While Israel marks Hebrew Book Week, JNS interviews the authors of a seminal book on Oct. 7, 2023.

By: Steve Linde

As Israel celebrated Hebrew Book Week, an annual literary event featuring book fairs across the country in June, the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem published its 2024 survey of book publishing in the country.

“It is safe to say that Israelis are still reading books,” it said in a press release on June 9. “The year 2024 marked a new record in the number of prose books published in Israel. There was also a significant increase in new children’s and young adult books, but a decrease in instructional and hobby books.”

The report includes a special section on books published in the wake of the Hamas assault on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza. “As was expected, the past year saw a huge increase in the number of books published about these topics,” it said. “Of the 6,928 books published in Israel in 2024, 548 dealt with Oct. 7 and its aftermath.”

Perhaps the best-known of the books in this genre is One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories, the bestselling book in Israel over the past year and an international bestseller as well. Originally published in Hebrew, it was beautifully translated into English by Sara Daniel and will soon be coming out in French as well.

“It has become the ‘national book’ on Oct. 7 and has offered readers a sense of hope and healing amidst the tragedy,” Rabbi Reuven Ziegler, the editorial director of Koren Publishers Jerusalem, told JNS.

All the stories take place within the 24 hours of Oct. 7. Koren described the book, published in October 2024, as “an ambitious and unique literary project, offering readers an intimate look at forty true heroes, told in their own voices.”

Alongside stories of soldiers who eliminated terrorists, you find “different kinds of heroism,” it said: an elderly man who sacrificed his life to save his family; a mental health patient who survived five days in Shuja’iyya in northern Gaza; a midwife who turned her home into a field hospital; a ZAKA volunteer who insisted on preserving the dignity of the fallen; and a United Hatzalah volunteer who made sure a love letter found in a fallen soldier’s pocket reached its destination.

The book was coauthored by Yair Agmon, an acclaimed Israeli author, film director and columnist who was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Hebrew Literary Works in 2022, and Oriya Mevorach, a bestselling author, lecturer on Judaism and philosophy, and editor-in-chief of Maggid Books’ Hebrew division.

Working from interview transcripts, Agmon and Mevorach crafted compelling first-person prose narratives. “Using the interviewees’ own words in their authentic immediacy, these monologues gently touch on the darkness, the sadness, but also the light, the beauty and the human grandeur that resonated on that day,” Koren said. “They aimed to tell the story of ordinary people who, on one tragic day, became heroes. All texts were reviewed and approved by the book’s heroes.”

What follows is JNS’s interview with the two authors.

Q: What motivated you to publish this book?

Agmon: To be honest, I didn’t really want to write this book. When the war broke out, I fell into a deep depression. I couldn’t leave the house. I was glued to the news, watching horrific videos on Telegram, crying all day. When Oriya approached me about writing a book on heroes who saved lives on October 7, I told her I wasn’t even able to step outside, let alone interview people. But she insisted, gently persuading me to try writing just one story. That first story was about a young man named Ofek Livni, who saved nine people in his car during the Nova party massacre. Reading the interview with Ofek was the first time since the war began that I felt like I was breathing pure oxygen into my heart. Something about it struck a deep chord, and I instinctively knew: this is what I need to do now. This is the book I have to dedicate myself to. I simply sent Oriya a message: “I’m in.”

Mevorach: Interestingly, I went through a process very similar to what Yair describes. Here you have two people who, in truth, didn’t want to write this book—and yet both of us were ultimately captivated by its magic, unable to resist. I wasn’t supposed to be involved at all. When Reuven Ziegler, our editorial director, first suggested the idea for the book, I thought it was a brilliant concept. I immediately proposed that Yair Agmon be the one to write it, and I didn’t even want to be connected to the project. The topic was so painful and overwhelming for me that I felt I couldn’t even touch it. I remember telling Reuven, “I don’t even want to be in the WhatsApp groups for the book’s production.” But once Yair began sending me stories he had edited, I suddenly felt what he describes—and what so many of the book’s readers have described too: a breath of air, oxygen, an embrace. About a month and a half later, Yair asked if I would consider joining him in writing the book. By then, I was in a different place. I wanted to do it deeply, because I felt the book was healing me.

Q: What did you learn from the experience?

Agmon: I’ve learned that Israeli society itself is the answer to all the terrifying questions this war has raised. When the state shattered into pieces on Oct. 7—when the army vanished, when the security forces were nowhere to be found—it was Israeli society that saved us from total collapse. Police officers left their homes. Soldiers on leave ran into battle. Haredi paramedics from Jerusalem rushed to save lives. Kibbutz members fought off terrorists with their bare hands. Religious settlers left the Hebron Hills to enter secular kibbutzim and rescue people. Bedouins from Rahat picked up partygoers and drove them to safety. Everyone showed up. That’s the strength of Israeli society. That’s the society where I want to raise my children.

Mevorach: I also received a profound lesson in ahavat Yisrael, love of Israel—though calling it a “lesson” doesn’t quite capture it. It was more like a conversation. Before working on this book, I felt frustration and even some alienation toward certain parts of Israeli society. But throughout the process of researching and writing, I encountered the souls of these people—without masks, without labels. This book contains every thread of Israeli society: religious, secular, Arab, foreign workers, women, men, even children, Ethiopian Israelis, Russian immigrants, Mizrahim, Ashkenazim. And what struck me most was that on that one day, they all acted from the same place in the soul—a place willing to sacrifice for the sake of another. I don’t have the words to describe the transformation I underwent. Where once I had to work hard to feel connected to people different from me, I now feel, first and foremost, an overwhelming love for every person in Israeli society. It’s truly a result I never expected.

Q: Do you have a favorite hero?

Mevorach: I feel deeply connected to all the stories, but my heart is especially tied to those with a profoundly moving common thread: a hero or heroine who faced death head-on—absolutely certain they were going to die, with no chance of making it out alive—and yet, somehow, returned to tell the tale. Many heroes in the book feared for their lives that day, but there are five whose encounters with death were absolute: Or Ben Yehuda (the Caracal commander), Miki, Eyal Aharon, Yadin Gellman and Emily Hand. Emily is a child who was believed to have died—her family mourned her—and then, against all odds, came back. These stories teach me profound lessons in hope. And humility. And in belief in life itself. We must never decide that our story is over. We must never give in to despair. We never know what unexpected twist in the plot life still has in store for us.

Agmon: I don’t have a favorite hero; I have a favorite story. It’s the story of Camille Jesalva, a foreign caregiver from the Philippines who saved the life of Nitza, a 95-year-old woman living on Kibbutz Nir Oz. Camille’s story is almost unbelievable because it involves a double act of rescue. These two women saved one another. With incredible wisdom, Camille bribed the vile terrorist, offering him all the money she could find in the house. In doing so, she saved both her own life and Nitza’s. But Nitza saved Camille as well. When Camille suffered a panic attack, it was Nitza who embraced her and held her in her arms for two and a half hours. It’s a story that restores your faith in humanity.

Q: What feedback have you had from readers, and what is it that you hope readers will take away from it?

Agmon: We received countless responses. The most moving ones came from readers who told me that the book allowed them to revisit that terrible day—but in a gentle, protected way. We went through a traumatic event, and we need to look at it squarely if we want to begin to understand it. These heroes are an incredible lens through which to view the catastrophe we experienced. They are our redemption and our consolation.

Mevorach: Exactly. Those are the kinds of responses we keep hearing. And also, the word “healing” comes up again and again. People feel that the book soothes their wounds—that it gives them strength, that it’s a kind of remedy for the soul. There’s a line Yair often says in our joint lectures, and I really relate to it: “Because of our heroes, my memory of Oct. 7 has changed.” It’s no longer just a day of devastation, humiliation, pain, and nightmare. Suddenly, when I think about Oct. 7, I also think of the embrace between Camille and Nitza, or the sweet, funny love between Netta Epstein and his fiancée, Irene. After reading the book, people suddenly can discern hues of humanity and love, not just shadows of ruin and sorrow, on Oct. 7. And that, to me, is remarkable.

Q: What’s your message to the world, as we mark Hebrew Book Week?

Agmon: I’m not someone who deals in messages—not for the world, and barely even for myself. What I can say is that this war, like any war, is an event that erases human beings. And this book is an attempt to love human beings. To feel them. Our book doesn’t ask what these people did—it asks who they are. It’s a book that searches for the human being.

Mevorach: At the very beginning of our work on the book, Yair said to the entire team: “Our heroes deserve to be loved, and our readers deserve to feel love.” Love is a healing emotion. And if we’re speaking about a message for the world, I believe this book carries a profound message not only for Israelis, and not even just for Jews. This is a universal story about the struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil. The book is a vivid illustration of what the human spirit looks like when it chooses evil and what it looks like when it chooses good. Every person on earth has something to learn from the profoundly human and inspiring heroes featured in this book.

(JNS.org)