Your Daily Phil: Darkness and light as communities mark first yahrtzeit of Oct. 7
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on how multiple Jewish federations’ social media accounts were disabled ahead of Oct. 7, and feature an opinion piece by Refael Salab about meeting the heightened needs of at-risk Israeli teens in the wake of Oct. 7. Also in this newsletter: Dara Horn, Barak Loozon and Dovid Efune. We’ll start with a look at how Jewish communities around the world marked the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks.
From Stockholm to Sydney, from Shreveport, La., to Davenport, Iowa, from New York City to Los Angeles — practically every Jewish community around the world hosted a memorial ceremony for the victims of the Oct. 7 terror attacks yesterday, remembering the approximately 1,200 people murdered that day, the thousands more injured and the 253 who were kidnapped, 101 of whom remain in captivity, report eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross and Judith Sudilovsky.
The most prominent of these was the service held in Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Park, where some 2,000 family members of Oct. 7 victims gathered for testimonies of survivors and relatives of those killed and captured, as well as performances by some of Israel’s biggest stars.
The crowdfunded Bereaved Families’ Oct. 7 Memorial Ceremony was meant to be the largest such event to mark the one-year anniversary of the attacks, but due to security concerns, the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command limited the size of the crowd, preventing the 40,000 people who had purchased tickets from attending. The ceremony was instead live-streamed online and broadcast on all television channels in Israel, as well as 50 foreign networks. Public community screenings were held in over 150 cities both in Israel and abroad.
The widely hailed ceremony featured speakers and performers from across Israeli society; most expressed admiration for the bravery, self-sacrifice, love and unity displayed on Oct. 7, while others voiced frustration and even a sense of betrayal by the government during the attacks and in their aftermath.
Nitza Korngold, spoke about her son, Tal Shoham, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri along with six other members of her family while three others were killed; Yigal Cohen, the father of IDF observer Hadar Cohen was killed at the Nahal Oz outpost, vowed that those who were responsible for the failure of protecting his daughter and the other observers would be brought to justice. Maysam Abu Wasel Darawshe described her brother Awad, a paramedic working at the Nova festival who died trying to save the wounded, as the light of the family and a dreamer who wanted to become a chef and a doctor. In a fiery speech, Yonatan Shamriz, one of the organizers of the ceremony whose brother Alon, was one of three hostages killed by friendly fire as they were trying to escape their captors, said Oct. 7 was what abandonment looked like.
The ceremony was held two hours before the broadcast of a prerecorded state ceremony organized by Transportation Minister Miri Regev, which many of the bereaved families had opposed for fear that it would not tell their narrative.
At the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, thousands gathered late Monday night for a special Selichot service, which was attended by families of hostages, bereaved families and IDF reservists. During the service, the children of Yossi Hershkovitz, a reservist who was killed in battle in Gaza, and the children of Dr. Eitan Ne’eman, a combat doctor who was killed on Oct. 7, recited the Kaddish. A Torah scroll — donated by philanthropist Haim Taib — which was written by bereaved family members, released hostages and wounded IDF soldiers, as well as prominent Israeli officials, was dedicated during the service.
More than 400 ceremonies have been organized to commemorate the Oct. 7 attacks, most of which were held yesterday or the day before, according to the Jewish Federations of North America, which has provided grants for many of them.
Some 3,000 members of the Washington-area Jewish community and supporters gathered at the Anthem, a southwest D.C. concert venue, on Monday night for a memorial service organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, the Washington Board of Rabbis and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. The event featured a range of speakers, including Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen; Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog; two Jewish students from The George Washington University; a student poet from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School; author Sarah Hurwitz; and local Jewish leaders. Earlier in the day, Dekel-Chen and Herzog also spoke at a memorial service organized by the American Jewish Committee.
In New York City, Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Mayor Eric Adams and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) were among the 5,000 people who gathered in Central Park Monday night in a ceremony organized by UJA-Federation of New York, Jewish Community Relations Council and Hostage Family Forum to honor the victims of the attack with family and friends of victims and survivors. Ronen and Orna Neutra, parents of Israeli-American lone soldier Omer Neutra, who remains in captivity, spoke at the event, calling for a cease-fire deal as the only way to secure the release of the hostages.
In Los Angeles, several ceremonies were held during the day beginning in the early morning with hundreds of people gathered in Beverly Hills in a somber ceremony in the with community leaders, elected officials, religious leaders and residents at the city’s Garden Park next to a temporary installation featuring 1,400 Israeli flags from more than 30 countries, each one representing a victim of the attack.
“Now it’s more important than ever that we unite, and serve as a voice against hate and discrimination and antisemitism,” Sharona Nazarian, Beverly Hills’ vice mayor, said at the ceremony.
DE-PLATFORMED
Several Jewish federations’ social media accounts disabled before Oct. 7
With the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 terror attacks approaching, JEWISHcolorado — a Denver-based nonprofit affiliated with the Jewish Federations of North America — posted on Instagram on Oct. 1 about the organization’s Oct. 7 commemoration event. Concerns about antisemitism meant attendees would need to register in advance, and JEWISHcolorado needed to give them time to do so before the start of Rosh Hashanah. The post, though, did not successfully reach community members. That’s because soon after sharing it, JEWISHcolorado’s Instagram account was disabled, reports Gabby Deutch for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Bringing in big guns: JEWISHcolorado was one of at least four local Jewish federations in the United States to have accounts on Meta-run platforms disabled after posting in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. They did not receive any answers from Meta regarding why they had been suspended, leading some to question whether they were being targeted for the content of their posts — sharing information about Oct. 7. All of the disabled accounts have since been restored — JEWISHcolorado’s after four days, and the San Antonio federation’s after nearly two weeks. But it took the involvement of a staff member at JFNA, the national advocacy arm representing Jewish Federations, who reached out to a contact at Meta directly.
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
LIFE SUPPORT
Israel’s at-risk teens are even more vulnerable since Oct. 7
“As the regional director of OU Israel Teen Centers in northern Israel, I have developed meaningful relationships with the at-risk teens with whom I interact daily. One year since that horrific October day, the trauma and anguish these teens continue to experience is painfully apparent,” writes Refael Salab in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Youth interrupted: “Today, many OU Israel Teen Center chanichim (students) lived through the Oct. 7 atrocities firsthand. Others have spent days taking refuge in bomb shelters. Many are feeling the ongoing stress of their parents’ unemployment. And least 80% of our chanichim have had family members fighting in the IDF since Oct. 7. Stripped of their friends, routines and sense of security, thousands of displaced teens are living indefinitely in apartments and hotels in hundreds of places nationwide, some crowded into a single room with family members. Evacuees are living a transient life with constant uncertainty about tomorrow — and the potential to be kicked out of their current locations at any time… With zero framework to ground them, our youth are also dangerously bored. Many sleep all day and wander the streets all night, where they are exposed to and engage in illicit activities like underage drinking and drug use.”
The importance of being present: “Despite the nationwide dispersal as a result of the war, our staff have diligently maintained connections with and programming for our displaced teens, who view our bonds and the frameworks we provide as literal lifelines. Through in-person meetings, fun activities, day trips, weeklong summer camps throughout the country, phone calls, WhatsApp groups and daily hotel visits, OU Israel staff bring a bit of hope, joy and constancy to at-risk youth whose days would otherwise be overshadowed by despair. Most of all, our presence and continuous care underscore to our struggling teens that they are not, and never will be, alone.”
Worthy Reads
Missing the Point: The experience of American Jewry over the past year “is both a pattern and a warning,” writes Dara Horn in The Atlantic. “This is the permission structure for anti-Semitism: claim whatever has happened to the Jews as one’s own experience, announce a ‘universal’ ideal that all good people must accept, and then redefine Jewish collective identity as lying beyond it. Hating Jews thus becomes a demonstration of righteousness. The key is to define, and redefine, and redefine again, the shiny new moral reasoning for why the Jews have failed the universal test of humanity… As we are repeatedly reminded, today’s chanting and targeting and harassing and ostracizing of American Jews is nothing at all like [Nazi-era Germany], because we all agree that anti-Semitism is bad. The mobs pushing Jews out of public spaces in 2024 are in no way similar to the mobs pushing Jews out of public spaces in 1935, or 1919, or 1492, or 1096, or 135… But there is indeed something we can learn from the long history of anti-Semitism and the societies it has destroyed: We’ve fallen for this before. After this terrifying year, I hope we can find the courage to say, Never again.” [TheAtlantic]
What Comes Next: Oct. 7 shattered basic assumptions of Jewish life in the post-Holocaust era, writes Yossi Klein Halevi in The Times of Israel: Israelis’ confidence that their state would protect them, and American Jewry’s sense of full social acceptance. “Once again Israel is fighting for survival; yet as recent days prove, we still possess the will and the means to defend ourselves. North American Jewry no longer enjoys unconditional acceptance, yet its communities remain the most fortunate in diaspora history. The ‘Jewish problem’ — as Jewish existence was once defined in pre-Holocaust Europe — has been replaced by the ‘Jewish state problem.’ But Israel is not alone in a hostile world, even if it sometimes feels that way. The great achievement of the post-Holocaust generation was the reclamation of power. Inevitably, that achievement came with a price: the loss of our innocence. Now we must own the consequences… The morning after the war to reestablish our military deterrence, Israel will be confronted with an internal existential challenge: healing the divide that has torn us apart.” [TOI]
Still Fighting: In Washington Monthly, Joanna Chen, whose heartfelt article about Israelis and Palestinians that was published and then retracted by Guernica caused a stir in the literary world, writes about her continued commitment to volunteering for Road to Recovery — an Israeli association of volunteers who drive Palestinian patients (primarily children) from checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza for life-saving treatments in Israeli hospitals — even in the midst of the ongoing conflict. “People tell me I’m wrong, confused, that the children I take to hospital will grow up to be terrorists and will come back to kill me or my children. People tell me the Israeli hostages are mostly dead anyway, that the State of Israel takes precedence over everything… People tell me that the death of innocents is unavoidable in war. What happened to the sanctity of life? What happened to basic decency? There is nothing more precious than life itself… As Rachel Goldberg, mother of Hersh, said recently, we must do better. Ask me why I don’t leave this country, why I don’t go back to the U.K., where I lived until I was sixteen, and I will tell you this: Walking away, leaving this broken world behind, is the easy way out. I’m here because I have something to do — hold out a hand, coax a smile from a baby.” [WashingtonMonthly]
Word on the Street
A new study by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that British Jews are both attached to and conflicted about Israel — about the state of its democracy and its military actions post-Oct. 7 — and that a large majority, 83%, believe that antisemitism is a problem in the United Kingdom…
In an opinion piece for The Times of Israel, Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Councilmember Noah Efron discusses a lawsuit being heard by Israel’s High Court of Justice about the right to hold gender-separated prayer services with a mechitza in public spaces in the city ahead of Yom Kippur this weekend…
The Jewish News of Northern California interviews Barak Loozon, the director of the Israel office of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, about his organization’s work in the past year…
Time magazine spotlights the families of hostages for the publication’s cover story this week…
The Jewish Federation in the Heart of New Jersey launched the Center to Combat Antisemitism and Reinforce Multicultural Acceptance (CARMA), which is meant to combat antisemitism and bigotry locally…
Todd Richman, a co-founder of Democratic Majority for Israel, was accosted by anti-Israel protesters in New York City in what Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said is being investigated as a hate crime…
The Times of Israel spotlights a new English-language children’s book, The Heroes of October 7, edited by Hadassah Ben-Ari, featuring age-appropriate tales of bravery from the attacks…
New York Sun owner Dovid Efune is nearing a deal to purchase The Telegraph for approximately $720 million…
Martin Paley, a former head of the San Francisco Foundation, the San Francisco Library Foundation and Koret Foundation, died on Sept. 12 at 94…
Author Lore Segal, who escaped the Holocaust on a Kindertransport and whose life experiences worked their way into her novels, died yesterday at 96…
Pic of the Day
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro visits an exhibition at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia yesterday about the Nova music festival massacre.
The exhibition, which Shapiro helped organize, includes burned cars, bullet-riddled bathroom stalls and personal belongings from victims of the attack.
“Lori and I are honoring their memories in part by leading a delegation of governors from across the country, along with community, education, and interfaith leaders, to visit the Nova Exhibition at the Weitzman Museum,” Shapiro said at the museum. “As we mourn the loss of so many innocent lives over the past year, Lori and I continue to pray for the return of the hostages, for an end to war, for peace in the Middle East, and for strength for all those who courageously combat terror, as well as for tolerance and understanding. May their memories be a blessing.”
Birthdays
Scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation New York, Rabbi Menachem Creditor…
Founder and chairman of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Isadore “Issy” Sharp… General surgeon in Tempe, Ariz., Agustin Estrada, MD… Gossip columnist and businesswoman, Rona Barrett (born Rona Burstein)… Author of more than 330 horror fiction novels that have sold over 400 million copies, R. L. Stine… Former attorney general of Maryland, Brian E. Frosh… Director of the photography department at Bard College since 1982, more than 25 books of his photographs have been published, Stephen Shore… Academy Award-winning film producer and director, Edward Zwick… CEO of Heart of a Nation, Jonathan Kessler… Movie and theater director, writer and filmmaker, Shira Piven… One of two Jewish Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives (R-TN), David Kustoff… Los Angeles-based art collector, art curator and art advisor, Stefan Simchowitz… Entertainment reporter and sports commentator, Ben Lyons… Magazine editor Ilana Michelle Blitzer Snider… Research assistant at Israel’s Ono Academic College, Aliyana Traison… Singer and actor, he represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, Yaakov “Kobi” Marimi… Founder of the Knock Knock, Give a Sock organization, Adina Lichtman…
