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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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Black Muslim Leaders Call on Supporters Not to Vote for Kamala Harris Due to Gaza, Israel Policy
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, US, Aug. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Erica Dischino
Black Muslim leaders across the United States are calling on their supporters to withhold their vote from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, accusing the incumbent US vice president of facilitating a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
In a letter published by the Middle East Eye on Monday, 50 black Muslim leaders called on members of their community to embrace the legacy of “black liberation” by only voting for candidates who support a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms blockade on Israel. The coalition of Muslim leaders urged their followers to reject the notion that Harris would be better on domestic issues and that a Donald Trump presidency would pose greater danger to Palestinians.
“As black Muslims, we also know that the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza is a war on Islam,” the letter read. “The Israeli government and its unhinged army of cowardly criminals have filmed themselves destroying mosques, burning Qurans, and slandering our sacred religious figures. The supremacist Israeli government has also destroyed churches and attacked the Palestinian Christian community.”
The black Muslim leaders condemned the Biden administration for supporting Israel’s defensive military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. The coalition also slammed Harris for not taking a more adversarial position against the Jewish state since she replaced US President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket.
“All of this has occurred under the watch of the Biden-Harris administration, which has provided steadfast military, financial, diplomatic, and rhetorical support for the Israeli government’s war crimes for four years, including at least $18 billion since the start of the genocide,” the group wrote.
The Muslim leaders lambasted Harris over her repeated refusals to implement an arms embargo against Israel. In recent months, anti-Israel activists have attempted to pressure Harris into agreeing to block weapons transfers to the Jewish state. In August, the her campaign released a statement denying any support for such a move and affirming Harris’s commitment to ensuring “Israel is able to defend itself.”
“Vice President Harris has explicitly opposed an arms embargo on the Israeli government even though US law requires it. She has refused to lay out any plan whatsoever to force [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal in Gaza that ends the genocide,” the letter stated. “She has validated the Israeli government’s efforts to spark a regional war with Iran, leading to instability in the region and the world at large. Just this week, she said that she would not have done anything differently than President Biden over the past four years.”
The coalition attempted to draw a parallel between the experience of black Americans and Palestinians, arguing that the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank are subject to brutal racial discrimination.
“As Muslims obliged to uphold justice and as black Americans whose ancestors experienced the worst of crimes, genocide must be our red line,” the letter added.
“There’s a false narrative that is being pushed that the majority of Muslims who are black are Kamala Harris supporters,” Imam Dawud Walid, a Muslim leader from Michigan, told the Middle East Eye. “There’s this narrative that is trying to divide the community to say that the majority of Muslims who aren’t black are supporting third party, but the majority of Muslims who are black are somehow divided from the rest of the community, and that’s not true.”
In the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election cycle, the Harris campaign has scrambled to coalesce support among Muslim voters. Despite aggressive overtures toward the Muslim American community, recent polls indicate that the vice president could experience a collapse of support among the demographic. Some polling data has shown Green Party nominee Jill Stein leading Harris among Muslim voters in the critical swing state of Michigan, while other polls show Harris and Trump tied with Muslim voters across battleground states.
Moreover, many Arab American leaders have continued to urge their community to withhold their votes from Harris, arguing that the Democratic party deserves “punishment” for supporting Israel. Groups such as “Abandon Harris” have encouraged Arab American voters to only throw their support behind anti-Israel candidates. Other groups such as the “Uncommitted Movement” have also pushed voters, especially in the Arab and Muslim communities, to refuse to cast a ballot in favor of Harris.
The post Black Muslim Leaders Call on Supporters Not to Vote for Kamala Harris Due to Gaza, Israel Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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On Simchat Torah, We Mourn — But Also Hope
In his 2016 book Essays on Ethics, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “A people that can know insecurity and still feel joy is one that can never be defeated, for its spirit can never be broken nor its hope destroyed.”
This year, as Simchat Torah draws near, we are painfully reminded that joy and suffering often coexist. While it is a staple of the human condition for Jews, this paradox echoes relentlessly throughout our history.
In the Diaspora, we will feel this contrast differently. Shmini Atzeret — a day marked by solemnity with Yizkor and the prayer for rain — falls on the anniversary of October 7th. Only the second evening transitions into the joy of Simchat Torah.
In Israel, however, the two days merge into one, with the solemnity of Shmini Atzeret intertwined with the joy of Simchat Torah. This year, embracing the usual high spirits will be incredibly challenging for Israelis. The weight of national grief hangs heavy; indeed, no Simchat Torah will ever be the same again.
When we danced with the Torahs last year, despite knowing that a terrible attack was unfolding, the full extent of the horror was not yet clear. It was only after Simchat Torah ended that the devastating truth began to emerge: 1,200 people tortured, murdered, and mutilated; families torn apart; and hostages dragged into Gaza.
In the months since, every painful detail has come to light, making it nearly impossible to embrace the unrestrained joy that typically defines Simchat Torah. How can we celebrate when every smile is shadowed by memory, and every song tinged with sorrow?
And yet, my late mother’s story comes to mind — her first Simchat Torah after the Holocaust, celebrated in the city of her birth: Rotterdam, Holland. It offers a profound lesson for us today.
My mother was born in 1941, a year after my grandparents married during the Nazi occupation. The Nazis invaded Holland in May 1940, and began deporting Jews to concentration camps in 1942.
Fearing for their lives, my grandparents went into hiding, spending more than two years in a cramped space behind a closet in the home of a gentile friend. My grandfather, active in the Dutch resistance, emerged only at night to carry out covert missions against the Nazis — knowing the risks but refusing to submit to despair.
Meanwhile, my mother was taken in by a Christian couple who raised her as their own, shielding her from the terrors outside. After the war, they returned her to her parents.
When the Nazis were defeated by the Allies in May 1945, Jewish life in Rotterdam began to re-emerge, although only a fraction of the community remained — 75% of Dutch Jewry, more than 100,000 people, had perished in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and other camps.
That fall, the synagogue reopened, and Simchat Torah was celebrated once more. The Torah scrolls my grandfather had hidden with gentile friends were retrieved. Miraculously, Rabbi Levie “Lou” Vorst, who had survived Bergen-Belsen and the infamous “Lost Train,” stood at the helm of the diminished community.
But the celebration was bittersweet. Almost everyone in the synagogue had lost parents, siblings, spouses, or children. My grandparents had lost their parents, siblings, and their second child, my uncle Yitzchak, who had died of malnutrition during the war.
And yet, they danced. Survivors — many without homes or families — clung to the Torah scrolls as if their lives depended on it. My mother, only four years old, stood quietly in the synagogue, receiving candy from weeping survivors. With each piece placed in her open mouth, the message was clear: the future must be sweet, even when the past has been unbearably bitter.
When she was born in 1941, during the Nazi occupation, her parents named my mother Miriam Chana, but they also added a third name: Tikva — hope. Naming her Tikva was a bold act of defiance and a statement of faith that they would live to see better days.
Many Dutch Jews from Rotterdam later made their way to Israel, realizing the ultimate Tikva—the dream of building a new life in the Jewish homeland.
Today, some of my mother’s friends from Rotterdam reside at Beth Juliana, a residential retirement complex in Herzliya for Dutch immigrants. But even there, the echoes of violence persist. Just two weeks ago, during Yom Kippur, a Hezbollah drone from Lebanon struck the building.
Though no one was injured, the drone destroyed an apartment filled with precious heirlooms and decades of memories. Miraculously, the resident had sought shelter moments before the impact — a stark reminder that even now, nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, the shadow of antisemitic hatred still looms over Israel.
As we mark the first anniversary of October 7th, I find myself returning to the image of those weeping survivors dancing with the Torahs in Rotterdam. If they could dance, surely we can too.
But just like them, our dancing this year will be different. Maybe it will be slower, or perhaps more enthusiastic — but whatever it is, it will be infused with memory, sorrow, and, most importantly, defiance. Our celebrations will not deny the pain but embrace it, just as my mother’s community did all those years ago.
The joy of Simchat Torah is not naïve happiness; it is the joy that comes from standing together, united in faith, knowing that despite everything, we are still here. Just as my grandparents emerged from hiding to rebuild, and just as the Torahs were salvaged from the ruins of Rotterdam, we too will lift the Torahs this Simchat Torah and say to our enemies: We are still here.
And we will hope. For without hope, there is no future. My grandparents named their daughter Tikva, believing in a day when evil would be defeated. We, too, must carry the torch of hope into the future. We will dance, and we will cry.
But above all, we will hope. Because even after the darkest of nights, the sun will rise again. And when it does, we will be ready to rebuild — one dance step at a time.
The post On Simchat Torah, We Mourn — But Also Hope first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany’s Eurovision Contestant Calls Out ‘So Much Hate’ Against Israeli Singer Eden Golan During Competition
The representative of Germany Isaak at the Eurovision Song Cotest entering the main stage on May 11, 2024 in Malmo, Sweden. Photo: Sanjin Strukic/PIXSELL/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Germany’s representative in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest shared his thoughts in a recent interview about the hatred and booing that Israeli singer Eden Golan received while competing on behalf of Israel in the international competition earlier this year.
“I can definitely understand why everyone was booing, but I think the Eurovision Song Contest says we are all ‘united by music’ and I didn’t see no unity,” German singer Isaak, 29, said in an interview with Irish blogger allthingsadam.ie, referring to the official slogan of the Eurovision competition. He further said of Golan: “It’s a young musician performing quite well and everyone f—ked her off. There was so much hate in this room, and hate shouldn’t be a place in the Eurovision Song Contest.”
Isaak finished in 12th place in the Eurovision finals this year in Malmo, Sweden, while Golan finished in fifth. The Israeli singer competed with a song called “Hurricane,” a reworded version of her original song “October Rain,” which was disqualified for being too political since it referenced the Hamas massacre in Israel that took place on Oct. 7, 2023.
Golan made it to the top five of the Eurovision contest despite being booed on stage by anti-Israel audience members, facing death threats, and having a Eurovision jury member refuse to give her points because of his personal feelings against Israel’s military actions during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Golan also said she had to conceal her identity outside her hotel room in Malmo because of the threats she received from anti-Israel activists angry about the Jewish state’s participation in the contest.
Isaak told Irish blogger allthingsadam.ie that he believes Golan was bullied during the competition. He then criticized people for wrongfully targeting Golan with hatred when they have issues with the state of Israel but not the singer herself. The German singer then said the animosity was misguided and it was wrong for Golan to face such abuse just for her affiliation with Israel. He said a personal experience like what Golan faced can deeply scar a musician
“Do you know how young she is?” Isaak asked about the 21-year-old Israeli singer. “This is your life goal and you wanna be part of Eurovision Song Contest and you’re going on that stage … just image Germany f—ks up in some point. And I’m German and I wanna be part of the Eurovision. And I’m just a random musician, I just wanna show them my music. I’m not the f—k president. I’m just a random musician, I just wanna make a small kid’s dream come true. And then I go on that stage and no matter how good I am, no matter how f—k amazing I can sing, the people just see my country and they just boo me out. I think that would be the most terrible thing that could maybe ever happen to me. I think that can definitely leave scars.”
Isaak also talked in the interview about his experience backstage with the other singers at the Eurovision competition. “You didn’t really have that feeling [that] we are all ‘united by music.’ It was a little bit sad behind the stage, that’s what I think. There could have been more love, more connectivity, and more passion,” he said.
The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Basel, Switzerland, in May. Bakel Walden, chairman of the Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group, discussed in a recent interview with Swiss media some changes to next year’s competition. He said the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the competition, “will pay more attention” to the well-being of artists in the future and stated that it is vital for the competition to maintain political neutrality. He insisted that “antisemitism has no place at the ESC.”
“The ESC stands for freedom of expression. The artists can comment on anything and also demonstrate in front of the hall. But on stage you need certain rules,” he said. “We want an ESC in which everyone puts their heart and soul into it. We cannot solve the many wars and conflicts in the world during the ESC. But it is a strong statement if we treat each other fairly, peacefully, and respectfully.”‘
Walden added that for next year’s competition the EBU will also have a crisis management team and “retreat rooms” for artists to relax where there will be no filming allowed.
The post Germany’s Eurovision Contestant Calls Out ‘So Much Hate’ Against Israeli Singer Eden Golan During Competition first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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