October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle

In this emotional missive from the diaspora, Globe and Mail columnist Marsha Lederman gathers her columns searching for the humanitarian middle of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Since 2023, the best-selling and award-winning author and journalist has been reflecting, with deep empathy, on the horrific October 7th attacks on Israeli citizens, rising anti-Semitism, and the brutal violence against civilians in Gaza in her column for the Globe and Mail.

As one of the leading Canadian voices on Jewish identity, Lederman’s impassioned work in the Globe has been a lifeline for readers since October 7th, 2023. The work collected in this book captures the pain of so many: Marsha’s prose has a way of cutting through the noise and capturing the humanity behind the headlines. She makes room for the reader to be conflicted, grieving, angry and unsure, and is with them through that process as she, like all of us, grapples with a new reality.

As someone who is firmly against Netanyahu and firmly in favour of Palestinian rights, believes in a two-state solution, and is a daughter of Holocaust survivors terrified by the rise in anti-Semitism, Marsha’s writing has captured the full complexity of the experience of reconciling an abhorrence of the violence against Israelis and Palestinians with the trauma and fear of rising prejudice around the world.

These columns are a contemporaneous look at the year that followed Oct 7th, 2023, reminding us of the pain and confusion. This collection is a crucial archive capturing, in real time, a period of deep division with care, empathy, and grief.

MARSHA LEDERMAN is a columnist for the Globe and Mail and was previously the Globe’s longtime Western Arts Correspondent. Before joining the Globe, Marsha worked for CBC Radio, mostly in Toronto. Born in Toronto, she now lives in Vancouver. Her first book, Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed was a National Bestseller, a Hill Times Best Book of 2022 and a Quill and Quire 2022 Book of the Year. It also won the Cindy Roadburg Memorial Prize at the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards in 2023. She has earned many awards for her writing, including, most recently, the 2024 Max Wyman Award for Critical Writing.