(See: For Whom the Bell Tolls by the writer, March 2024)
Henri Bergson (1859-1941), the French philosopher of *la durée*—duration—taught that the past does not vanish when the present arrives. It endures within us, shaping consciousness and reemerging in the rhythms of collective life. Memory, for Bergson, is not a static archive but a living force, constantly re-creating the world we perceive.
If we extend Bergson’s thought from the individual to the national sphere, duration becomes the melody of a people’s identity. Nations do not march through time in straight lines; they live in layers, where past and present interpenetrate. The Exodus continues to define Jewish identity; the French Revolution still animates French politics; the American Civil War reverberates in cultural divides.
National memory is polyphonic—the earlier notes never fade but linger in resonance with the next.
The Bells of October
On October 7, 1571, church bells rang across Europe to announce a miraculous victory: the combined Christian fleets had triumphed over the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto, saving Europe from conquest and marking the turning of the Ottoman tide (Chesterton, 1911). Bells tolled in gratitude and relief—a sound that became the music of survival and faith.
More than four centuries later, on October 7, 2023, Jerusalem awoke to another kind of tolling. Air-raid sirens shattered the serenity of Simchat Torah morning in Yemin Moshe, that quiet quarter overlooking the Valley of Ben Hinnom—the ancient Gehenna, from which the English word “hell” derives. From the terraces above the valley, one can see the Old City’s walls, its eight gates and thirty-four watchtowers, its quarters—Jewish, Armenian, Christian, and Muslim—compressed within the stones of time.
As the sirens wailed, the bells of the nearby Dormition Church joined the chorus. The sound was strange, discordant: a collision of lament and alarm. Moments later, the Iron Dome streaked across the blue sky, intercepting rockets from Gaza. The booms that followed echoed the ancient cries of that valley once drenched in sacrifice.
In the following days, the same grim symphony returned—sirens, bells, explosions—now joined by a chilling roar of celebration from the direction of the Muslim Quarter.
Now, two years later, the bell no longer tolls. It has fallen silent, absorbed into the unending undulation of the sirens. Perhaps there is no need for it anymore. Perhaps there is no one left to listen.
No Century Is an Island
John Donne wrote in 1623, “No man is an island, entire of itself… each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind” (Donne, 1623). So too, no century stands apart. The bells of 1571 and the sirens of 2023 are part of one long melody of civilization under siege.
From the Arab conquests of the seventh century through the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, Europe lived under the shadow of militant caliphates determined to subdue the “infidel.” Historian Michael Novak (2014) described how Mediterranean villages were raided, men chained for the galleys, women and children sold to harems, and the elderly butchered in churches “to strike terror into other villages.”
On that Sunday, October 7, 1571, the Christian fleet prevailed. By nightfall, the Mediterranean was saved from Ottoman domination, and Europe from invasion. The bells that tolled that day proclaimed not triumph, but reprieve—the momentary survival of Christian Europe. But the threat is omnipresent today.
For whom, then, did the bells toll in Jerusalem on October 7, 2023?
No Country Is an Island
Centuries later, the warnings persist. In 2017, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, warned Europe: “There will come a day when we will see far more radical extremists coming out of Europe because of a lack of decision-making and political correctness. That is pure ignorance” (Al Nahyan, 2017). His words were not prophecy but diagnosis: Europe had forgotten the melody of its own history.
Thus, echoing Donne once again—“Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
No Nation Is an Island
When antisemitism reemerges from the shameful fringes into the public square, it is not about Jews—it is about civilization. Bari Weiss said this in a Washington address after the October 7 massacre: “When antisemitism becomes public, it is an early warning sign—a sign that society itself is breaking down… Postmodernism and postcolonialism once seemed like academic games, but they seek nothing less than the deconstruction of our civilization from within” (Weiss, 2023).
The bell tolled for all who share in the fragile covenant of humanity. It does not toll anymore.
Traditional historiography sees history as a line of discrete events. Bergson teaches otherwise: the past coexists with the present, inseparable from it. A nation’s “duration” is the sum of its remembered pain and creativity. Each crisis reawakens old meanings, old betrayals.
We remember the 1939 British White Paper, which sealed Europe’s Jews within Hitler’s inferno by restricting immigration to Palestine. Historians Yehuda Bauer and Walter Laqueur estimated that hundreds of thousands could have been saved had those gates remained open. Ben-Gurion lamented, “The British have decided to sacrifice the Jewish people on the altar of appeasement”. The British still do.
We remember 1967, when Charles de Gaulle’s arms embargo, framed as neutrality, deprived Israel of the Mirage jets it had already paid for. It was a betrayal that ended the Franco-Israeli alliance, and they just did it again.
We remember Germany. Nothing to add.
We remember Spain, where Jewish gravestones from Mount Judah were torn from the cemetery and built into the walls of Barcelona’s Palau del Lloctinent. They are still there. The Hebrew words—“lament,” “my son,” “Joseph”—still appear, inverted, on the ancient stones. Tourists stroll beneath guitars and laughter, unaware that the walls themselves weep.
Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, addressing the Spanish monarchs upon the expulsion of the Jews, wrote:
“We leave you with this comforting knowledge. For although you can dispose of our power, we have the higher truth. Although you can dispose of our persons, you cannot dispose of our sacred souls and the historical truth to which only we bear witness.”
Epilogue
Two years after October 7, 2023, the bell of the Dormition Church no longer tolls. Only the sirens remain, their undulating cry warning the inhabitants of Jerusalem of incoming missiles. There is no need for tolling anymore. There is no one left to listen.
They do not remember. But we will always remember.
“A person has no right to forgo his dignity, and if he does, Heaven will not forgive him. The Jew is obligated to inform the world that his blood is not cheap. Vengeance for its own sake is forbidden, but when it comes for the sake of deterrence and self-defense, it is the elementary right of man.” - Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik