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How ‘holding space’ became a post-Oct. 7 mantra of grief and comfort
As Sukkot and the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks approached, I received separate emails from two different Jewish organizations with what to me was an unfamiliar use of the word “holding.”
The first, from the progressive group New Jewish Narrative, had the subject line “Holding complexity on October 7th.”
The second, from the women’s educational group Svivah, read, “Holding Their Light, Holding Our Loss.”
In each case, I could imagine a synonym that might work just as well, like “offering” or “providing” nuance, or “remembering” their light and “mourning” our loss.
But I trusted both organizations in their use of language, and I’m glad I did. It turns out the term “holding” has become widespread among many Jewish writers and activists, usually in therapeutic or comforting contexts.
I also found out that I’m late to the “holding” party, and that the term sort of blew up last year when two Hollywood stars used the expression in a video that went viral.
When Jewish writers use “holding” this way, it means something like “to leave room for,” the way a good friend or therapist indulges your feelings without trying to contradict or explain them away.
“How do we talk about October 7th? How do we share everyone’s grief and also hold how isolating and scary it has been?” Svivah wrote, in an email promoting an event marking the two-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks. “ “How do we hold the enormity of the loss — knowing that each and every life lost was a whole world?”
“Holding” in this sense is usually followed by “space,” as in this recent message from Hillel International ahead of Sukkot:
This year, as the holiday overlaps with the two-year commemoration of the October 7 attacks, may we enter the sukkah holding space for both joy and grief, honoring the victims and their families while embracing traditions that root us in resilience.
The term “holding space” as it is understood today was popularized by Canadian writer and facilitator Heather Plett in a 2015 blog post. Plett defined it to Psychology Today as “being willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on, without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome.”
Since then, “holding space” has become a common term in therapeutic, coaching and spiritual communities, emphasizing the importance of being present and supportive.
It’s also the definition that launched a thousand memes. Late last year, “Wicked” stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were being interviewed by journalist Tracey E. Gilchrist, who told Erivo that “people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that, and feeling power in that.” Fans and haters couldn’t get enough of the two stars’ deeply emotional response.
I apparently missed the “holding space” hullabaloo that followed, but the phrase apparently triggered people inclined to dismiss therapy-speak as jargony, cloying or imprecise.
Despite the mockery, “holding space” has become useful, especially at a time of deep political and cultural polarization, and particularly in a Jewish world still reeling from the attacks, the war and a rise in antisemitism.
Rabbis and other Jewish influentials using the term suggest that people are hungry for settings where they can express their feelings without rancor. That hunger has only increased with the trauma that followed Oct. 7, when many Jews felt isolated and unable to express their grief in public, and wary of airing their political views even in Jewish settings.
Last year, one year after the attacks, Sarah Sokolic, the co-founder and executive director of Lab/Shul, told JTA how her New York-based congregation planned to negotiate its political divides on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7.
“We have community members that span the spectrum of Zionist, anti-Zionist, and every nuance in between, and holding nuance and holding space for both … is something that we’ve really leaned into,” Sokolic said.
Similarly, the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies is holding a series of monthly online seminars for Jewish professionals called “Holding Space.” In announcing the series over the summer, NJHSA said it was in response to the war in the Middle East, but also to the upheavals surrounding political violence, anti-Israel protests around the country and immigration raids that “are compounding widespread anxiety and fear.”
“[A]mid this turmoil, the demands of leadership, caregiving, and showing up for others remain relentless,” it explained, “That’s why The Network is reaffirming its commitment to holding space for you — to pause, connect, reflect, and support one another.”
In February, after the bodies of hostages Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned to Israel for burial, Rabbi Chaya Bender of Bnai Israel Congregation in Wilmington, Delaware offered her own take on “holding space” as the congregation dealt with its emotions.
“This past Saturday, I spoke about holding space for horror,” she said in a sermon. “When emotions are so large, and are so raw, the only thing that one can do is to pause and to allow the feelings to flow. In the aftershock of horror, of tremendous loss, it is not the time to act. After the initial shock waves have subsided and grief begins to become true mourning, that is one when can act.”
The second anniversary of the attacks coincides with the first day of Sukkot, a holiday in which Jews move out of their comfortable homes and eat and sleep in temporary booths set up in their backyards, balconies and communal spaces. For some, it is a holiday about hospitality — having friends and relatives over for a meal, and even inviting biblical forebears, known as “ushpizin,” to take a symbolic seat at the table.
On Sukkot, “holding space” is both literal and metaphorical.
On the first day of the holiday, the Hostages Families and Survivors Forum planned to gather in front of the White House in a “Sukkah of Hope.” With talk of a peace agreement in the air, the group announced, “We’ll honor those we lost, hold space for the 48 hostages still in Gaza, and continue the fight to bring them home.”
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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
The post PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors appeared first on The Forward.
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Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide
(JTA) — The Church of England’s legislative body voted Monday to encourage churches across England to engage with a document produced by Palestinian Christians that accuses Israel of genocide despite requests from Jewish organizations and Britain’s chief rabbi to reject it.
The document is titled “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” and is also known as Kairos II, after the Palestinian Christian movement Kairos Palestine that produced it. It describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide, states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism,” and says decades of “occupation,” “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The vote on Monday does not adopt the accusations as church doctrine but says the church should hear the documents as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians,” and to engage with them in order to better understand the conflict.
Ahead of the debate in York, several Jewish organizations expressed concerns, and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis asked Synod members to reject the amendment. Mirvis called Kairos II “deeply concerning” and that it “risks undermining decades of careful relationship-building” between Christians and Jews.
“It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood,” he said.
Afterwards, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, issued a statement calling the passage of the motion “highly problematic.”
“Kairos Palestine may come from a place of genuine pain, but the falsehoods and distortions of Kairos II, including its erasure of Jewish identity and experience, is a prescription for more division and not the answer to conflict in the Middle East,” he said.
“This document reflects the pain and trauma of the Palestinian people. As a pastor, I hear the cry of our Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers — a cry that rises from the ruins of Gaza, and from the violence and oppression of the West Bank,” she said.
She added, ”I also hear the concerns of the chief rabbi, the co-leads of the Movement for Progressive Judaism, and the Board of Deputies, and I thank them for their honesty.” She said the church remained opposed to antisemitism and committed to safety for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
The Synod debate followed Mullally’s visit to the West Bank in June, where she met Palestinian Christian communities in Birzeit. During the visit she said, “I will use my role as Archbishop to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve.”
The debate marks the ascendance of Israel-related issues in another major church, after the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV angered Jewish groups soon after being elected last year by endorsing an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
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Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown
(JTA) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has weighed in against antisemitism after officials in his Indiana town say a costly fire may have been caused by arson to an Israeli flag displayed on a local barn.
The alleged arson broke out early Friday morning, damaging a historic home in Zionsville, Indiana, where Pence lives, and causing an estimated $150,000 in damages, according to the Zionsville Police Department.
Zionsville Mayor John Stehr said during a press conference on Friday that officials believed the fire began when an individual set fire to an Israeli flag that had been displayed outside the building alongside an American flag. The town later announced that the FBI had joined the investigation and that officials were examining whether the arson “may have been motivated by bias” but said no determination had been made.
“Absolutely despicable,” Pence tweeted on Sunday. “There can be no tolerance in America for Antisemitism or political acts of violence, and it is heartbreaking to see in our adopted hometown of Zionsville, Indiana. We thank God no one was hurt and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”
Pence has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, including after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, and has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism in the conservative movement and beyond.
Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks also condemned the alleged arson in a post on X Saturday. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated. Not in Zionsville. Not in Indiana. Not anywhere,” Banks wrote. “Thank you to the federal, state, and local officials working to bring the perpetrators of this despicable arson attack to justice.”
On Sunday, the Jewish community in central Indiana hosted a rally condemning the alleged arson attack, chanting, “We will stand up,” according to local outlet Fox 59. While Zionsville does not have a large Jewish community of its own, other suburbs of Indianapolis have significant Jewish populations, and Zionsville is also the longtime home of a Reform movement summer camp, the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is in session now.
“The founding fathers founded a country where we have the ability to resolve differences among each other; we don’t do it by firebombing homes,” rally organizer David Schiller told Fox 59. “It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.”
The Zionsville Police Department did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the status of the investigation on Monday.
The post Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown appeared first on The Forward.
