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30 days after Oct. 7, a Jewish world wracked by grief is marking a traditional milestone of mourning

(JTA) — A wide array of events and experiences are planned to mark the 30-day threshold since the Oct. 7 massacre that killed 1,400 Israelis — even though many of their loved ones have yet to reach that point in the Jewish grieving process.

The 30-day mark after death is a meaningful moment in the Jewish calendar of grief. It is when a secondary period of ritual mourning – following shiva, which lasts for seven days beginning with burial — is lifted for anyone who has lost a spouse, sibling or child. (People who have lost a parent mourn for a whole year.)

During the period, known as shloshim, mourners are prohibited from some activities, such as cutting their hair, listening to music, and attending religious celebrations and social events, but they are permitted to resume many personal and professional activities. The idea, according to the tradition, is to help mourners ease back into their communities.

“Judaism acknowledges that grief isn’t linear, and shloshim is really part of that framework,” said Sarit Wishnevski, head of Kavod v’Nichum, a nonprofit that supports progressive and pluralistic Jewish burial societies in North America. “Tradition gives us a roadmap about how to proceed at a time when there is no clear path forward.”

Kavod v’Nichum is holding a 30-minute Zoom vigil on Sunday evening aimed at letting community members share their grief and pain and drawing on each other as they prepare to enter the next phase of the grieving process. The group’s shloshim gathering joins others held by groups ranging from major Israeli organizations, which streamed a ceremony from Jerusalem on Sunday, to local Jewish federations to individual synagogues and communities around the world.

The gatherings are complicated by the fact that the communal loss does not line up with the timelines of many of the families of those who died. Burials in many cases did not happen on the swift timeline prescribed by Judaism, because of the dangers and difficulties in retrieving their bodies. The remains of some victims are still being identified. As recently as last week, someone died of injuries sustained on Oct. 7.

Yet even though the 30-day mark is unlikely to be the moment when any mourners are relieved of their proscriptions under Jewish law, it makes sense as a time to mark a communal shift, according to Rabbi Menachem Creditor, the rabbi in residence at UJA-Federation of New York, which like other Jewish federations around the country is planning a vigil to mark shloshim.

“This is uncharted territory. Not since the Shoah have we had to deal with this massive scale of grief,” Creditor said. “And we need each other so deeply that coming together even if some of the language doesn’t fit every part of our pain is essential and healthy.”

UJA-Federation’s event in Central Park on Monday night will feature Israeli musicians alongside local Jewish and elected officials. A host of similar events held by Jewish federations and branches of the Israeli consulate across the United States will offer a range of programming, for example a reading of names of those murdered and held hostage in St. Louis and a speech by survivors of the massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza in Los Angeles.

Other initiatives are also underway to mark shloshim. The American Zionist Movement is urging Jews to wear blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, on Monday. On Monday at the Western Wall, 1,400 candles will be lit in honor of the victims, according to a report in Hamodia, an Orthodox news outlet. The And on social media, people have begun sharing pictures of the memorial candles that they are lighting to mark the moment.

Today marks the Shloshim (30 days) since the barbaric Hamas pogrom. I light this candle in memory of those murdered while also thinking of those still held hostage and those recovering from their injuries #the_light_will_overcome pic.twitter.com/qkhxL23pAg

— Russell Langer (@R_Langer) November 5, 2023

Some Jews have taken on the mourning rituals of the shloshim period despite not being obligated to under Jewish law, in part because at least some of the people killed on Oct. 7 left behind no one to mourn for them.

“My wife Tami and I decided, when we learned how many of the dead from the October 7th attack were complete families and therefore wouldn’t have a kaddishel (someone obligated to say kaddish for them), we vowed that we would observe shloshim for them,” Rabbi Jeffrey Arnowitz of Westchester Jewish Center said in a blog post about his trip to Israel last week, in which he and other Conservative rabbis from the United States were the first civilian group to visit Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than a quarter of residents were killed or abducted.

“If you’ve noticed me looking a bit scruffy lately, that’s why,” Arnowitz wrote. “The truth is I have been grieving like a mourner and the ritual has helped me move through the last four weeks as I get used to a world that looks and feels different than it did on October 6th.”

Marking shloshim does not take away from the pain that is deeply felt across the Jewish world right now, said Wishnevski, whose own cousin’s husband, Sagui Dekel-Chen, disappeared from his kibbutz on Oct. 7 and is thought to be held hostage in Gaza.

“We need to be able to continue living our lives and being with our families and doing our work and being in the world,” she said. “We’re not forgetting. We’re not leaving anything behind. But we’re marking time together.”


The post 30 days after Oct. 7, a Jewish world wracked by grief is marking a traditional milestone of mourning appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation

A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect

As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.

The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.

On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”

“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.

The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”

Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.

In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”

Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.

Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.

Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”

Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.

In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.

Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.

“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.

In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.

Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.

Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.

However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.

This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.

Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.

The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.

The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.

“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”

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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect

The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.

On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.

This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.

Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.

According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.

While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.

In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.

“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.

“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.

This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.

The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.

For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.

Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.

Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”

“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”

Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.

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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says

Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.

“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”

NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”

The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.

“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”

July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.

In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.

That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.

“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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