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In Israel, a struggle to reconcile grief and joy as Sukkot and Oct. 7 coincide
(JTA) — On the second anniversary of the Hamas massacre, Israelis grappled with how to mark the date which overlapped with the first day of Sukkot, when Jewish tradition requires festivity.
The government postponed official remembrances until the day after the Simchat Torah holiday that bookends Sukkot rather than the Gregorian anniversary. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under fire for initially failing to acknowledge Oct. 7 directly, writing a social media post that read simply “Happy Sukkot.”
The convergence of the festival’s religiously required joy with the memory of mass death set off a broader debate over whether celebration and grief could coexist. Some religious leaders and community groups, including the Reform movement, urged weaving remembrance into holiday rituals — lighting candles, reading names, adding prayers for the fallen — while others argued that Sukkot’s happiness should remain intact, with official mourning deferred.
Some Israelis traveled south to visit sites of the attacks, including at official memorials at some of the kibbutzes that were devastated on Oct. 7, but larger crowds were expected on Wednesday, the first of the intermediary days of Sukkot. Travel is prohibited on the first day for those who adhere to traditional interpretations of Jewish law.
Even among the bereaved, observance varied. British-Israeli Gaby Young Shalev, whose younger brother Nathanel Young, a soldier, was killed in action on Oct. 7, said her family chose to celebrate the festival with friends and relatives before turning to commemoration.
“I tried not to think about the fact that it’s Oct. 7. Because I really think it’s important that we don’t let these atrocities of Oct. 7 ruin our chagim,” she said, using the Hebrew word for Jewish festivals.
But once the holiday day ended on Tuesday evening, Young, her parents and sister Miriam went to Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park for the Oct. 7 memorial organized by Kumu (“Rise Up”), an initiative set up by families of victims and hostages as a counterpoint to the official state ceremony.
The event was livestreamed globally and screened simultaneously at Hostages Square. It opened with released hostage Agam Berger performing the theme from “Schindler’s List” on violin. Between speeches from hostage relatives, bereaved families and released captives, well-known Israeli musicians performed on a stage that was a tableau of symbols: a burned-out car like those destroyed along the Gaza border, encircled by red crown anemones — the national flower and an emblem of remembrance — a bullet-riddled bomb shelter, and 48 suspended yellow chairs representing each hostage still in Gaza.
Singer Yuval Rafael, who survived the Nova festival massacre and later represented Israel at Eurovision, sang with Daniel Weiss, whose parents were murdered by Hamas. Zvi Zussman, father of Maj. Gen. (res.) Ben Zussman, killed in December 2023, recited the Yizkor prayer, while Elchanan Danino, whose son Ori was kidnapped and later murdered in captivity, recited the Mourner’s Kaddish.
Eurovision contestant Eden Golan addressed the livestream in English, saying the nation “had been holding its breath” for two years and calling for the release of the 48 hostages still held in Gaza. She performed “I’m Coming Home” as images of hostages filled the screen behind her. The crowd erupted in chants of “Everyone, Now,” the slogan that has become shorthand for demanding their return.
Unlike last year, the memorial was open to the general public and drew an estimated 30,000 people. In 2024, 50,000 tickets had been reserved by the public but organizers were forced to curtail attendance to the press and victims’ families amid security threats. For Young, the crowd’s size this year conveyed a collective response beyond those most directly affected.
“It’s a reminder that it’s not just about the bereaved families or the families of hostages,” she said. “The whole country is mourning.”
At last year’s memorial, Young told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was the first time her brother’s death had truly sunk in. In the months before, she said, her family’s grief had been buffered by “happy” distractions — the birth of her twins, her parents’ aliyah from the United Kingdom, and the flurry of projects created in Nathanel’s memory. But as another year passed and she returned to the same spot this October, the sense of loss felt sharper. The passage of time, she said on Tuesday, had made his absence harder, not easier.
“We realize that Nathanel’s not just on a long holiday, but that he’s not actually coming back,” she said. The release last month of the army’s year-long investigation into what happened on his base that morning, she added, made the loss feel newly immediate. Still, “we live life with a lot of purpose,” she said. “We keep his spirit alive by asking, even in the most everyday situations, what would Nat do?”
Young said she resonated deeply with an image shared on stage by fellow bereaved speaker Tomer Zak, whose parents and younger brother were killed in the attacks. Zak compared herself to a tree that had lost its leaves but whose roots remained strong. For Young, the metaphor captured the tension between devastation and resilience.
“When other people look at it from the outside they’re like, how can this person continue with their lives? But the memory and the light from the person we lost, from Nathanel, makes us keep going, makes us stronger. It gives us these magic powers — you basically want to do all these things for them,” she said.
To that end, the family have set up a memorial fund in his name to support projects for youth at risk, including young people with ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence, reflecting what she described as Nathanel’s determination to overcome his own setbacks in life and help others do the same.
A few miles east in Bnei Brak, the atmosphere was strikingly different. Late at night, Hasidic music blasted from the Beit Hashem synagogue during a simchat beit hashoeva — a Sukkot celebration where worshippers dance and play music late into the night during the holiday’s midweek nights. Men in fur streimels streamed inside while children chased one another through the narrow alleys.
Asked about the tension between celebration and mourning, several attendees said they were unaware the Gregorian anniversary of Oct. 7 had arrived. Down the road, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement had erected a roadside sukkah draped with yellow Mashiach flags — contrasting with the yellow hostage ribbons ubiquitous at the Tel Aviv memorial — and were handing cotton candy to children.
Yossi, one of the Chabad volunteers, said the date did not change their message. “We pray every day for the return of the hostages and the safe return of the soldiers. In all our daily prayers and also when we read from the Torah,” he said.
A woman in a tank top said that despite identifying herself as secular, the attack’s timing would fix the memory to the Hebrew calendar. “I can’t separate from the fact that it happened on Shabbat and also such a joyous festival — Simchat Torah. [Hamas] took that from us forever.”
In Holon, south of Tel Aviv, Eyal Golan spent the day at home. His youngest sister Shirel, a Nova festival survivor, died by suicide shortly before the first anniversary of the attacks. He could not bring himself to attend a memorial, he said, but added that looking after his two small daughters, the youngest of whom is a newborn, took precedence.
“The mental is affecting the physical,” he said of the migraines he was suffering. “I felt a sense of emptiness all day and I struggled with my own PTSD just to function.”
As the event in the Yarkon Park wrapped up, the crowd stood to sing Israel’s national anthem. For Young, the moment tied mourning to resolve. “It’s a collective grief but also a collective hope, that’s how I felt at the end of ‘Hatikvah.’ Yes, we are all grieving, but there’s something with Am Yisrael, with the Jewish people and with Israeli people. We keep going.”
The post In Israel, a struggle to reconcile grief and joy as Sukkot and Oct. 7 coincide appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
