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‘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.”
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.