Jewish community mourns victims of October 7th attack

Editor’s Note: This story mentions potentially triggering situations such as kidnapping, violence, and death.

The shadows stretched until the sky turned black Monday evening over a gathering of more than 800 people where local Jewish organizations held a vigil to commemorate the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

It has been a dark year for the world’s Jewish population, beginning with the violent attack that killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, And a third are considered dead.

But local Jewish organizations and speakers offered a path to unity and remembered those whose lives were taken at Monday’s vigil behind the Alumni Center.

IU Hillel President Leah Sterbcow was the first to address the crowd.

“Our community has faced extreme adversity and uncertainty,” she said. “Time and time again we have been knocked down, but each time we have gotten back up stronger than before.”

The past year has been challenging for Jewish students at IU. The October 7 attack left many people shocked and heartbroken.

Sterbcow found himself in the same place as many Jewish people in Bloomington.

Hours after learning of the attack, she burst into tears in a store. She hid in the front corner, not wanting to make a scene.

“At this point, I think my tears came mostly from fear of the unknown,” she said.

On the other side of the world, the Israeli government responded forcefully.

In the wake of the conflict, anti-Semitism in America rose rapidly. In a report released on October 6, the Anti-Defamation League recorded more than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents since October 7, 2023, a 200% increase from the same period last year. According to the organization, more than 1,200 incidents occurred on college campuses.

The ADL recorded more than 3,000 incidents of “regular explicit expressions of support for terrorist groups,” including Hamas and Hezbollah. Excluding these incidents, the ADL counted 7,523 incidents of anti-Semitism, a 103% increase from 2022.

Last week, Jewish people celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which fell October 2-4 this year.

The holiday is one of the most important times of the year for Jewish people, Sterbcow said. The following 10 days until Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, are for reflection.

Sterbcow said that Rosh Hashanah and the days of reflection that followed were one of the most powerful of her life. “When we come together, it’s always meaningful,” she said – but this year she managed to put aside for a moment the anger, fear and confusion of the past year.

Israeli IU graduate student Roee Alper and Israeli fellow Almog Avraham of IU Hillel shared the experience of losing or fearing loved ones in Israel during the Hamas-led attack.

Avraham, who was in a hotel in London with her family at the time of the attack, recounted agonizing hours spent waiting to hear from her friends at the Nova Music Festival. Hamas targeted the festival with more than 3,000 people in Re’im, just outside Gaza.

“My family and I were terrified,” she said. “We didn’t step outside the hotel. We were all silent.”

On the vigil’s main screen, Avraham showed a video taken by some of her friends at the festival. Against a backdrop of gunfire and roaring machines, a camera packed with handshakes showed victims running away and taking cover.

In Alper’s video, the camera work was eerily still.

His sister Maya sent him a video as she hid from Hamas militants for seven hours, leaving a message in case she didn’t survive.

That was her Visiting Israel from Guatemala. She asked Roee to help her find work in Israel while she was there. He found that she worked at Nova.

In the video, Maya reassured herself and her family that everything would be okay.

“I’m so, so proud of myself,” she whispered in the video. “I’ll make it.”

Sophie Shafran, president of Hoosiers for Israel, said she did not grow up in a home with a particularly strong connection to Israel.

But her brothers both joined the Israel Defense Forces, and as she grew older, she became pro-Israel.

She led a congregational prayer for the IDF on Monday evening.

Her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. When she and her brothers were in their 20s and beginning to develop their identities, they looked back to him. Her grandfather wanted to join the IDF but never did. So her brothers came forward.

Because of the time zone difference, most people in the U.S. didn’t find out about the October 7 attack until the day after. But Shafran stayed up late that night, found out about it from family members, and couldn’t sleep. The sense of security she previously felt for the Jewish people and Israel was broken.

This Rosh Hashanah, Shafran said, was very hard for many Jews. At Hillel, a table was left empty in honor of the hostages.

Six metal detectors and at least 14 security and events staff lined the entrance to the memorial. Sterbcow said it was a precaution against that Rise in anti-Semitism on the university campus last year.

Sterbcow first sensed that things would be tense on campus for Jewish students in the days after October 7th. The turning point came two days later, on October 9, when IU Hillel and IU Chabad organized a vigil in Dunn Meadow to honor those killed in the attack.

The vigil a year ago The event was scheduled to take place at Sample Gates, but IU recommended moving it to Dunn Meadow due to the expected large turnout. The Palestine Solidarity Committee decided to hold a so-called “counter-protest” at Sample Gates, where participants said they were committed to peace.

During Hillel and Chabad’s vigil, several people drove by, chanting “Free Palestine” and waving Palestinian flags. Many Jewish students said they felt ridiculed. The ensuing simmering tension and hostility on campus felt devastating to Sterbcow.

Some pro-Israel protesters later arrived at the Sample Gates protest, where a collision occurred. People from the two groups of demonstrators shouted at each other

Shafran said a pro-Palestinian protester called her a Nazi in Sample Gates on October 9, 2023.

“As the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, this comment was probably one of the hardest comments to come by,” Shafran said. “I don’t feel welcome.”

This year, the PSC is participating along with the IU Divestment Coalition and the IU Middle Eastern Student Association, posted a “call to action” to protest in front of Sample Gates on Monday, the first anniversary of October 7th. Sterbcow said holding a demonstration on the first anniversary of the attack was “disgusting”.

One of her biggest concerns right now, Sterbcow said, is that she doesn’t know when tensions on campus will subside. This uncertainty is weighing on her and many other students, she said.

“This shouldn’t have happened in my four years of college experience,” she said.

Sterbcow traveled to Israel last summer. It was a kind of discomfort she had never felt before, lying in bed just miles away from the hostages living in “hell” in Gaza. She said the trip overall was wonderful for her and it was not her first trip to the country. But her heart felt heavier.

“Here I feel like there’s nothing I can do to bring the hostages home,” Sterbcow said.

IU Hillel an event was held to remember the six hostages killed in Gaza in September and to emphasize the importance of unity. Sterbcow said that while she doesn’t personally know anyone who was killed or taken hostage in the attack, she does know many people she knows.

Still, she said the tensions and hostilities since Oct. 7 have deepened her ties to Israel. That doesn’t mean the government, she said, nor the government’s actions. She said Israel is omnipresent in Jewish tradition, from history to religious texts to the identity of many Jewish peoples.

And because she feels like she’s being attacked, that connection has only grown stronger.

Dena Shink tries to practice her tenor sax every day. She said she hasn’t missed anything since middle school.

As the memorial service came to an end, Shink was the second to last to take the stage. The crowd was silent but did not let up. Few, if any, left the memorial early. Shink had a packed audience.

Flickering orange and yellow hues lit up the area directly in front of the main stage, where almost the entire crowd had gathered. They lit candles in memory of those who died.

Shink performed a Jewish mourning song, “El Malei Rachamim.” She composed the variation herself, inspired by her great-grandfather.

“El Malei Rachamim,” meaning “God full of compassion,” is a prayer said for the souls of the dead, sometimes on the anniversary of their death.

“That doesn’t happen very often in Bloomington. It’s so important,” Sterbcow said. “Our strength lies in our numbers, and I am incredibly proud to be here tonight at the forefront of community leadership throughout the Bloomington area.”

Shink’s haunting vibrato echoed across the field, capping a night of sadness but also unity.