A year after the October 7 attacks, here's what it means to be Jewish in America - opinion

In Jewish tradition, the one-year mark after the death of a loved one called a yahrzeit, is significant. It is the time when we are meant to formally close our mourning period and return to normal life. 

On the yahrzeit of the October 7 attacks, however, the Jewish community is nowhere near ready to move on. The events of that terrible day not only left an indelible mark on our souls but have continued to play out day after day, month after month, and now a full year later.  

101 people remain captive to Hamas terrorists, with no contact with their families or access to the Red Cross. Half of them feared to be dead. 

The war has not only dragged on for a year, but Hamas has shown no willingness to accept a ceasefire, even as its power as a military force has been reduced to an insurgency and the people it has so callously and egregiously put in harm’s way suffer.  Israel has faced multiple threats and direct attacks from not only Hamas in the south but from Hezbollah in the north, the Houthis in Yemen, and the rogue regime of Iran, which funds all of them from the east. 

The intensity of these threats has only been made more tangible by Iran’s outrageous missile attack against Israel last week. 

The grief for lives lost is unbearable, yet equally piercing is the shock of being ripped from the safety of our modern world, thrust back into the painful legacy of generations past—when our ancestors lived as exiles—outcasts, hunted, and afraid. October 7 was the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, and the world’s reaction has further triggered our historical trauma.  

Record-levels of antisemitism

Here in America, our own society feels like it is coming apart at the seams, with a surge of antisemitism that few of us have seen in our lifetimes. We watched this year as America, where we had attained a level of comfort and security previously unknown in our 3,500-year history, became a place where it doesn’t always feel safe to be Jewish. 

The protests on college campuses and in city council meetings, the inflammatory and utterly inappropriate use of the term “genocide,” discrimination against Zionists, the exclusion of Jews from so many of the social justice spaces that Jews helped create and build, alongside the growth of Jew-hating white supremacy have all left us wondering if America is becoming inhospitable for Jews.  

So yes, one year later, the anguish of October 7 still haunts our community.  

And yet we have confronted these challenges with strength and determination – first and foremost, responding in a historic way to the needs of our brothers and sisters in Israel with over $850M raised from the Jewish Federation system alone – all while being confronted by increased challenges to our community in America.  

We mobilized the largest gathering of Jews in America’s history on the National Mall to support Israel, stand against antisemitism, and call for the release of the hostages. Our communities organized to oppose antisemitic resolutions in city councils and labor unions, to push back against those who use “Zionist” as an antisemitic code word to exclude Jews on college campuses, and to ensure our K-12 schools remain safe learning environments for our children.

We organized and supported hundreds of commemoration events across North America, which will bring hundreds of thousands of people together to support and uplift one another. And next month, we will gather again in Washington, DC, to bring our community together in a unity event called Stand Together. 

There is still hope

Amid all the challenges, we have found reasons for optimism. There has been a surge in involvement and engagement in every sector of Jewish life—synagogues, JCCs, day schools, camps, and on and on.  Perhaps the greatest period of Jewish life in America is still to come if we stay true to our values, focus on embracing this surge, and refuse to allow our detractors to set our communal agenda.  

Half a century ago, in a speech to the Young Leadership Cabinet at the UJA National Conference in New York in December of 1974, the great Jewish thinker Leonard ”Leibel” Fein reflected on the one-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, which was also a shocking and existential threat to Israel. He took as his theme the Hebrew phrase Lamrot Hakol (“in spite of everything”). 

Fein admitted to being bone-weary of the endless crisis, of the constant state of emergency, and of the seemingly never-ending challenges. And yet, Fein noted, “in spite of all, we persist,” which he called “a pledge of a proud and self-respecting people that will not let the world beat us down, not now, not ever.”  

The losses have been unimaginable, but our response proves that our strength and resilience are much stronger than the forces that seek to harm and destroy us.  

A yahrzeit is an opportunity to take stock of how we have persevered through our grief and how we have found new strength and inspiration to carry on. Even as we remember the profound depth of loss on October 7, we must also take comfort in our strong response to this crisis.  

It is through this strength that we will enter the Jewish new year with the same conviction that will enable us to continue to build flourishing Jewish life in America that contributes to the safe and thriving society we are all proud to be part of. 

The writer is the Executive Vice President of The Jewish Federations of North America.