Sharing Sorrow, Teaching, and Wisdom During October 7 Memorials

Amid the sorrow of the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack, the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion community came together during several in-person and virtual events to mourn those killed, pray for the hostages still being held in Gaza, and reinforce HUC-JIR's commitment to Israel during this difficult time.

Early on October 7, faculty and staff at the Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem joined Year-In-Israel students and guests at a moving memorial service at the S. Zalman and Ayala Abramov Library, with prayers, songs, and sermons for the murdered, fallen, wounded, and kidnapped - led by members of the staff and faculty.

That afternoon, HUC-JIR President Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D. and Rabbi David Adelson, D.Min., Dean of the New York Campus, led a virtual memorial session that included prayer from Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music Director Cantor Jill Abramson; cantorial student Will Brockman's setting of Oseh Shalom; poetry from Rabbi Haim O. Rechnitzer, Ph.D., Professor of Jewish Thought; and teaching from Rabbinical School Director Rabbi Dvora Weisberg, Ph.D., Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Rabbinics. In her talk Responding to the Unbearable: Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 60b, Weisberg imagined "a different read of this story," with Rabbi Joshua telling his grieving compatriots: "There may always be a piece of us that is broken, but we pray that piece will grow smaller over time, and that we will find ourselves again in a place where our joy is greater than our sorrow."

President Rehfeld recalled that, on that Simchat Torah a year ago, "the uninterrupted cycle of Jewish learning was disrupted by a different cycle too familiar to us as a people - the cycle of persecution that has shaped our people's history for centuries. A day of dancing and celebration of Torah became a day of mourning, of sadness, of anger and bewilderment, as barbaric antisemitism once again reared its ferocious head."

"There is much more to say about what happened after October 7," Rehfeld continued, but he noted that on the anniversary, the HUC-JIR community needed "to reflect upon the brutal suffering and loss inflicted that day on innocent people - Jews, non-Jews, Arabs and Druze, Israelis and citizens of 17 other nations - whose only guilt on that day was having the misfortune of dancing too closely to Jews in the State of Israel."

On September 29, HUC-JIR faculty joined leaders of the global Reform Movement in Jerusalem ahead of the October 7 anniversary. Professors Rabbi Dalia Marx, Ph.D. and Rabbi Michael Marmur, Ph.D. offered teachings during the session In Memory and In Hope, honoring the experiences of the past year and setting intentions for the future through shared stories, inspiring messages, and communal ritual.

In connection with the anniversary commemorations, HUC-JIR also held "A Day of Learning for Our Hostages" in partnership with the Shalom Hartman Institute and educational institutions in North America and Israel on September 30. The series of memorial events marked the shloshim for the six hostages murdered in Gaza in August, while also showing solidarity with the 101 hostages who remain in captivity.

In order to be productive as an educational institution following the horrors of October 7, the HUC-JIR community must "imagine and act in bringing the perfected world we will one day inhabit," Rabbi Adelson wrote in opening remarks delivered by Cantor Jill Abramson. "Judaism gives us a roadmap toward this future. That is the practice of studying torah at all times - those of sadness and joy, of horror and delight."

In the spirit of that introduction, Gordon Dale, Ph.D., the Dr. Jack Gottlieb Scholar in Jewish Music Studies and Associate Professor of Jewish Musicology at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, delivered the talk Gathering the Good Spirit: Music, Unity, and Jewish Peoplehood, discussing how Jewish text and mystical tradition identifies music as a particularly strong tool for strengthening social and spiritual bonds between people.

On the Cincinnati campus, Rabbi Haim O. Rechnitzer explored the ethical, theological, and humanitarian aspects of the Torah's laws concerning war. His talk, For Humankind is a Tree of the Field, examined the way Jewish tradition views the value of life in the midst of war, and the balance of self-defense and the sacred imperative to remember that all of humankind is created in the image of God and all of humankind are "fruit-bearing trees," in the words of Deuteronomy 20:19.

Members of the HUC-JIR community in Los Angeles considered the conviction voiced by the family of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin that "Hope is Mandatory," in the talk A Leader's Responsibility to Sustain Tikvah by Miriam Heller Stern, Ph.D., Vice Provost for Educational Strategy, Director of the School of Education, and Associate Professor. She explored what makes tikvah (hope) a distinctively Jewish sensibility in classical and modern Jewish texts, and how Jews have turned to tradition and history to find the courage, determination, and power to sustain tikvah in challenging times.

During the Day of Learning's Global Virtual Session, Wendy Zierler, Ph.D., Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies, spoke on the theme of Putting Away the Goatkid: Anda Pinkerfeld-Amir's Poetry of Solidarity and Activism. Pinkerfeld-Amir, one of the founders of Israeli children's literature and one of the first modern Hebrew women poets who immigrated to Palestine in the 1920's, also worked in the Displaced Persons camps after the Shoah, writing some of the first Hebrew poetry in response to the Holocaust. Zierler's session discussed Pinkerfeld-Amir's poems for children as well as adults that call for solidarity, accountability, and the protection of the young.

Taken together, President Rehfeld concluded, the recent memorial events represent an essential "moment of solidarity, as we continue to feel the pain and trauma of that moment that will live in our Jewish memory for all of eternity."

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