many-  I was suspended in this grim new reality, unsure of what to do. It was my husband who recognized, before I did, that the only way for me to ground myself—to face this world I no longer recognized—was to travel to Israel. There was a war, yes, but I needed to feel the strange relief of being there,  of no longer trying to process my grief from afar.

In February 2024, I made the journey. For two weeks, I spent time with dear friends, met new ones, and had some deeply moving, sometimes painful experiences. In a suburb outside Tel Aviv, I met a woman at a coffee shop who turned out to be a distant cousin; together, we brought a bag of extra clothes to the outskirts of an army base for another one of her relatives, a young woman serving as a medic. I visited Hostages' Square in Tel Aviv, and wanting to retreat from the intensity of it all, found myself in a kosher McDonald's just outside the city where, just beneath the menu, a photo carousel of the hostages played endlessly and without fanfare. I cried into my nuggets. I cried into many Aroma iced coffees. I cried as a young man who survived the massacre explained what went through his mind as he survived the day, not only saving himself but several of his relatives and friends. I cried in a pediatric dental office waiting room as I accompanied a close friend to her daughter’s appointment. I received a few soft smiles, but mostly, no one batted an eye.

I also laughed a lot on that trip. I laughed at a dinner I shared with an extended family who had survived the worst of that shattering day. I laughed over lunch with a woman whose daughter, an IDF commander, narrowly emerged from the massacre with her life. And I laughed for hours at a Tel Aviv comedy club where I heard stand-up from American comedians Michael Rapaport and Tiffany Haddish, as well as Israel comedian Matan Perez, and many more.

Back home in Chicago, I found myself talking endlessly about the people I met and the stories I heard in Israel. I wanted to hear more about how people were navigating life after October 7th, and this desire led me to the Israel Story podcast, specifically their Wartime Diaries series, which deeply moved me. I eagerly awaited each new episode, which featured short vignettes from all kinds of people in Israel living through the aftermath of the attack and the ensuing war.

Now, it’s important to mention that I’m a psychotherapist by profession. Stories have always been at the center of my work. In one hour increments, I listen to people share their lives with me one story at a time, and I’ve seen how telling a life story can actually change its course. So, when my husband noticed how often I was listening to Wartime Diaries, he encouraged me to try my hand interviewing people and listening to their stories in a slightly different way.

He mentioned his idea to me on a Thursday night in April.  “Don’t you think you could host a podcast?,” he asked.  “You could interview all these people who’ve shared these amazing stories with you.” I told him that I’d think about it, but by that Sunday morning, Matt had already ordered equipment and turned a corner of our bedroom into a podcast studio. With his encouragement, I decided to take the leap. I reached out to the team at Israel Story, who gave me their blessing to start a podcast so heavily inspired by their own.

I initially did three virtual interviews, but I made the decision to wait until I was back in Israel so that I could conduct the rest of the interviews for the podcast in person. My two-week trip in February 2024 made it clear that I wanted to spend a lot of time in Israel and that I also wanted my children to experience the country beyond the headlines. Although moving to Israel (making Aliyah) is not off the table, the timing wasn’t (and still isn’t, unfortunately)  right. So, in the summer of 2024, I brought my three kids to Israel for seven weeks.  My husband joined us for the last week of the trip. The experience was ambitious—and a little crazy—but with the help of friends who became like family, I was able to spend most of my summer in Jerusalem, doing interviews while my kids were at camp and seeing my American therapy clients via telehealth late into the evening. (Suffice it to say, I didn’t get much sleep!)

In mid-July, I had the great fortune of a chance coffee shop encounter with Maya Zanger-Nadis, a Jerusalem-based journalist originally from the States, who became the podcast’s producer.  Maya helped me scout guests and prepare for the interviews. She also quickly learned the ins and outs of the tech elements of our rented recording equipment, navigated the logistics of traveling back and forth to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem for interviews, and built the show’s website while she was at it.

The more in-person interviews we did, the more I realized that these conversations felt richer, more meaningful, and more vulnerable than those done virtually. Interviewing people face-to-face became the heart of this podcast. It also became clear that this work is documentary work. An hour is a long time in the Middle East, and slowing down to document this history is crucial—especially now, when the world seems to rush to forget what took place on October 7th—  or worse, vilify the days’ victims and survivors.

What Came After is not just a podcast about trauma. It’s a documentary series about how people respond to crisis: what they think now, how they feel now, what they believe now. What family means now, what peoplehood means now. What  honor and duty and legacy mean now. What joy means now. What history means now. And of course, what the future means now.

I hope that the stories you hear on What Came After will stay with you, long after each episode ends. Thank you for joining me and the What Came After team on this journey. It means so much to all of us.