How We Will be Marking the First Anniversary of October 7th
Full Text of Rabbi Joel Mosbacher’s ‘If Not Now, When’ Weekly Message
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Dear Friends,
As we approach the anniversary of the attack against Israel on October 7, our leadership team has spent time reflecting on how to mark this somber occasion both on the date itself, and also through this season of High Holidays. We want to share with you our thoughts, the values and principles we hold true, and what you can expect this commemoration to feel and look like over the next few weeks.
To start with, we asked ourselves some difficult questions about the pain and loss the Jewish community has suffered this past year.
How do we mark the immensity and intensity of the emotions many of us feel as we process not just Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7 and the war that has ensued, but also the rise of antisemitism that we are experiencing, all while the war continues and 101 hostages still held in Gaza?
How do we plan for the holidays and for the observance of October 7, even though none of us knows what will unfold in the next few weeks?
How do we acknowledge the painful challenges of this time without ceding the entire holiday season to the range of sentiments we feel?
How do we make space for the diverse range of emotions and feelings that our members have at this time?
Our own hearts are heavy with the difficulties of the world, and we seek to bring comfort and strength to all of us in these challenging times. Even as we work with our security team to ensure our physical safety as we always do, we have also been working to ensure that this is a deeply meaningful and spiritual time for all of us.
After much important conversation, we developed an informal mission statement to help guide us in our decision making as we approach the anniversary of October 7:
- We will seek to support and hold our congregation as we each continue to process the trauma of the October 7 attack and its continued impact on our lives
- We will work to promote a sense of family with those in Israel while holding all of our and its complexity
- We will continue to build resilience and hope in the face of grief and fear
- We will honor and celebrate the eternal themes of the holidays – repentance, return, and repair – in ways that anchor us as we need to be anchored, especially now.
With all of this in mind, we have developed a plan for this difficult anniversary that we hope provides space for individual and communal observance, and that also allows you to choose how and when to participate. We hope that you will opt in to as many chances to mark this moment as you feel is appropriate for where your heart is right now. Know, of course, that our plans may change in response to events that unfold in the coming weeks; we will adjust these plans and keep you informed if that proves necessary.
Of course, you can expect the music and liturgy of the holidays. We are so excited to welcome you into the building, into our sanctuary, and into the space to engage in the important spiritual work we all have to do this season. As always, this is our annual congregational “family reunion,” and we seek to make it so at a time when we feel our family needs to be together now more than ever.
October 7 Observance
The Reform Movement will be holding a global Online Gathering on Sunday, September 29 at 1:00pm. All of the leading organizations of our movement, in partnership with the Reform movement in Israel, have come together for this gathering; you can register here to join us.
On October 7 itself, we will be promoting and participating in these events:
8:15 to 9:45am at Shaaray Tefila on October 7, our clergy will be present in the Davis Auditorium. Members are welcome to come, have a cup of coffee, and share where we are in this moment with each other and with our clergy team. At 9:20am, we will have a brief ceremony which will include saying Kaddish for those who have been killed in the last 11 months, and an opportunity for members to light a candle in memory of all those who have been taken from us.
3:00 to 7:00 pm. For those who cannot make this early morning gathering at Shaaray Tefila, Plaza Jewish Community Chapel will open its doors to provide the community an opportunity to light a candle and say a prayer for the State of Israel, the IDF and hostages that have been rescued, and for those that are still in captivity.
[Information withheld here for security reasons]
High Holidays:
We will incorporate the commemoration into our High Holiday season in several ways.
There will be a chair on the bimah throughout the holidays that will have a prayer book and a yellow ribbon to hold space for the hostages who remain in Gaza. For those praying with us on the livestream, there will be a yellow ribbon on the opening slide and for slides that mark transitions between services.
Our clergy will share a few liturgical moments of remembrance throughout the holidays.
The sermons on Rosh Hashanah morning and Yom Kippur morning will speak in pastoral ways to the complexities and pain of this time in Jewish history, and the ways in which being able to hold nuance and complexity in our congregation and in our lives can help strengthen us in challenging times.
Our guest speaker at 3:30pm on Yom Kippur afternoon will be Rabbi Seth Limmer, Director of Public Affairs for PERIL (Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab) at the School of Public Affairs at American University. Rabbi Limmer will be in public conversation with Rabbi Mosbacher about the dangers of antisemitism and extremism in this moment for Jews, and what gives us hope in spite of the challenges we face as a people and as a society.
During the Yom Kippur afternoon service at 4:30pm, we will be hearing the stories of four Israelis who were killed on October 7. Additionally in that service, some of our fellow congregants will share personal reflections on how they are finding hope in this moment.
Finally, at services at 10:15 a.m. on the morning of Simchat Torah, October 24, the Hebrew anniversary of the attack, we will mark the anniversary liturgically.
My friends, I hope and know a few things about this moment.
As I said above, I hope you feel the same urgency and will experience the same level of comfort that I do about being together at this moment. For me personally, and for the rest of our clergy, you are our Jewish community, and being together to mark this time is so meaningful and provides strength to us. I hope you feel the same way about all of your fellow members.
At the same time, I am humble enough to know that the pains we each feel are diverse and unique, that everyone might need something different to help with the ongoing grief that we are feeling, and that we may be unable to provide each person with everything they need. And, I know that we seek to make it so that each person has a place to be for the holidays so that every one of us can find something of what they need in this season.
I also know that it is difficult to ritualize a trauma of which we we are still in the middle. As of this writing, the war is still ongoing; the hostages are still not with their families; the threats to Israel are still serious; innocent people are still dying. Additionally, the reality is that our congregants have a diversity of views on Israel’s actions since October 7. At one point I thought that we and our Israeli siblings were experiencing a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I came to realize that we are not “post” anything; this terrible chapter in Jewish history is still unfolding. For so many Jews, it feels like it’s still October 8.
But I am also sure of this: we can get through this together. We can hold one another in our grieving. We can acknowledge this moment in ways that allow us to grieve, and that allow us to continue to put one foot in front of the other, seeking to bring hope into a world that so badly needs hope.