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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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The post ‘I just felt this urgency’: For some, Oct. 7 fueled a renewed dedication to becoming Jewish appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Hamas Confirms Death of Terror Chief Mohammed Deif Months After Israeli Strike
Picture said to show leader of Hamas’s military wing, known as Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif in a location given as Gaza Strip in this handout picture released on Jan. 7, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas officially confirmed on Thursday that its military chief, Mohammed Deif, was killed during the Gaza war, almost six months after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported his death.
Deif, the architect of Hamas’s military capabilities, is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — which sparked the Gaza war.
Abu Ubaida, a Hamas spokesperson, also reported the deaths of Deif’s deputy, Khan Younis Brigade commander Rafa Salama, as well as senior operatives Marwan Issa, Ghazi Abu Tama’a, Raad Thabet, Ahmed Ghandour, and Ayman Nofal.
According to the IDF, Deif was killed in an airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on July 13 of last year.
Following weeks of intelligence assessments, Israeli authorities gathered evidence to confirm Deif’s death before publicly announcing it in early August.
“IDF fighter jets struck in the area of Khan Yunis, and … it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated in the strike,” the military said. “His elimination serves the objectives of the war and demonstrates Israel’s ability to carry out targeted strikes with precision.”
At the time, Hamas neither confirmed nor denied Deif’s death, but one official, Ezzat Rashaq, stated that any announcements regarding the deaths of its leaders would be made solely by the organization.
“Unless either of them [the Hamas political and military leadership] announces it, no news published in the media or by any other parties can be confirmed,” Rashaq said.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Deif, as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Deif is believed to have collaborated closely with the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, managing military operations and coordinating with the group’s top commanders throughout the conflict.
After Deif’s assassination, then-defense minister Gallant posted an image on social media praising the Israeli military’s accomplishment.
“The assassination of mass murderer Mohammed Deif — ‘Gaza’s Bin Laden’ — is a major step toward dismantling Hamas as a military and governing entity, and achieving the war’s objectives,” he said.
The post Hamas Confirms Death of Terror Chief Mohammed Deif Months After Israeli Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘A Bad but Necessary Deal’: Five Members of His Family Were Murdered — Today, Their Killer Walks Free
Oran Almog, right, addressing the UN Security Council next to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon on July 25, 2017. Photo: Screenshot
While the release of three Israeli hostages on Thursday brought relief and elation across Israel, it also triggered a wave of mixed emotions, especially among victims who saw the terrorists responsible for their suffering set free. One of them is Oran Almog, who was just ten years old when a Palestinian terrorist disguised as a pregnant woman blew up the restaurant he was in, killing five members of his family and leaving him blind.
Yet, while Thursday’s release of Sami Jaradat — the mastermind behind the October 2003 massacre of Almog’s family — was a deeply personal blow, the return of hostages remained a necessary step, he said.
“That the terrorist who killed my family will find himself free is deeply painful, heartbreaking even,” he told The Algemeiner. “But at the same time, I know that even today — especially today — I must set aside my personal pain and focus on the significance of this deal. And the significance is clear. We are getting our hostages home, and that is the only thing that matters.”
Almog’s father, Moshe Almog, his younger brother, Tomer, his grandparents Admiral (res.) Ze’ev and Ruth Almog, and his cousin, Asaf, were murdered when the suicide bomber, Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, managed to get past the security guard of the Maxim restaurant — jointly owned by a Jewish Israeli and an Arab Israeli — and blow herself up. Sixteen other people were also murdered in the attack, among them four children. Almog lost his eyesight, and his mother, sister, and aunt were among the 60 injured Israelis.
“Sami Jaradat’s continued imprisonment will never bring my family back, but his release can bring the hostages back home alive,” Almog explained.
Emotional meeting between Agam Berger and her family at Beilinson Hospital in Israel. Photo: Haim Zach (GPO)
Almog knows firsthand what it means to be on the receiving end of a hostage-prisoner exchange.
Just two weeks after marking the 20th anniversary of the Maxim restaurant attack, another tragedy struck his family. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered Nadav and Yam and abducted Chen, Agam, Gal, and Tal from the Almog-Goldstein family in Kfar Azza.
Fifty-one days later, in November 2023, they were released from Hamas captivity in a temporary ceasefire deal.
Under the current ceasefire agreement reached earlier this month, Hamas will release a total 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, according to the terrorist group. In exchange, Israel will free over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were serving multiple life sentences on terrorism offenses. Thursday saw the release of three Israelis — including IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger, 20, and civilians Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80 — and five Thai nationals, who were working in Israeli kibbutzim when they were abducted.
“This is a bad deal, very bad, but the alternative is that much worse,” Almog said. “We must look ahead, put today aside, and recognize that releasing prisoners serves a greater purpose.”
However, Almog expressed hope that Israel would move toward a more decisive and uncompromising approach in its fight against terrorism.
“I sincerely hope that as a country, we will have the wisdom to decisively thwart terrorism,” he said, emphasizing the need to break free from the ongoing cycle of prisoner exchanges.
“I don’t want us to find ourselves trapped in a cycle of releasing terrorists, only for them to return to terror, and then repeat the process again and again,” he added.
Almog has previously addressed the UN Security Council, urging action against the so-called “pay-for-slay” scheme, in which terrorists and their families receive monthly stipends from the Palestinian Authority. The terrorist behind the murder of Almog’s family received $3,000 a month while behind bars, making him almost a millionaire by the time of his release.
Still, Almog concluded with a deeply uplifting message for the returning hostages, confident that they would have a chance at a good life, drawing from his own experiences since the terror attack.
Oran Almog. Photo: Facebook
After his release from the hospital, he began a long rehabilitation process, culminating in third place at the World Blind Sailing Championship with Etgarim, a nonprofit founded by disabled veterans and rehabilitation experts, and supported by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). He was chosen to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the state and, despite his disability, insisted on enlisting in the IDF, serving in an elite unit. Today, he is a managing partner at a financial technology fund, works with Etgarim, and shares his story globally through lectures.
“I know the hostages will be able to return, to live, and to live well. With enough support — and a great deal of willpower — it is truly possible to rebuild life, even after the deepest catastrophes,” he said.
The post ‘A Bad but Necessary Deal’: Five Members of His Family Were Murdered — Today, Their Killer Walks Free first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pro-Israel Lawmaker Randy Fine Wins Florida GOP Primary, Favorite to Replace Trump Adviser Mike Waltz in Congress
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine. Photo: Reuters
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine emerged victorious on Tuesday in the Republican primary election for the Sunshine State’s 6th Congressional District in the US Congress, making the firebrand conservative the overwhelming favorite to secure the highly-coveted seat to replace now-former Rep. Mike Waltz.
The congressional seat became vacant after Waltz stepped down to become the national security adviser for US President Donald Trump in the White House. Waltz had managed to secure reelection in November with 66 percent of the vote.
Fine, who is Jewish, has established himself as a stalwart ally of Israel. In the year following the Hamas-led slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages during a cross-border invasion into southern Israel, Fine has spearheaded efforts to uproot antisemitism within the state of Florida.
In August 2024, he chided Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for taking a trip to Ireland, repudiating the country as “antisemitic.”
“I was certainly disappointed to see not only folks go to what is clearly an antisemitic country that supports Muslim terror, but I was also disappointed that the game wasn’t cancelled, which it should have been,” Fine said.
Ireland has been a fierce critic of Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, even joining a legal case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The move, which came after the Irish government in May officially recognized a Palestinian state, led Israel to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
In August 2024, Fine launched an investigation into alleged antisemitic and pro-terrorist ideology within instructional materials at Florida public universities. Fine suggested that activist professors were using textbooks that were indoctrinating students with anti-Israel sentiment.
“When we learned that Florida universities were using a factually inaccurate, openly antisemitic textbook, we realized there was a problem that had to be addressed,” Fine said.
Following the New Year’s Day ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New Orleans, Fine raised eyebrows by repudiating Islam as a “fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”
“Muslim terror has attacked the United States — again. The blood is on the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge the worldwide #MuslimProblem. It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture,” Fine posted on X/Twitter.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US congratulated Fine for his primary victory on Tuesday.
“We are proud to support pro-Israel candidates who help strengthen and expand the US-Israel relationship. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics,” AIPAC, which endorsed Fine, posted on social media.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), an organization that attempts to forge closer ties between the Jewish community and the Republican Party, touted Fine’s vigorous crusade against antisemitism within the Florida state legislature.
“Randy Fine is a warrior for his constituents and has served for years in the Florida legislature with distinction,” RJC wrote on X/Twitter. “Randy Fine will be a fierce advocate for the Jewish community in the House of Representatives. Importantly, he has led the fight and been the loudest voice against the rise of antisemitism in Florida and across the country.”
The post Pro-Israel Lawmaker Randy Fine Wins Florida GOP Primary, Favorite to Replace Trump Adviser Mike Waltz in Congress first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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