KYIV, Ukraine — For the first time since Ukraine was plunged into war in 2022, soldiers on the front lines could hear the blast of the shofar marking the Jewish new year.

The largest Jewish communal body in the country distributed shofars to Jewish soldiers stationed in dozens of military positions along the 620 miles of the Ukrainian frontline. Each received training in how to blow the ritual instrument.

“The soldiers’ response was overwhelming,” said Rabbi Yaakov Sinyakov, who led the initiative of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, in a statement. “It reinforced their connection to their faith and heritage, even in the midst of conflict.”

The initiative is one of several notable Rosh Hashanah observances across Ukraine. Nonprofit and religious groups are supporting Jewish Ukrainians, who are needier on average than they used to be because of the war, in being able to celebrate. Meanwhile, thousands of Jewish pilgrims from outside of Ukraine have flooded into the country, against safety warnings, for an annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage that pays tribute to the influential Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in the city of Uman.

But the efforts to serve soldiers are the biggest change over previous years, reflecting a growing mobilization during the grinding war.

The FJCU, which is affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Judaism, says it is supporting more than 1,200 Jewish soldiers serving in the Ukrainian army as professional soldiers, volunteers and a growing proportion of conscripts, according to the group’s chair, Rabbi Mayer Stambler.

Besides delivering the shofars, FJCU volunteers distributed hundreds of holiday kits containing kippahs and Rosh Hashanah ritual items such as candles and honey, eaten to symbolize a sweet new year.

The kits also include informational materials about the holidays and Ukrainian-language prayer books. The books have been translated as part of a broader trend in which Ukraine’s historically Russian-speaking Jewish communities have embraced Ukrainian as their communal language.

Apart from the materials transferred to soldiers, the FJCU has dispatched with the help of Chabad emissaries in 30 Ukrainian cities holiday kits to 51,000 Jewish households across Ukraine, reaching communities in 169 different locations.

“We are also providing festive meals for thousands,” Stambler said in a statement, adding that he expects synagogues across Ukraine to be filled for Rosh Hashanah services despite the ongoing war and the severe consequences it is bringing for Ukrainian Jews and non-Jews alike in the form of constant power outages, involuntary military mobilization and widespread casualties on the front lines.

The FJCU’s efforts are not the only ones meant to reach Jewish soldiers in the Ukrainian army. Last year, David Milman, who is affiliated with Kyiv’s Brodsky Synagogue, became the first official Jewish chaplain in the Ukrainian army. In that role, he has visited with wounded Jewish soldiers, provided pastoral care to their families and even facilitated ritual circumcisions for several men who did not have them as babies.

The head rabbi of the Brodsky Synagogue, Moshe Azman, recently buried his adopted son after his son was conscripted into the army shortly after becoming a father and killed in battle just weeks later.

In the first casualties in Lebanon since Israel launched a ground incursion this week, eight Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Hezbollah fighters.

The army said Wednesday that six soldiers were killed in one clash and that two were killed in another.

Israeli sent ground troops into Lebanon on Monday night for the first time since 2006, in a bid to further degrade Hezbollah and distance it from the border following a year of cross-border missile fire that the terror group started on Oct. 8 of last year, following Hamas’ attack the previous day.

In recent weeks Israel has destroyed much of Hezbollah’s infrastructure and killed its top leadership, including its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, in air strikes. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the strikes.

The army has said that its incursion is meant to be limited. The ground troops’ mission is to destroy Hezbollah arms depots close to the border along with its tunnel systems. Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon, meant to deter attacks on northern Israel became massively unpopular, spurred the rise of Hezbollah, and cost hundreds of Israeli lives. Israel fought another war against Hezbollah in 2006 after the group kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently added to Israel’s war aims the return of civilians to their homes on the northern border. The other war aims are the destruction of Hamas in Gaza and the return of the hostages that terrorist group still holds captive there.

The conflict on the northern front kept to a simmer for months after last October, although it led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese civilians living along the border, and killed dozens of civilians in both countries. Hundreds of Hezbollah operatives and approximately 20 Israeli soldiers were also killed before the conflict escalated in recent weeks.

This article is part of a project examining how Oct. 7 and its aftermath have changed the Jewish world. You can see the complete project here.

(JTA) — Dictionaries are remarkably consistent when it comes to the definition of “Zionism”: Merriam-Webster, for example, defines the term as “an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel.”

And yet few words have been as scrutinized, debated, embraced and demonized in the year since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 and led to a war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000. Google’s search data shows interest in “Zionism” was more than twice as high in October and November 2023 than at any other time in internet history. The most frequent searches were for definitions.

The ideology has never been contained to just one meaning, with non-statist Zionists, political Zionists, labor Zionists, cultural Zionists, post-Zionists, revisionist Zionists and religious Zionists all advancing different visions of Jewish self-determination over time. The founding of a Jewish state fragmented perceptions of Zionism between the hopes, ideals and identities of those who use the term and the political realities of Israel. But over the last year, its definition has become harder than ever to pin down.

Opponents of Zionism, who mobilized around the war and also include a subset of left-wing Jews, say it is an ideology of colonialism and apartheid, at best a way for one ethnic group to dominate another and at worst a recipe for genocide. Some have set “no Zionists” rules at pro-Palestinian protests.

Pro-Israel Jewish groups have called the new wave of anti-Zionism antisemitic and say that asking Jews to reject “Zionism” is asking them to negate a core aspect of their identity and disregard their affinity for a country where half of their co-religionists live.

The fighting has been so pitched that social media companies and American universities have considered whether to police the use of the word “Zionist” — a term that has long been a badge of pride for many Diaspora Jews but has become a pejorative in many contexts.

We asked eight authors, advocates and scholars of Jewish history and the Middle East what “Zionism” means to them, how its definition changed with the founding of Israel, and what new meanings it has taken on since Oct. 7. Here’s what they said.

• Liz P.G. Hirsch is a rabbi and CEO of Women of Reform Judaism, the women’s affiliate to the largest Jewish denomination in North America. 
• Sara Hirschhorn is a visiting professor at the University of Haifa Ruderman Program for American Jewish Studies. She is the author of “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement.”
• Amal Jamal is a Palestinian Druze professor of political science at Tel Aviv University and head of the Walter Lebach Institute for the Study of Jewish-Arab Coexistence.
• Shaul Magid teaches about Judaism at Harvard Divinity School and is the rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue.
• Derek Penslar is a professor of Jewish history and the director of Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. He is the author of “Zionism: An Emotional State.”
• Adi Ophir is an Israeli philosopher and a visiting professor of humanities and Middle East studies at Brown University. He is the co-author of “The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine.” He served in the IDF during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
• Emily Tamkin writes about American Jewish identity. She is the author of “Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities.”
• Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University and a Zionist activist living in Jerusalem. He is the author of “Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today.”

JTA: What does Zionism mean in your life?

DEREK PENSLAR: I see Zionism as a revolutionary movement aspiring to create a strong and stable democratic state rooted in Hebrew culture. To be a Zionist is to be part of that project and not to hold back from criticism when it falls short of its promise.

ADI OPHIR: Zionism has been a mental and emotional straitjacket from which I have been struggling to release myself since October 1973.

GIL TROY: Zionism is the defining ideological framework of my life, rooting me in the Jewish story, connecting me to my people, the Jewish people, and inspiring me to fulfill my dreams and our dreams, while making the world a better place.

EMILY TAMKIN: Professionally and personally, it’s the thing people with whom I speak and spend my time are grappling with or are divided by.

AMAL JAMAL: I work at Tel Aviv University. I live here with many friends from the Jewish community. And I differentiate between being Jewish and being Zionist, although many of my friends are Zionists. For most of them, Zionism is about Israel as a safe haven for Jews, which I agree with. 

But I always tell them, it’s for you to prove that Zionism can go together with equality. It’s not for me to prove that. If you are a Zionist and I am the “other,” you have to prove every day that you treat me equally, you respect my identity, my right to culture and national aspirations as much as they are legitimate for you. Because so far, Israel has not managed to prove that it can be Jewish and democratic in a fair way. For me, so far, Zionism on a daily basis entails discrimination, inequality, marginalization.

LIZ P.G. HIRSCH: For me, Zionism is directly connected to Jewish peoplehood. We can understand our relationship to the Jewish people as inherently part of the same covenant that we have with God. What’s more, we join this covenant together — not as individuals, and not only collectively with the people we like or agree with. This extends to those of differing opinions in North America, and it extends to Jewish people around the world, including those in Israel.

SHAUL MAGID: I did not grow up a Zionist, but it became central to my life as a young Jewish adult when I made aliyah to Israel in 1980 and became a citizen. I became disillusioned with Zionism while serving in the IDF during the First Intifada, and seeing up close the way in which we were dominating the Palestinian people. Last year, in my book “The Necessity of Exile,” I proposed the idea of “counter Zionism,” which argues that while Zionism may have been a necessary ideology to found a state, it can no longer function to create an equitable society in that state. We need a new political ideology where Jews and non-Jews can live as equal citizens in the land.

SARA HIRSCHHORN: Zionism is my aspiration and expression of national liberation as an individual and collective, to be part of the radical experiment of Jewish sovereignty, and to hopefully see a secure future for the Jewish people on this planet.

How did the founding of Israel change Zionism?

TAMKIN: This is the most important question, I think. It’s one thing to believe in or argue for the right of something to exist when it does not yet exist. But once it does exist, as Israel does and has for decades, the word becomes used to describe both the “home” as people believe it should exist and the state as which it actually does. 

I know many people, Jewish and not, for whom Zionism means belief in the right to self-determination for Jews and Palestinians; I also know many people, Jewish and not, for whom it means the reality of the establishment of a state that has seen the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians. And there are, of course, people for whom the idea and the current reality of Israel mean the same thing.

PENSLAR: Until the Second World War, it was possible to be a Zionist without explicitly endorsing sovereign Jewish statehood. After the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel, Zionism became synonymous with support for the state, especially in its conflict with the Arab world.

HIRSCH: The founding of the modern state of Israel was the manifestation of what thought leaders and dreamers intended. A Jewish homeland for the Jewish people was finally established. 

MAGID: In some way, the founding of the state could have ended Zionism. Ben-Gurion [the first prime minister of Israel] suggested that. If Zionism was a revolutionary movement to found a Jewish state, 1948 could have been its conclusion. 

Instead, Zionism became a kind of “permanent revolution” and a political ideology of Jewish privilege in a democracy. The “Jewish and democratic state” addition to Israel’s Basic Law in 1985 attempted to argue that Jewish majoritarianism was not in contradiction to democracy, but that theory has proven to be more problematic in the past few decades. 

TROY: Movements are often threatened by success. In this case, because it was always proactive not just reactive, dreaming, idea-driven, Zionism continued to be volcanic, catalytic, hoping to make Israel ideal and the world better — even as Zionism was forced to adjust and deal with the ongoing, genocidal hostility of too many of Israel’s neighbors. 

OPHIR: The establishment of the state killed the option of non-statist Zionism and implanted both the colonial and the national aspects of Zionism in powerful state apparatuses.

HIRSCHHORN: The founding of the state of Israel changed Zionism from a theory or an idea to the reality of governing a state of the Jews, from many different origins, backgrounds and traditions, and also a sizeable minority of non-Jews who found themselves living in a Zionist state after 1948.  

JAMAL: When you translate any idea from a utopian ideal into reality, it becomes distorted. Reality cannot contain ideals as they are imagined. Of course, the moment Zionist Jews landed in the country, they became aware of the fact that this land is full of people who belong to another culture, who consider it to be their homeland. 

How did Oct. 7 change Zionism?

HIRSCH: Oct. 7 changed everything for the Jewish people, therefore it changed Zionism. After Oct. 7, being a proud Zionist means I believe women when they said they were brutally attacked and raped. Being a Zionist means I believe in Israel’s right to defend itself against the attacks from Hamas and Iran’s proxies. Being a Zionist means that I support and care for all of Israel’s citizens, and all people, regardless of religion. At a recent havdalah service in Tel Aviv, I sang the Israeli song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” — “I Have No Other Country.” As an American, as a Jew, that song is still true for me. 

PENSLAR: There has always been a tension within Zionism, between its promise of safety and security for persecuted Jews anywhere and the insecurity with which Israel has had to contend since it was established. Oct. 7 made that tension much more difficult to bear. The Oct. 7 massacre and Israel’s response also amplified anti-Zionist speech and acts, leaving Jews throughout the world feeling vulnerable and anxious.  

TROY: ​​Some claim Zionism failed on Oct. 7. I don’t. Zionism never promised us a rose garden or a state on “Magash Hakesef” [a silver platter]. On Oct. 7 the government failed, the IDF failed — but Zionism succeeded, mobilizing Israelis, having given Israelis the tools to defend themselves so that Israelis could save Israel. 

MAGID: In some way, it has made the Jewish privilege of older Zionism into an ideology of Jewish domination as an arguably necessary policy to ensure Jewish security. 

The more humanistic inclinations of some Zionists to resolve the age-old “Arab Question” — how do Arabs become integrated in the Jewish state? — through political compromise, is giving way to a position that would deny Palestinians self-determination by seeing them as a perennial threat to Jewish sovereignty in the land. 

Oct. 7 may be viewed as the death of liberal Zionism, and the fracturing of American Zionists into more reactionary forms of Zionism or abandoning Zionism for alternative ways of Jewish identity.

HIRSCHHORN: I don’t think it changed Zionism at all. Zionism has been about the right to exist, self-determination, national liberation and the ability to find a place of Jewish safety all along. If anything, it only brought the existential element of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — or the dilemmas of 1948 which have never disappeared — into sharper focus.

JAMAL: For Jews, there is the concern for safety, self-determination, the right of a historical connection between Jewish identity as it developed 2,000 years ago and today’s Israeli Jewish identity and culture. 

The issue is that we have to look at Zionism as a political ideology, as something that cannot be disconnected from practical reality and practical ethics. When you look at the polls in Israel, asking to what extent Israel has to take into consideration the civilian population in Gaza when fighting Hamas, you see a great majority of Israelis say it shouldn’t — that the Israeli army shouldn’t be sensitive to the basic civic safety of non-combatants. That means Israel has changed as a result of Oct. 7. 

OPHIR: Oct. 7 certainly exposed the genocidal potential of the settler-colonial project, and Zionism’s impressive flexibility to tolerate genocidal culture and policies. These were much older than the Hamas attack, which provided a new impetus and self-justification for the perpetrators.

TAMKIN: I don’t think it changed it, but I do think that it brought different understandings [of Zionism] — and different realities — further into the open.

How do you understand anti-Zionism?

JAMAL: Just as Zionism means different things for different people, it’s the same thing with anti-Zionism. When you say anti-Zionism, it could be non-Zionism, meaning: “I’m not Zionist, but I know that some people are Zionist and I respect the right to be Zionist.” This is one end of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum, you have anti-Zionism that means abolishing Zionism, because Zionism is conceived to be racism and therefore is fundamentally illegitimate. 

HIRSCHHORN: Anti-Zionism is a phenomenon as old as Zionism itself — first as an internal Jewish objection from the ultra-Orthodox and also from the internationalist Left, then as a local Palestinian opposition to the immigration and settlement of Ottoman and British Palestine before 1948, and then as an Arab and global movement.

PENSLAR: Broadly understood, anti-Zionism sees the creation of the Jewish state as a crime, or at least a tragedy, and seeks to replace Israel’s regime with a binational democracy or to deny Jewish rights in Palestine altogether.

TROY: Anti-Zionism today festers in the unhappy intersection of traditional Jew-hatred and a modern illiberal, anti-Western mania. If once upon a time in Medieval Europe, in Islamic lands, the Jew was broadly hated, today, the human rights activist Irwin Cotler notes, Israel is the Jew of the world. 

HIRSCH: Before, the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism was more clear. But since the start of the war, many attacks toward Israel have involved antisemitic tropes, not holding the government accountable, but rather harming Jews, many in North America.

TAMKIN: Opposition to the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, or a state exclusively or primarily for Jews.

OPHIR: A struggle which, at least since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, has become a moral duty, as it is more than ever today. 

MAGID: There is a long-standing Jewish tradition that opposes Zionism for a variety of reasons. 

One is on theological grounds that the Jews are destined to remain in exile until the end-time and quickening that end, which Zionism arguably does, is prohibitive. There is “dual-allegiance” anti-Zionism that claims Zionism presents Jews with pledging fidelity to two distinct sovereign states. There is “Judaism as a religion” anti-Zionism that claims Jews are not a nation but carriers of a religion, and thus do not aspire to return to the land but consider the land where they live as their home. 

There is Jewish socialist or communist anti-Zionism, which views the destiny of the Jew to fight against injustice and oppression wherever they reside. Then there is cosmopolitan anti-Zionism that argues Jews are best served by living with others and expressing their Jewishness, however they do so, in a cosmopolitan context. There is also a kind of non-nationalist anti-Zionism that views nationalism as a corrupt, corrosive and violent collective ideology that Jews should avoid, retaining their special relationship with God. 

I think many young Jews today embrace an anti-Zionism that is really opposed to Zionist hegemony. They want to be able to cultivate their Jewish identity outside any affiliation with a state that claims to represent them but one which they cannot, or do not want to, support.

What is the future of Zionism?

HIRSCHHORN: The future of Zionism is bright — if only because Jewish history has taught us that being (only) a Diasporic people has fatal consequences and Zionism must be part of the Jewish future.

TAMKIN: I don’t know. For American Jews specifically, I don’t think it will get back the kind of consensus support it enjoyed for much of the 20th century — though, as books like “The Threshold of Dissent” and “Our Palestine Question” remind us, there have always been American Jews who did not sign onto that consensus. I also don’t think that means it’s over. 

JAMAL: As you know, “prophecy has been given to fools.” Given that it’s not one thing, it’s hard to say how it could develop.

I hope that the moderate and humanistic version of Zionism will win. I’m not determinist in the way I see human destiny, so I hope that Israelis will learn — albeit in the hard way — that racist versions of Zionism are not sustainable. For Zionism to remain something that expresses the right of self-determination for Jews, it has to compromise. It has to adopt the most moderate version of this right. So far, the historical trend in which we live is not that way. But history is an open horizon that could change in the future. 

TROY:  I believe this is our generation’s ’67 moment. Just as [the 1967 Arab-Israeli War] clarified how deep the Jewish tie is to Israel, Oct. 7 confirmed all kinds of Zionist lessons — that we Jews share a common fate, that we are intertwined, that we will protect ourselves because we have no choice, that we will rebuild better, and that while we have enemies, we will not let our enemies define us. 

HIRSCH: The future of Zionism is to understand that we are in a collective covenant with the Jewish people around the world. Jews deserve to live in safety, just like any other people, ethnicity or religion. We must continue to fight for these ideals with the collective Jewish people, even those we may disagree with, to sanctify and ensure this homeland for generations to come. 

PENSLAR: The most dynamic form of Zionism today is religious Zionism. Its striving to provide Jews a richer, more meaningful spiritual and communal life in the Land of Israel is praiseworthy.  But it has become increasingly linked with the dismantling of Israeli democracy and the denial of rights, security, or life itself to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Jews repelled by these trends may be tempted to walk away from Israel altogether. But the only way forward is to engage with Israel through a Zionism that is critical yet committed.

MAGID: I think Zionism will become less liberal and more hyper-nationalist. I think liberal Zionism will become diminished, in part because it no longer embodies the values of the state as such. I think Zionist hegemony will weaken as more Jews cultivate their Jewish identities outside Zionism — some opposed to it, some not.  

I think opposition to Zionism is emergent and this is healthy — for the Jews and for Zionism. In the future, Zionism may take its rightful place among a variety of Jewish political ideologies that Jews can choose from to curate their Jewish identities. In short, I think the Zionist “revolution” is coming to an end while Zionism will continue. 

OPHIR: I would rather leave this question to the prophets.

A teacher at a Jewish school in Baltimore has been sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for sex crimes.

William “Zev” Steen, 46, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child, a felony, in the U.S. District Court of Maryland. He was sentenced on Monday.

Steen, who taught students at Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore, an all-girls high school, admitted to filming himself abusing a young girl and sharing child pornography online. The abuse took place for five years, including two instances in 2008 when Steen filmed it, prosecutors said. 

Steen was also the director of Baltimore’s Technology Awareness Group, a firm that installs filtration software on observant Jews’ phones, which would have given him access to hundreds of community members’ personal devices. The case also included allegations of trafficking in child pornography online, although there are no known connections between the crimes and either organization.

The school fired Steen, and the software firm, known as TAG Baltimore, said he was no longer employed with it after he was arrested in 2022. 

The defense’s plea for a light sentence said Steen had admitted to some of the misdeeds in 2013, consulted with a family rabbi and had seen a therapist for a year. The memorandum contains more than 10 letters from community members defending Steen, but is heavily redacted and does not contain names.

Despite the offenses coming to the attention of community members, they do not appear to have been reported to authorities for years before he was arrested. Police investigators tracked child pornography to a computer at Steen’s family residence in 2022, executed a search warrant at the home, and found material related to the abuse on Steen’s laptop and an SD card.

Steen will be imprisoned in Fort Dix, New Jersey. After his release, he will be under supervised release for the rest of his life.

Prosecutors had called for a sentence of 28 years “to protect society from the defendant, whose conduct demonstrates that he poses a clear and imminent threat to young girls.”

A letter from the prosecution to the judge said two rabbis had pleaded for a lenient sentence in a video submitted to the court that has not been released to the public. Prosecutors also said a counselor had treated an individual involved in the case from 2013-2015, and was “informed generally” about the sexual abuse, but had not sought further information. The counselor was identified by Za’akah, an advocacy group for Jewish victims of sexual assault, as an employee of CHANA, a Baltimore nonprofit that aids victims of abuse and trauma.

CHANA said in a Monday statement that it had offered community support after finding out about the allegations against Steen.

“Our crisis intervention services are devised to protect victims and survivors of abuse as well as the community at large, including our strict adherence to mandatory reporting whenever child abuse is suspected,” the statement said, without mentioning whether the group reported the abuse to authorities.

Steen’s family members and other supporters attended his hearing on Monday, with some pleading for a light sentence.

According to Steen’s LinkedIn profile, he began working at the school in 2017 — after community members found out about his abuse, but before his arrest.

This article is part of a series examining how Oct. 7 and its aftermath have changed the Jewish world. You can see the complete project here.

While she was studying last year at Columbia University’s journalism school, Eleanor Reich would walk by protests calling for her country to be destroyed. When she would pass by classmates in the hallways, she said, some would avoid her gaze.

Only when she returned home to Tel Aviv did she feel like she could exhale. She said when she arrived for her first trip back in December, she immediately started crying.

“At least here, even if I disagree with someone, at least it’s out of a shared narrative of this country should exist,” Reich, 27, said of her time in Israel. “In New York, when you argue with someone, you don’t know if they even think that my country should exist.”

She added, “I think that what really Oct. 7 did to me and a lot of people I spoke to was that it clarified for us that no matter where we are in the world, we’re first and foremost Israelis.”

Officially, about 200,000 Israelis live in the United States. But Israeli advocacy groups, taking a wider view than the U.S. Census, puts the number as high as 1 million. Some of the expats are here for temporary stints, others to build a permanent life far from their place of birth. But those who spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency said that, since Oct. 7, despite being an ocean away, they feel much more Israeli.

“I’ve been living here for 23 years, and I discovered I’m much more Israeli than I thought,” said Vered Guttman, a chef and food writer who lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland and has done work on behalf of families of Israeli hostages this year. Since Oct. 7, she said, she has been watching Israeli TV news “every single hour of the day that I was awake,” something she had never done before.

“I cannot think of anything but the hostages and Israel, the feeling that my country is falling apart,” said Guttman, 56. “The United States is my country too, but Israel is still my country, and it feels like it’s really falling apart. I don’t know if it will survive this.”

Assiduously following Israeli news has been a common coping mechanism. Rabbi Amitai Fraiman, a Jerusalem native who moved to the United States 11 years ago, pointed to the news in explaining that the past year can be summed up as “a perpetual state of emotional jet lag.”

“Even just the simple fact of the news cycle, of when we get our news from Israel directly, that creates a delay in terms of our consciousness,” said Fraiman, 37, who lives in Palo Alto, California and runs a Zionist think tank. “There’s a certain time of day where there’s no news from there, so what are we supposed to be doing?”

For Boaz Atzili, a political scientist and a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., the daily hostage updates began from the moment he woke up on Oct. 7. Several members of Atzili’s family live in communities on the Gaza border.

“When you see hundreds of WhatsApp messages, when you wake up and you see, I have the alert system from Israel that also shows hundreds of thousands of alerts at the same time, you know that something is wrong,” Atzili said.

Atzili, 57, spent that day — and every day since — in constant communication with his family members in Israel. His 79-year-old aunt hid for 10 hours as Hamas fighters searched her home but did not find her, Atzili said. He would soon learn that two relatives — his cousin Aviv and Aviv’s wife, Liat, who lived on Kibbutz Nir Oz, were missing. Liat, who is an American citizen, was released in November as part of Israel’s weeklong cease-fire with Hamas.

One day after Liat was freed, the Atzilis learned that Aviv, who had been a member of Nir Oz’s emergency response team, had been killed on Oct. 7. Hamas still has his body.

For Boaz Atzili, the deeply personal nature of the war has helped put things in perspective. While he acknowledges the rise of antisemitism in the United States, especially on college campuses like his, he said those issues don’t compare to the hardship in Israel.

“I find it’s always a little bit hard to kind of relate to the fear of antisemitism and all that,” Atzili said. “I understand it and it’s real. But I also, all the time, [have] a feeling that, guys, that’s not the main story here. That’s a side story that is not nearly as threatening, as horrible, as what’s going on in the Middle East.”

Elan Carr, the CEO of the Israeli American Council, which provides programming for Israelis living in the United States and advocates for the country politically, said rising antisemitism has affected Israelis here. By the end of the past school year, he said, IAC had directly responded to more than 600 reported cases of antisemitism in both public K-12 schools and on college campuses — more than the group had ever addressed before.

“When I say handled, I don’t mean made a statement,” Carr said. “I mean handled, caseworked, met with families, trained teachers and students, accompanied parents and families to school board meetings.”

The IAC has also held trainings for 2,000 public school teachers across the country on “the IHRA definition [of antisemitism], on anti-Zionism, on Jewish peoplehood, on how to recognize antisemitism,” Carr said. The group also held a national conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month headlined by former President Donald Trump, in whose administration Carr served.

Israelis have also been the driving force behind protests on behalf of the hostages in cities across the United States, where they have found community with each other. In addition to attending demonstrations, Atzili has written letters and met with politicians and Jewish community leaders to push for a hostage deal and a cease-fire. Guttman has been at some of the same protests.

“I think that many of us Israelis here felt the need to do something when we were just going crazy from day one,” Guttman said.

Some Israelis said they have paid a social price for their national identity. One 38-year-old tech worker from Brooklyn said she has lost several friends over fallout from the Israel-Hamas war. She defined the past year as “a combination of grief, anger and a sense of betrayal,” particularly from the “Brooklyn liberal left” with which she identifies.

“I feel like in the circles I run in, or used to run in, what has been a leading value was always acceptance, hearing everybody, respecting everybody, understanding complexity, intersectionality, holding different narratives in the same way,” she said. “And post-Oct. 7, all of that seemed to crumble down. Now there’s a sense that those circles found the true evil, and that true evil is Israel, and what Israel is doing, and all of the values that I felt they held before were kind of abandoned.”

The Brooklynite tech worker, who moved to the United States 12 years ago, declined to share her name, explaining that she “felt a deep rift in what I believed was my identity, who I can be comfortable and authentic around, and which parts of myself I can safely share.”

Like Reich, she said she felt most comfortable when visiting Israel.

“Because of who I am, my circles in Israel are also the liberal left,” she said. “So I felt like I could finally have the complex conversation of, ‘We disagree wholeheartedly with the government, we believe the war needs to end, what’s happening in Gaza is terrible. Having that said, Oct. 7 happened, that was also terrible, Israel has the right to exist. Israel has the right to defend itself,’ which I feel like is a narrative that doesn’t exist in the U.S.”

For some, that feeling of belonging in Israel has prompted a question: When do we move back?

Fraiman, the Palo Alto rabbi, visited Israel in July for his brother’s wedding. He said the “urge” to move back to Israel has only intensified since the war began.

“Like most Israelis, the joke is that we’re on our 11th year of our three-year plan,” Fraiman said. “When we first came it was never the intention to move or relocate in this way. It’s just, life happens, and so the conversation of coming back is always alive and well with me and my wife.”

The Brooklyn tech worker said moving back to Israel was always part of her plan, but larger forces got in the way, from COVID to economic downturns to the upheaval over judicial reform in Israel to the war.

“Suddenly it became like, what am I doing here?” she said. “But also, I have two small children that I need to think about their future, and right now, the reality in Israel is very gloomy. So getting on a plane sounds irresponsible.”

While the past 11 months have brought considerable pain and anguish for many Israeli-Americans, there have been silver linings. Guttman, for example, said she and her husband felt an outpouring of support from neighbors they didn’t previously know.

“We suddenly had neighbors who were never in our house — we didn’t even know they knew we were Israelis — come and knock on our door just to say how sorry they were for everything that was going on and thinking of us,” Guttman said. “We personally only got the most supportive, thoughtful reaction from people and neighbors.”

Miriam Buium, an Ashdod native who moved to San Diego in 1999, said she and her husband have felt a similar embrace. In fact, Buium, 49, said it is her interactions with others — especially non-Israelis — that give her hope for her native country.

“We have friends over here that are Muslims, and we work with them, and we go to their restaurants, and with the majority of them, the 90% of them, we have no issues,” Buium said. “So in the future, I do believe, if we can live here together, we can live together in Israel.”

At this point, Gabi Hasin had grown used to fleeing his home ahead of missile fire from Lebanon. A resident of the northern border city of Kiryat Shemona, Hasin has spent the past year on the move, relocating seven times to keep himself and his family out of harm’s way.

So when he packed his bags and moved south again over the past couple weeks — this time from the northern city of Tiberias to Jerusalem — it was the least of his problems. He’s taking sleeping pills for the first time in his life. Last month, his daughter was hospitalized with panic attacks because she was due to get married on the day thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon.

Now, for the first time in decades, he and his 10 siblings will not be together for Rosh Hashanah, which begins Wednesday evening. Every year, they all gather at their late parents’ home in Kiryat Shemona for the holiday, setting up a large makeshift tent to accommodate dozens of children and grandchildren.

Instead, the 11 siblings are scattered across six cities. Hasin will be with his in-laws in Jerusalem.

“It’s very depressing,” he said. “I don’t care about what’s going on in Jerusalem, Tiberias or anywhere else. My only concern is Kiryat Shemona. It’s a town, but it feels like a village and is the most family-oriented place there is. Everyone knows everyone there. When I walk down the street, I can’t stop saying hello.”

Hasin is one of more than 68,000 Israelis, mostly from the north, who have lived as evacuees for nearly a year since Hamas’ attack on Israel last Oct. 7. Hezbollah began attacking Israel soon afterward, and that conflict has escalated into another front in the war, as Israel has pummeled Hezbollah leaders and infrastructure in Lebanon and the terror group and its sponsor, Iran, have shot hundreds of missiles at Israel.

Many residents of the north hope that when the war is over, they will be able to again live in their houses and apartments. But for many who have been displaced over the past year, their only wish is to celebrate the holidays at home — a near-impossibility at a time when the conflict is only escalating.

“I stay up all night thinking about the future, wondering what will happen, how we’ll return to Kiryat Shmona, and if my kids will ever come back. We would have been home ages ago if they [government] had done earlier what they’re doing the last two weeks in Lebanon,” said Hasin.

No matter what happens in the war, Kiryat Shemona may not be able to return to the way things were. According to a poll conducted in June, 43% of the city’s approximately 30,000 residents are considering not returning to their homes, while 13% have already decided they will not go back​.

Other residents of the north are facing tough judgment calls ahead of the holiday. Shani Tzililm has spent much of the past week sheltering with her four kids in their home in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Bialik from rockets fired by Iran and Hezbollah. Their city has not yet been evacuated. But this week, she won’t be celebrating Rosh Hashanah with her mother in the nearby city of Akko — because it’s 10 miles further north, and even more unsafe.

Her mother’s home in the ancient mixed Arab-Jewish city lacks a safe room, and the nearest bomb shelter is in a school several minutes away. Tzililm’s apartment building, at least, has a bomb shelter, though during a barrage of successive sirens on Sunday, she fell and tumbled down the stairs with her three-year-old in her arms.

“I prefer to sit at home where I feel safer. But who knows anymore what’s safe?” Tzililm said. “I can’t cope with it anymore. My 8 year old is full of anxiety, she cries all day. I’m scared to death myself. How much longer can we live like this? I pray every day for this war to end. I don’t care how, it needs to be over.”

Daniel Ohana, a municipal coordinator for the thousands of evacuees living in hotels throughout Tel Aviv, said that his team conducted hotel visits ahead of the holiday to ensure that evacuees had everything they needed.

“It’s difficult. We’ve moved a whole city — which has a certain culture and pace of life — to another city with an entirely different culture,” Ohana said. “But we’re trying to do everything we can to make sure we preserve a sense of community and family. Little gestures like pre-holiday toasts.”

He emphasized that the work wasn’t only a one-way effort; evacuees from Kiryat Shemona were also volunteering to help by packing food parcels for needy Tel Aviv families.

In Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center, Rosh Hashanah preparations were underway at the Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital — the world’s largest underground medical facility, built to remain functional during a rocket barrage.

Now, the subterranean hospital has sprung into action: 600 patients were transferred there last week amid rocket fire, though around 200 ambulatory patients will be moved back to the regular hospital for the holiday, hospital spokesperson David Ratner told JTA on Monday.

Rabbi Shmuel Turkov, director of Lev Chabad in Haifa, was organizing prayers and meals in cooperation with Rambam’s onsite rabbi. “People are concerned about how they will celebrate the holiday in the hospital. We’re making sure they will hear the shofar, and have a proper festive meal with all the simanim,” he said, referring to Rosh Hashanah foods symbolizing wishes for the new year.

The widening war is affecting people throughout the country. Several nonprofits ramped up their activity this week to meet the sharp rise in demand for aid, addressing the new waves of needy people affected by the war, or what celebrity chef Jamie Geller referred to as the “new poor.” Geller is working with emergency relief organization Yad Ezra V’Shulamit.

“We have so many new poor this holiday season. They were givers last year and now need to be on the receiving end of charitable donations and food rations,” Geller said.

The organization had been asked by the Home Front Command to feed an extra 16,000 families impacted by the war, bringing the total up to 66,000 holiday food baskets.

“There are wartorn widows and orphans who not only have to prepare for the first holiday season without their loved ones, they also have to be concerned about putting food on the table,” she said.

Moshe Cohen, CEO of the nonprofit Chasdei Naomi, highlighted that the food baskets his organization would give out this year included extra staples and holiday-specific items because Rosh Hashanah immediately precedes Shabbat, extending the festival into a three-day holiday, a rarity in Israel. He also expressed gratitude for the many foreign volunteers, primarily from the US, who arrived to assist with packaging the increased number of food parcels.

Meanwhile, in Kiryat Bialik, Tzililm, who earns minimum wage as a kindergarten assistant, received holiday food vouchers from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. This year, the group increased its annual holiday aid campaign allowance to $10 million, also extending its support beyond its usual roster of needy families to include those impacted by the war, including residents of border towns and displaced families, hostage families, survivors of the Oct. 7 attack and IDF reservists in financial need.

But Tzililm said she wasn’t even sure she had the strength to cook the food she had been given.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m just not in the mood to make the holiday this year,” she said.

In Jaffa, single mother Karina Zilbersher’s Rosh Hashanah plans were upended over the weekend when her only son, Liam, a soldier in the Israeli Air Defense Command, was deployed alongside approximately 10,000 other soldiers.

With the growing threat of ballistic missiles and large-caliber rocket launches from Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, soldiers in Liam’s unit, responsible for operating David’s Sling, an Israeli air-defense system, will be on duty throughout the holidays.

“They’re the most needed soldiers right now, and I get that, but it’s still so frustrating,” she said. “I have no other family in Israel. He’s all I have, and they took him.”

Nearly a year has passed since Oct. 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. As the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel approaches, many people are looking for a way to mark the date and honor those who were killed, taken hostage or otherwise affected on Oct. 7 and throughout the ongoing war. 

Events will be held all across New York City (and virtually), both on the anniversary itself and throughout the week. Some encourage flag-waving and outward support for Israel, while others ask attendees not to bring signs or flags of any sort. Between large public gatherings, intimate discussions with Oct. 7 survivors and displays of creative expression, there’s no shortage of ways to meaningfully observe the anniversary in New York. Keep scrolling for our roundup. 

Oct. 5 | Havdalah for the Hostages

Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan (334 Amsterdam Ave.) is hosting a Havdalah service from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. CEO Rabbi Joanna Samuels and Cantor Shimon Smith will lead a song circle to honor the victims of Oct. 7 and pray for the release of the hostages. Free; register here.

Oct. 6 | Brooklyn Memorial Service

Congregation Beth Elohim (271 Garfield Pl.), a Reform synagogue in Park Slope, is holding a reflective, musical ceremony of mourning and remembrance with clergy and communities from around Brooklyn. The event will run from 8 to 9 p.m. For security purposes, attendees are required to present a valid ID and should refrain from bringing items including umbrellas, strollers, backpacks and banners or large flags. Free; find more information and register here.

Oct. 6 | One Year Later: Israel, the Middle East War, and U.S.-Israel Relations

Hosted by the 92nd Street Y and cosponsored by Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics, this panel discussion will feature experts and journalists giving their analysis of the war in Gaza, Israel’s domestic political situation and U.S.-Israeli relations. The discussion, moderated by the dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, Keren Yarhi-Milo, will include Dennis Ross, Jane Harman and Nadav Eyal. Get tickets, $18, to watch the panel either in-person at Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center (1395 Lexington Ave.), or online. 8 p.m.

Oct. 7 | A Year of Mourning with the Hey Alma Community (Zoom)

Join Rabbi Emily Cohen and the Hey Alma community for a virtual gathering. During this brief event — 2 to 2:20 p.m. — attendees will share their experiences of the past year, name those who were lost and offer prayers and hopes for the time to come. Register and get more information here.

Oct. 7 | Community-wide Commemoration

The UJA-Federation of New York is organizing gatherings across the city to commemorate Oct. 7. The marquee event in central Manhattan is sold out, but there are additional livestream viewings and satellite events. To participate in the commemorative event with the Queens Jewish community, contact Mayer Waxman; to watch a livestream of the marquee event in Riverdale, contact Rabbi Scott Kalmikoff.

Oct. 7 | Israelis for Peace NYC Vigil

Israelis for Peace NYC, an activist group promoting a shared Israeli-Palestinian future, is holding a vigil at 7 p.m. in Union Square by the George Washington statue. Participants will join in mourning all those killed on and since Oct. 7, and in demanding a ceasefire and the return of the hostages from Gaza. Organizers request that attendees do not bring flags or signs. Click for details.

Oct. 7 | Kings Bay Y One-Year Commemoration

Kings Bay Y in South Brooklyn (3495 Nostrand Ave.) is hosting an evening of songs, speeches and prayers. Atir Vinnikov, a Nova music festival survivor, will be present to recount the story of how a Bedouin Israeli man rescued him and his friends. Event is from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., RSVP here.

Oct. 7 | Memorial Event at the Sephardic Community Center

In partnership with the Sephardic Community Alliance and Barkai Yeshivah, the Sephardic Community Center (1901 Ocean Pkwy.) in Brooklyn will host a memorial from 8 to 9:30 p.m. (doors open at 7:30). Rabbi Achiya Eliyahu and Idit Eliyahu will be present to honor the memory of their son, Ariel Eliyahu, who died while serving in the IDF during the winter. Learn more here.

Oct. 7 | NYC Documentary Premiere: “October 7: Voices of Pain, Hope and Heroism”

Aish, the Jewish educational organization that produced this documentary film, is premiering their documentary at AMC Empire 25 (234 West 42nd St.) in midtown Manhattan. The film captures five Israeli families’ journeys in the wake of Oct. 7. Following the screening, a discussion will be led by Aish COO Global, Rabbi Elliot Mathias, featuring Zach Sage Fox, Lizzy Savetsky, Tanya Zuckerbrot and Ari Ackerman as panelists. The event will run from 7:15 to 9:30 p.m.. Tickets are $12.51; click here to buy or learn more.

Oct. 7 | Times Square Memorial

Organized by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s World Values Network, this Times Square event will honor the victims of Oct. 7, the hostages who remain captive in Gaza and the soldiers fighting to free them. It will also include words from keynote speaker, U.S. Army Captain and Medal of Honor recipient, Florent Groberg. Attendees are encouraged to bring flags and other visible accessories and clothing. Doors open at 4:15 p.m. and the event runs from 5 to 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here for free; organizers ask for a donation (as little as $1) to prevent spammers.

Oct. 7 | Touro University: Reflections & Commemoration One Year Later (Zoom)

Hosted by Dr. Alan Kadish, president of Touro University, this virtual talk will feature words from former Chief Rabbi of Israel Yisrael Meir Lau, and former Consul General of Israel Ido Aharoni. Event begins at 8 p.m. Learn more and register here.

Oct. 9 | Erez Kaganovitz Presents: Humans of October 7th Photography Exhibit & Gallery Talk

In the aftermath of Hamas’ attack, Erez Kaganovitz — the photojournalist behind Humans of Tel Aviv and Humans of The Holocaust projects — launched a new project: Humans of October 7th. Kaganovitz will bring his exhibit, which chronicles stories of Israeli heroism and humanity, to the Joan & Alan Bernikow JCC of Staten Island (1466 Manor Rd.) on Oct. 9, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Register here to attend this and other free commemorative events at the JCC of Staten Island Oct. 6 to 9.

This article is part of a series examining how Oct. 7 and its aftermath have changed the Jewish world. You can see the complete project here.

More than 700 readers responded to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s survey asking about what has changed in their lives over the last year. In extended comments, they described wrenching changes, political and personal isolation and feelings of grief and fear since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

JTA readers also offered an abridged version of their stories in responses to the survey’s first question, about how they would summarize their year in a single word. Here are the words they chose, in declining order of frequency.

37 times: Sad

34 times: Difficult

26 times: Devastating

24 times: Heartbroken

23 times: Stressful

19 times each: Anxious, depressing

17 times: Horrific

16 times each: Challenging, painful

15 times: Frightening

14 times each: Scary, traumatic

12 times: Horrible

10 times each: Upsetting, worrisome 

9 times each: Concerning, exhausting, frustrating, grief, tense

8 times each: Hard, lonely, shocking

7 times each: Anger, distressing, terrifying

6 times each: Awful, despair, emotional, harrowing, heavy, isolating

5 times each: Confusing, crushing, disappointing, eye-opening, gut-wrenching, hell, surreal, terrible, tumultuous, unsettling

4 times each: Anguish, awakening, disgusted, disturbing, loss, shattering, sorrowful, tough, troubling

3 times each: Busy, complicated, conflicting, disbelief, fraught, intense, overwhelming, rage, sobering, trying, unnerving

2 times each: Existential, agony, alienation, consuming, antisemitism, apprehensive, bad, broken, brutal, chaotic, clarifying, dark, demoralizing, discouraging, distrust, dreadful, horrendous, infuriating, miserable, mournful, nightmare, PTSD, relentless, rollercoaster, rough, tragic, transformative, unprecedented

Once each: Abandoned, ashamed, bereaved, betrayal, bewildering, bittersweet, bizarre, blurry, cataclysmic, cautious, change, contempt, crazy, debilitating, dedication, defining, despondent, different, disconnected, disheartening, disillusioning, disjointed, dismal, disruptive, dissonance, draining, enlightening, excruciating, forlorn, fractured, fragile, galvanizing, gutting, harsh, hectic, helpless, hopeful, hurting, indescribable, lamentation, life-altering, long, meaningful, mind-blowing, nauseating, prayerful, puzzled, reflective, revealing, rocky, sickening, solemn, tormenting, tortured, turmoil, uncertain, unifying, unpleasant, unstable, upending, vigilance, vulnerable, weary, worst, yikes

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz both expressed unstinting support for Israel during a vice presidential debate that took place just after Israel came under Iranian assault.

But the two men tussled over whether Donald Trump, the former president who is the Republican presidential nominee, would be as reliable a steward of the U.S.-Israel relationship as President Joe Biden has been. On Tuesday, Biden sent in reinforcements to help counter the Iranian onslaught and warned of “severe consequences” for Iran.

In their first question, the debate’s moderators asked whether the candidates would back Israel were it to strike Iran preemptively in an effort to set back its nuclear program.

Walz, the Democratic nominee and running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris, did not directly answer but emphasized that “steady leadership” from the United States would be essential in confronting the threat posed by Iran.

Related: Hezbollah crisis adds to threats facing Jews during High Holidays and ahead of Oct. 7, experts say

Walz pivoted to an attack on Trump. Referring to last month’s presidential debate, in which Trump dwelled on perceived personal slights, he said, “It’s clear, and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago: A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment.”

Walz quoted an array of Trump associates — including Vance, in remarks he made before he got close to Trump — as saying Trump was unfit to maintain diplomatic alliances because he was fickle. In Harris, Walz said, “We’ve seen a calmness that is able to be able to draw on the coalitions to bring them together, understanding that our allies matter.”

Vance, in his reply, defended Trump’s record in his first term and charged that policies advanced by Biden and Harris had emboldened Iran.

“Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence people were afraid of stepping out of line. Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion and unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration,” Vance said. It was not clear what he was referring to. Iranian assets held by Korea totaling $6-7 billion were released for humanitarian use as part of a deal releasing U.S. citizens held in Iran.

Vance also directly answered the question about a preemptive strike. “It is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe, and we should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mulled a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program more than a decade ago. Israel has said it plans to respond to Tuesday’s missile attack.

In his rebuttal, Walz defended the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, reached under President Barack Obama, which traded sanctions relief for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Israel opposed the deal. In 2018, Trump abandoned the deal unilaterally in a move that he cites as evidence of his pro-Israel bona fides. Democrats say Trump’s quitting the deal accelerated the threat posed by Iran.

“We had a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program in the inability to advance it,” Walz said. “Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership.”

Walz barely alluded to the Palestinians and their dire circumstances in the Gaza Strip in the war that ensued after Hamas invaded Israel a year ago, instead focusing on the threat Israel has sought to crush.

“Let’s keep in mind where this started. October 7, Hamas terrorists massacred over 1,400 Israelis and took prisoners,” he said. “Israel’s ability to be able to defend itself is absolutely fundamental. Getting its hostages back, fundamental. And ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

JERUSALEM — The whoops and applause felt more suited to a rock concert than a prayer service. But this was a gathering of survivors from the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history, and Asaf Oren had just recited the blessing traditionally said after surviving a life-threatening event.

Oren, whose arm was partially paralyzed by a bullet on Oct. 7,  was one of 180 survivors of the massacre at the Nova music festival last year to attend a Shabbat retreat, or Shabbaton, at a Jerusalem hotel organized by Kesher Yehudi, a movement aimed at bridging gaps between haredi Orthodox and secular Israelis and connecting secular Israelis to Jewish heritage. A group of relatives of Israeli hostages also attended.

Two hours earlier, just before candle-lighting  marked the onset of Shabbat, the prominent religious leader Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi delivered a short sermon highlighting the distinction of that Shabbat — the last before the Rosh Hashanah holiday, which would begin a new Jewish year.

“I’m not nervous about Rosh Hashanah this year. Look how many amazing merits we have as a people. When I come to eat the pomegranate, I’ll be thinking of Aner Shapira, who hurled grenade after grenade,” she said, using the Hebrew word—rimon—for both pomegranate and hand grenade.

Shapira, who attended the Nova festival with his friend Hersh Goldberg-Polin, caught seven grenades in his hand in a roadside bomb shelter, hurling them back at Hamas terrorists and saving the lives of 10 people. The eighth grenade exploded and killed him.

After Friday night dinner, Oren and other attendees shared their survival stories, highlighting the role of hashgacha pratit — the concept that God’s presence can be observed in day-to-day life — which, for many, inspired them to commit to increasing their Jewish observance.

Outside of the hotel, the divide between secular and haredi Orthodox Israelis has in some ways never been starker. Surveys show that Israelis are concerned about religious divides in society. The Supreme Court has ordered the army to begin conscripting haredi men who previously received blanket exemptions from Israel’s mandatory draft to study in yeshivas — a longtime arrangement that many Israelis have no longer been willing to make during the longest war in the country’s history. The issue has long festered and has the potential to collapse the government.

And while there are widespread anecdotal reports about secular Israelis drawing closer to religion after Oct. 7, data has not confirmed a broader trend. A survey in December, two months after the attack, found that most Israelis reported no change in their religious outlook. Of those who had drawn closer to Judaism, the majority were haredi or Modern Orthodox already.

But inside the hotel, there was no sign of tension, and Kesher Yehudi was bullish on escalating religious observance among the participants. Although the group has organized four similar Shabbat retreats since Oct. 7, this was the first where attendees were asked to observe Shabbat according to traditional Jewish law — a request made by the organization’s founder and CEO, Tzili Schneider, as a spiritual effort to help bring about the hostages’ return from Gaza.

In a room adjacent to the one where Oren appeared, a far more somber tone took hold as several dozen family members of the hostages gathered to listen to a lecture by an organizational consultant named Natan Rozen. Offering the caveat that he could never grasp their suffering, Rozen told them they were creating history and could choose to either be consumed by their pain or harness it as the greatest driving force in the world to shape new realities for Israel.

Shelly Shem-Tov, mother of Omer, who was abducted from the Nova party, said Rozen’s words resonated with her.

“I can either take charge and lead others or become a victim,” she said. “This test we’re all going through — as painful as it is — teaches us that we’re all brothers and this Shabbat is proof of that. We must break down these walls — right, left, religious, secular — that we’ve built the past few years. Brothers fight, but they also look out for one another.”

Meirav Berger, mother of Agam, one of five female surveillance soldiers abducted from the Nahal Oz military base, said Rozen’s words struck a chord with her.

Berger, who was there with her husband and younger children, said that since Oct. 7, her family had begun observing Shabbat. The most recent news the Bergers received about Agam came from members of the Goldstein-Almog family, released from Hamas captivity in November, who shared that Agam had been praying frequently and observing Shabbat while in captivity.

“There’s no doubt about the magnitude of our role in this,” she said. Referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom many Israelis blame for scuttling efforts to secure a hostage release deal, she continued, “It’s just a shame he can’t do what’s right by history.”

Shortly after she made her comments, news trickled in of the assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. While some people expressed shock or glee, the news barely registered for Shira Cohen, who, like many participants, was observing Shabbat according to Jewish law for the first time.

“I’m in a total bubble,” she said. “Who cares about Nasrallah?”

A month before Oct. 7, Cohen’s brother was killed in a motorbike accident, plunging her into depression. In a bid to lighten her mood, her best friend, Livnat Levi, convinced her to go to the Nova festival. Cohen resisted, saying she wasn’t a fan of trance music, but Levi insisted. Cohen recalled Levi kissing her at the festival several times on the cheek and repeating, “I love you.” Cohen barely made it out alive, while Levi was killed.

Cohen had decided to keep Shabbat at the retreat in honor of her brother and Levi. The hardest part, she said, was resisting the urge to smoke, so before Shabbat she handed her cigarettes over to one of the organizers to avoid the temptation. Levi’s brother, Eitan, was also at the Shabbaton, though he admitted he was not observing Shabbat, saying that Oct. 7 had jolted his faith in God.

Two days earlier, his family had gathered at his sister’s grave to mark the first anniversary of her death, a difficult day made even more harrowing when a rocket siren yanked him from sleep. Hezbollah had launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv for the first time, triggering sirens across central Israel at 6:29 a.m.—the same time rockets had filled the skies on Oct. 7, when the music at Nova abruptly stopped.

Sivan Dabush, too, kept Shabbat for the first time in her life, and like Cohen, refraining from smoking was the toughest part. Dabush is the aunt of Rom Braslavski, who was also kidnapped from the Nova festival where he was working as a security guard. Dabush was originally meant to accompany her sister, Rom’s mother Tami, to the Shabbaton, but Tami pulled out.

“She’s closed herself off to the world,” Dabush said of her sister. “It’s my duty to remain strong for her and the rest of the family. That’s what helped me push through the urge to give up on observing this Shabbat.”

In the hotel lobby, participant Livnat Or shivered from the icy blast of the air conditioning. “They did it on purpose to make sure we dress modestly,” she said, laughing, and referencing another norm of Orthodox life that frequently creates a visible distinction between religious and secular Israelis.

Oren, whose survival story has been dramatized in a play on Oct. 7 currently touring Ivy League universities, stood in the Shabbat elevator with the doors open, waiting for it to begin its automatic ascent. “So I don’t get it, what happens now? God closes the doors?” he quipped.

Having grown up in the haredi Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, Schneider said that unlike many of the participants, she had never had the “privilege of devotion” for Shabbat, which she believes allows people to heal from the worst kinds of trauma. In 2012, Schneider founded Kesher Yehudi with a mission to combat mistrust between haredi Jews and other groups, rooted in her belief that the Jewish people are united at the core.

“Certain elements like the media and the government would have you believe we’re divided, but we’ve proved them wrong over and over again,” she said. “The problem is, we’re just not given the opportunities to meet.”

The organization’s activities have grown exponentially since Oct. 7, and in addition to the Shabbaton programs, now includes 14,000 study partners joined in pairings, known in Hebrew as hevrutas, between secular and haredi Israelis. The group also runs learning programs in pre-military academies.

“People are asking what it means to be Jewish. They understand now that it doesn’t matter what your background is, the Sinwars and the Nasrallahs don’t differentiate between us,” she said, referring to the Hamas chief in Gaza. “They hate us because we’re Jewish.”

For Meirav Berger, Nasrallah’s assassination encapsulated the essence of her Shabbat experience.

“He’s dead. You could say, that’s the whole Shabbat,” she said. “Who ever thought we would manage that? It’s God, revealing himself. Now he will reveal himself more and more. From here, the only way is up.”