RSS
‘I just felt this urgency’: For some, Oct. 7 fueled a renewed dedication to becoming Jewish
(JTA) — Jasamine Hodge started converting to Judaism eight years ago, but it wasn’t until Oct. 7 that she set a date to finish.
As a child and teen, Hodge, 33, who lives in Kansas City, had grown up with families that practiced Christianity and Islam. When a friend introduced her to Judaism when she was 24, she realized she had found her “religious home.”
Over the years, she studied Judaism intensively, spent time in Israel and learned Hebrew. Yet because of complications in her life and community, including rabbinic turnover at her synagogue, she still was not officially Jewish last fall.
When Hamas struck Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages, she felt the gap in her identity acutely.
“When the attack happened, I just felt this urgency to be even more connected with God because I felt that every single prayer, with so many against us, was needed right now,” Hodge said. “As I continued to elevate my prayers and elevate my closeness to God, I realized that this was the time more than ever that I needed to push things to the finish line.”
Hodge is not the only person to experience a pull toward conversion after Oct. 7. Multiple rabbis told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they have seen a surge in interest from potential converts since the attack, both from people who were already in the process of converting and from people who had never before been in touch. The surge has taken place even as the attack and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas have fueled antisemitic incidents around the world.
“It’s been nothing short of profound and personally inspiring as an educator, and invigorating as a spiritual leader, to see people in the face of such brazen hatred feel all the more called to step into their Judaism,” said Rabbi Avram Mlotek, who received Orthodox ordination and lives in New York City.
For those who were already Jewish on Oct. 7, there has also been a noticeable inclination to draw closer to those identities or to Israel. Some Israelis have reconnected with their faith since the war began, and a number of Jewish families that had been planning to move to Israel before October sped up their immigration process in response to the attacks.
With two other Orthodox-trained rabbis in New York City, Mlotek facilitates a 22-week online course and beit din, or three-member religious court, aimed at making Orthodox Jewish conversions accessible outside of the rigid process overseen by the Rabbinical Council of America, an umbrella Orthodox rabbinical association that coordinates its conversion process with that of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.
Rabbi Adam Mintz, who leads a congregation in Manhattan and is part of Mlotek’s conversion initiative, said that in the weeks immediately following Oct. 7, he and his colleagues “have found an explosion of people who are interested in beginning to explore conversion.” He said he had been fielding three to five phone calls per week with people who were interested in pursuing conversion — a substantial increase over the typical rate.
In Los Angeles, meanwhile, the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program, which operates an online conversion course that many Conservative rabbis recommend to potential converts, experienced a 40% uptick in interest inquiries in the three months following Oct. 7.
“There was a noticeable increase,” said Benjamin Wright, the program’s associate director. He characterized the rise as “pretty sharp.”
Exactly what is driving the uptick is still coming into focus. In addition to people who are part of Jewish families seeking to formalize the way they feel, there are examples throughout history of people choosing to become Jewish after learning about Judaism or identifying with it because of a trauma to the Jewish people.
Most notably, thousands of Germans expressed a desire to convert to Judaism in the years after the Holocaust, with many saying they were overcome by their sense of “guilt and shame and shock” at the atrocities their country had committed, according to one historian. The interest was so high that in 1950 a special commission was formed to help Berlin’s top rabbi sift through the requests. In recent years, a debate has consumed some Jewish circles in Germany over whether there is such a thing as too much conversion.
But for now, the rabbis say the people who have moved most quickly from Oct. 7 toward conversion are people who have longstanding connections to Judaism.
Kelly Tanner was already months into her conversion process when the attack occurred. The daughter of a Catholic mother and a Methodist father, Tanner, 26, began looking for a church when she moved to New York City for college. But it was not until she met Jake, who had grown up in a Conservative Jewish home and introduced Tanner to Shabbat and other Jewish traditions, that she felt she had found the right religious home.
“It felt like I was getting a piece of that spiritual side of me back that I had been looking for since I was 6 years old asking my mom to go to church,” she recalled.
Tanner initially had not expected to complete her conversion until closer to her wedding, planned for 2025. But after she reached out to Mintz the week of Oct. 7 to find out whether their regularly scheduled meeting was still on, she felt inspired by his response to move faster.
Mintz responded that “the perfect reaction to this war was creating really strong Jewish families,” Tanner said.
“That stuck with me for the rest of the conversion,” she added. “You feel so helpless here. But when you think about the importance of just spreading light during this time, and creating community, which are all huge parts, obviously, of Judaism, then it feels like you are doing something. Like there is some kind of tangible thing that you can do way over here in New York, when it feels like the world is just crumbling.”
Tanner completed her conversion on Dec. 21.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, who directs the Miller program, is expecting more than 100 students when her next course begins later this month. “I have never had this many students ever,” she said.
But while she said she was eager to learn from her new students about why they had chosen to reach out since Oct. 7, she had already learned about the effects of the attack on people who have chosen Judaism.
Some have sought her advice about the safety of keeping their mezuzahs publicly displayed on their doorposts and about discussing Israel with their non-Jewish relatives.
“When [Oct. 7] first happened, I had students who came up to me and said, ‘Rabbi, I didn’t realize that I had to have a relationship with Israel as a Jew. I was converting to Judaism, but I didn’t know that I had to have a relationship with Israel,’” Rabizadeh said.
“I had other students that came up to me who had already converted and said to me, ‘I suddenly feel Jewish now. And not only do I suddenly feel Jewish, now I suddenly understand what antisemitism is,’” she added.
Tanner said that while her family has been “incredibly supportive” of her decision to convert, some of her family and friends have expressed concerns “because it’s a scary time to be Jewish right now,” she said.
Mlotek said that unfortunate reality has come up in his class, too. Because many of the students are already engaging in Jewish practice or have expressed sympathy for Israel after Oct. 7, they may be considered Jewish by others, for better or worse.
“We got into this conversation about how the enemies of the Jewish people don’t look with as piercing precision as the way we Jews do ourselves about Conservative, Orthodox, Reform,” Mlotek said. “Whether that hatred comes from the right or the left, if you stand with the Jewish people, you’re considered one of us. I think our students are experiencing that in a very acute way.”
That experience was deeply personal for Veronica Elmendal, who lives in the northern Israeli city of Tiberias and whose children are in the Israeli military.
“Why did they kill us?” she asked, referring to Hamas. “Because we’re Jewish. They slaughter us because we’re Jewish.”
Raised Christian in Sweden, Elmendal, 45, underwent a conversion to Judaism in 2004 when she was living in Los Angeles, after having already lived in Israel for a time in the late 1990s. But after her family moved to Israel in 2021, religious authorities there said they could not verify the rabbi who had overseen her conversion and thus could not recognize her as Jewish.
Veronica Elmendal with her youngest daughter, Lilach Zelig. (Courtesy of Elmendal)
Elmendal was able to secure a spouse visa through her husband, who is Israeli, and she said she and her four children — ages 7 to young adult — knew they were Jewish, no matter what the government said.
“My kids, they always feel Jewish anyways. They know they’re Jewish. And I’m Jewish, too. I don’t care what anybody says,” she said.
But after Hamas’ attack, she said, that didn’t feel like enough. “When Oct. 7 happened, all my kids, it was very important for them to be registered as Jewish,” Elmendal recalled.
Now, she is working with an Israeli rabbi on a conversion that will pass muster with the country’s religious authorities. She immersed in a mikvah and completed a conversion exam last month.
“They’re ready to take my kids to the army. And they’re ready to die for this country,” she said about her older children. “So this is why it’s very important for us to do the conversion.”
Hodge, too, recently completed her conversion. On Dec. 21, she immersed in a mikvah under the supervision of three rabbis, including Mlotek and Mintz, to finish the process. Now back in Kansas City, where she works in real estate and is preparing to marry her Israeli fiance, she says she is ready to contribute to the Jewish people — as a Jew.
“When the war happened, I felt that my connection to Judaism was growing stronger,” Hodge said. “I felt my need to be a Jewish mother was growing stronger, and my desire to be in Israel, to help and just to be unified with the people. So for me, this was the biggest push. I want to start my Jewish family. I want to bring good to the Jewish world right now. We just need that right now.”
—
The post ‘I just felt this urgency’: For some, Oct. 7 fueled a renewed dedication to becoming Jewish appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
‘Never Forget’: ADL Files Oct. 7 Lawsuit Against Hamas, Iran, North Korea
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Ammar Awad via Reuters Connect
A legal effort to hold the perpetrators of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel is being mounted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its partners, which on Thursday filed a major lawsuit in US federal court against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a slew of state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran and North Korea.
“The victims of the Oct. 7 massacre deserve justice, accountability, and redress,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to do that by holding those responsible for the carnage accountable, from the the state sponsors who provided the funding, weapons, and training to the terrorist organizations who carried out these unspeakable atrocities.”
The suit is made possible by federal laws, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Anti-Terrorism Act, allowing for the kin of the victims of terrorism to sue those who contributed to their murders. It seeks damages, compensatory and punitive, for the dozens of plaintiffs who brought the action while aiming to expose the funding networks which facilitate mass atrocities and destabilization of the societies subjected to them.
“The world must never forget what happened on Oct. 7. Our son’s life was senselessly cut short,” said David and Hazel Brief, the parents of Yona Brief, whom Hamas fatally injured during its onslaught. “We believe it is critical that those responsible for the horrific terror inflicted that day are held accountable in a court of law, to ensure the record is clear as to who helped support, plan, and carry out the violence that day. We are hopeful that this type of litigation will help prevent attacks like these in the future, so that no other families have to go through losing a loved on as a result of such violence.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, invaded neighboring Israel and massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians, injured thousands more, and kidnapped over 200 hostages. In the days following the tragedy, the brutality of Hamas’s violence shocked the world as numerous eyewitnesses and victims shared accounts of rape, torture, beheading, and the mutilation of the bodies of the deceased.
In March 2024, the United Nation said in a report commissioned by the Representative of the Secretary General that Hamas likely committed mass acts of gang-rape and torture against women during the massacre and continued to abuse women whom it imprisoned. The report came amid a volley of attacks by anti-Israel agitators, who discredited the testimonies of rape victims, attempting to bury them under counter accusations of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
“Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment was also gathered,” the report said, as previously reported by The Algemeiner and other outlets. “It also said that the research team “found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”
The previous month, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel issued a report detailing harrowing accounts of Hamas’s sexual violence. In 35 pages, it recounted numerous sexual assaults reported by Israel women, several of which were perpetrated in the presence of their loved ones. Some women were killed after the act, some during it. Hamas terrorists also desecrated the bodies of victims they murdered, mutilating their genitalia, and they raped men.
Hamas’s violence and mission to destroy Israel has inspired hatred across the world, triggering a wave of antisemitic hate crimes, perpetrated by anti-Zionists, in the US unlike any seen in the country’s history.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
According to an FBI report issued last month, antisemitic hate crimes are occurring at record-setting rates. Even as hate crimes decreased overall, the report said, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Also, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
“Leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on,” Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said in a statement when the FBI report was released.. “Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
Dozens of Celebrities Call for Ceasefire, Help Raise $2 Million for Gaza Palestinians at Benefit Concert
Billie Eilish and Finneas receive Album of the Year Award for “Hit Me Hard and Soft” during the iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, US, March 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
A star-studded list of celebrities helped raise money for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid the Israel-Hamas war as part of a fundraising campaign and benefit concert that took place at London’s Wembley Arena on Wednesday.
Ahead of the ‘Together for Palestine” concert, the campaign released a video featuring dozens of celebrities who called for a ceasefire in Gaza and to “stop the killing” of Palestinians during the ongoing war. They included Grammy-winning artists Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, Oscar winners Cillian Murphy, Joaquin Phoenix, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz; “Outlander” star Caitriona Balfe; Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai; and Scottish actor Brian Cox.
“We have to tell the truth on behalf of the people of Palestine,” Cox said in the video.
“It’s important to speak out now, not when this is over, right now, while it’s happening, pressurize your government. Lend your support to those who are peacefully campaigning for Palestine. Call for a ceasefire, stop the killing,” added British comedian and actor Steve Coogan in the clip.
The video also included appearances by “The White Lotus” star Natasha Rothwell, “Bad Sisters” star Sharon Horgan, and “Weapons” actor Benedict Wong. It was released mere hours before the “Together for Palestine” benefit concert at Wembley Arena, which raised more than £1.5 million ($2 million). The event included performances from Bastille, James Blake, Jamie xx, and PinkPantheress, and Palestinian artists such as Sama’ Abdulhadi, Saint Levant, and Nia Barghouti, who is the daughter of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Paloma Faith performed live wearing a dress made from a Palestinian keffiyeh. The event also featured a pre-recorded performance by Annie Lennox of her new song “Why? – For Gaza,” which she sang while wearing a T-shirt that said, “Let Gaza Live.”
The event, which was livestreamed on YouTube, was organized by British artist Brian Eno, who read the poem “Oh Rascal Shildren of Gaza” by Palestinian writer Khaled Juma. Speakers at the event included actors Richard Gere, Florence Pugh, and “Bridgerton” stars Nicola Coughlan and Charithra Chandran. Benedict Cumberbatch recited a Palestinian poem while broadcaster Mehdi Hasan led the audience in chanting “You can’t bomb the truth away.”
British-American documentarian Louis Theroux claimed on stage that Palestinians are “living under military occupation [and are] subject to slow, grinding relentless violence.” French former soccer player Eric Cantona called for Israeli athletes to be banned from all soccer competitions around the world, including FIFA and UEFA matches.
“I know that international football is more than just sport,” said the former Manchester United player. “It’s cultural; political. It’s soft power in the way that a country represents itself on a global stage. The time has come to suspend Israel from that privilege.” His comments elicited loud applause from the audience.
“FIFA and UEFA must suspend Israel,” he added. “[Soccer] clubs everywhere must refuse to play Israeli teams. Current players everywhere must refuse to play against Israeli teams … it’s time for everyone to get off the sidelines.” When Cantona asked the audience if they agreed that Israelis should be boycotted from all soccer matches, they replied in unison, “Yes!”
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories said, “Palestinians continue to suffer while our governments turn a blind eye, or worse – they are complicit. They trade weapons. They host Israeli officials.” Both Pugh and Coughlan criticized their colleagues in Hollywood for staying silent about “grave violations of human rights in Gaza.”
“Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality. It is complicity. And empathy should not be this hard and it should have never been this hard,” said Pugh. She also applauded Nia’s Bargouti’s performance at the concert in an Instagram story. In the caption of the post, she told Bargouti that “[you] sang so beautifully and so powerfully considering the weight and meaning of this evening. I was blown away by your strength.”
Others who made an appearance at the event included actress Jameela Jamil, “Love Island” host Laura Whitmore, and the “Chicken Shop Date” YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg.
“Together For Palestine” said all ticket proceeds from the benefit concert will be given to Palestinian-led organizations on the ground in Gaza, through Choose Love, a British charity that supports humanitarian workers in conflict zones. The groups that will benefit from Wednesday’s concert include Taawon, which runs orphan care programs in Gaza, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.
Israel has long expressed concern that Hamas steals much of the humanitarian aid that is sent into Gaza for its own terrorist operations and to sell to Palestinian civilians at inflated prices.
RSS
Italian Port Blocks Arms for Israel as Worker Protests Mount
Illustrative: Demonstrators participate in a pro-Palestinian protest in Piazza Duomo in Milan, Italy, on Nov. 23, 2024. Photo: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna on Thursday refused entry to two trucks said to be carrying arms to Israel, as protests mount among Italian dockworkers and other labor groups against the offensive in Gaza.
The center-left mayor of Ravenna, Alessandro Barattoni, told reporters the port authority had accepted the request from him and the regional government to deny access to the lorries carrying explosives en route to the Israeli port of Haifa.
“The Italian state says it has blocked the sale of arms to Israel but it is unacceptable that, thank to bureaucratic loopholes, they can pass through Italy from other countries,” Barattoni said in a statement.
He did not provide details on where the containers had come from or provide evidence of their contents.
Similar action to block arms shipments to Israel has been taken by dockworkers in other European countries such as France, Sweden, and Greece.
Ravenna’s decision reflects growing mobilization in Italy against Israel‘s military campaign and in support of an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to the Palestinians.
A spokesperson from the Israeli embassy in Rome said they did not have sufficiently detailed information about the case and so declined to comment. Israel‘s government sometimes accuses Europea nations of bias against it and swallowing propaganda by the Hamas terrorist group whom it is fighting in Gaza.
On Friday Italy’s largest trade union body, the CGIL, will hold a national half-day strike and marches in Rome and other cities, while on Sept. 22 two other unions will halt work and try to block activity in the large ports of Genoa and Livorno.
“We won’t let a single pin through the port,” said Riccardo Rudino from the Calp dockers’ union in Genoa.
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
The CGIL said its protests were aimed at generating pressure on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government “to suspend all commercial and military cooperation agreements with Israel, lift the humanitarian embargo, and recognize the State of Palestine.”
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday Italy would support EU sanctions against violent Israeli settlers and Israeli ministers who have made “unacceptable” comments on Gaza and the West Bank, and was open to considering trade sanctions.