For Israelis, October 7, 2023 has changed the way we remember October 6, 1973. The two dates are separated by exactly fifty years, but they are joined by more than coincidence. Both were Jewish holidays. Both began with a devastating surprise attack by genocidal enemies. In both cases, Israel’s political and military leadership had convinced itself that it understood its enemies and that a major war was unlikely. In both cases, the first hours exposed the failure of that assumption in the most painful possible way.
But there is another connection between 1973 and 2023. Both wars raise the same question: How should Israel understand a catastrophic blow that does not end in defeat?
That question is at the heart of an important reassessment of the Yom Kippur War by Dr. Hagi Ben Artzi, a veteran of the Yom Kippur War and Religious Zionist scholar of Jewish thought who is also the brother in law of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Ben Artzi argues that Israelis have spent five decades remembering the Yom Kippur War primarily through the trauma of its opening days, while neglecting the extraordinary and miraculous military victory that followed. More importantly, he sees the war as part of a Divine process in which God deliberately shocked the Jewish people after Israel’s extraordinary victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Ben Artzi’s argument is particularly relevant now. If October 7 has taught Israelis anything, it is that the opening hours of a war do not necessarily tell us what the war means. And if 1973 is any guide, the Jewish people may spend decades arguing about the meaning of October 7 before the full consequences of that day become clear.
A recent discussion with Ben Artzi and Yoel Elitzur in Olam Katan makes this case with unusual force.
“A blow that would shake us, but not bring us down”
There is no question that the beginning of the Yom Kippur War was a disaster. On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack. Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal, while Syrian forces advanced into the Golan Heights. Israeli forces were caught unprepared and initially faced overwhelming enemy numbers. Thousands of Israeli soldiers were killed or wounded, and the country experienced a level of fear and uncertainty that was almost unimaginable after the triumph of 1967.
The Israeli government and military leadership badly misjudged the situation. The Agranat Commission later documented the surprise suffered by Israel’s political and military leadership and the severe conditions faced by the IDF in the opening days. Yet the same historical record also makes clear what happened next: Israel halted the Egyptian and Syrian advances, launched counteroffensives, crossed the Suez Canal and ended the war with Israeli forces approximately 101 kilometers from Cairo and 35 kilometers from Damascus.
For Ben Artzi, the distinction between the opening of the war and its conclusion is crucial. “The Holy One, blessed be He, made sure to give us a blow that would shake us, but not bring us down.” That is a very different way of remembering 1973. It does not deny the tragedy, but it insists that the tragedy was not the whole story.
Ben Artzi points to the extraordinary reversal on the battlefield. Israel began the war with Egyptian and Syrian armies penetrating its defenses. Three weeks later, the IDF had driven the Syrian army back, entered Syrian territory, crossed the Suez Canal and surrounded Egypt’s Third Army. The military situation at the end of the war was radically improved from the state of affairs before the war.
Yet the Israeli national memory has overwhelmingly focused on the catastrophic beginning of the war instead of its victorious conclusion.
Ben Artzi argues that there is a political reason Israelis remember the war this way. For decades, Israel’s Left has pointed to the Yom Kippur War as proof that expanding Israel’s borders will not help to keep Israel safe. In their view, Israel controlled the Sinai, the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, and still came under devastating attack. The lesson was clear: Israel’s security would come through giving up territory and making peace with its enemies, not through holding strategic land.
But the end of the war tells a very different story. Israel was attacked by surprise on two fronts and initially pushed back. Three weeks later, the IDF was deep inside Syria, had crossed the Suez Canal and had surrounded Egypt’s Third Army. Rather than proving that strategic depth had failed, Ben Artzi argues, the war showed exactly why it mattered. Israel had the land and the space to absorb a devastating surprise attack, recover and turn the war around.
The shadow of 1967
The Six-Day War of 1967 transformed the Jewish people’s relationship with the Land of Israel. In six days, Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and returned to the heart of its biblical homeland. Jerusalem was reunited, Judea and Samaria were liberated, and the Golan Heights and Sinai were captured as well. The victory was so overwhelming that it created a dangerous confidence.
Ben Artzi describes the mentality that took hold after 1967 in the biblical language of “kochi v’otzem yadi,” “my own power and the might of my hand” (Deuteronomy 8:17). Israel had just achieved what seemed impossible, and the stunning victory transformed the way many Israelis viewed the IDF. Instead of seeing the victory as an act of divine providence, they began to place their faith in Israel’s military power. The IDF had become so strong, they believed, that Israel could protect itself through its own strength alone.
Then came the Yom Kippur War.
For Ben Artzi, this was not simply a failure of military intelligence. After the triumph of 1967, Israel began to believe too much in its own strength. The shock of the Yom Kippur War shattered that confidence and forced the Jewish people to confront a truth they had begun to forget: Israel’s survival depends not only on the strength of the IDF, but ultimately on God.
Yoel Elitzur experienced that lesson firsthand. A young reservist during the Yom Kippur War, Elitzur was among the first Israeli soldiers to cross the Suez Canal as the IDF turned the war around. For him, what happened in 1973 followed a pattern straight out of the Bible: Israel was humbled, reminded that military strength alone could not save it, and then granted an extraordinary victory.
“This is an even greater victory than the Six-Day War,” Elitzur says, “because we began from such an inferior position.”
He compares the two wars to the biblical battles for Ai. Israel had just experienced the miraculous conquest of Jericho when confidence gave way to failure at Ai. Only after that painful setback did Israel return to battle and achieve victory.
Elitzur sees the same pattern in 1967 and 1973. The Six-Day War gave Israel a victory that seemed almost impossible. But that victory also fed the belief that the IDF was unbeatable. The opening days of the Yom Kippur War shattered that illusion. What happened next, however, was not defeat.
Israel fought back. Elitzur saw that reversal with his own eyes. At one point after crossing the Suez Canal, his unit climbed a hill in single file and suddenly found itself completely exposed to an Egyptian position. “They could have mowed us all down.” Instead, the Egyptian soldiers fled.
Later, Israeli forces discovered dozens of Egyptian soldiers hiding in a bunker. Elitzur’s own company repeatedly fought on the front lines yet suffered only two casualties, one killed and one wounded. For Elitzur, these were not simply lucky breaks. They were part of what he calls “a chain of miracles throughout that entire war.”
“In that war I felt that when God decides to help me, He does it in extraordinary ways. And on the other hand, when He strikes me, He strikes me.”
That, for Ben Artzi and Elitzur, is the deeper story of 1973. Israel was shaken badly enough to lose its faith in its own invincibility, but not destroyed. And then, from an extraordinarily weak position, it was given the strength to turn the war around.
The consequences went far beyond the battlefield.
The awakening after 1973
Ben Artzi argues that the shock of the Yom Kippur War helped trigger a religious awakening in Israel. After years of growing confidence in the power of the state and the IDF, thousands of young Israelis began searching for something deeper. Many drew closer to Torah, Jewish faith and the Land of Israel.
That awakening would help reshape the future of Judea and Samaria.
It is common to describe the settlement movement as a product of the euphoria that followed the Six-Day War. Ben Artzi argues almost the opposite.
“Gush Emunim [the group that launched the settlement movement] did not arise after the Six-Day War,” he says. “The religious community itself also needed to be shaken and awakened.”
The distinction matters. The Six-Day War returned Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland, to Jewish control. But according to Ben Artzi, it was the shock of 1973 that awakened a generation to what that return meant.
For them, settling Shiloh, Beit El, Hebron and Gush Etzion was not simply about controlling strategic territory. It was about returning to the places at the center of the Jewish story and rebuilding Jewish life in the land their ancestors had lived in thousands of years before.
And then came October 7
Fifty years later, almost to the day, October 7 shook Israel once again. The attack shattered many of the assumptions Israelis held about their enemies and their ability to contain them. Yet, as in 1973, the shock also sparked changes that reach far beyond the battlefield.
Since October 7, a remarkable religious awakening has swept across Israeli society. Israelis from every background have turned toward Jewish faith and tradition with a new intensity. Thousands of supposedly “secular” Jewish soldiers fulfilled the commandment of tefillin (phylacteries), carried Torah scrolls into Gaza, prayed together before battle and spoke openly about their faith in God. Israelis far from the front are embracing Shabbat, prayer, Torah study and other Jewish practices as they search for meaning in the aftermath of the attack.
We can already see some of what October 7 has changed. But we cannot yet know how deeply that terrible day will shape the Jewish people in the decades to come. The Yom Kippur War shook Israel to its core, yet from that trauma emerged a religious revival and a generation newly committed to the Land of Israel. Few could have foreseen any of that in October 1973.
Perhaps the same is true today. October 7 inflicted a terrible wound on Israel and the Jewish people, but that does not mean we yet understand its place in God’s plan. If 1973 teaches us anything, it is that the meaning of a catastrophe may only become clear through what comes after it.
