The High Holy Days of Judaism are customarily a time for reflection, resilience and resolution.
But those themes weighed heavier this year with the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel falling between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur.
“The confluence of events are moving,” said Steve Hunegs, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas,from the sanctuary of Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka on Monday.
In that sanctuary, a commemoration Monday night brought together about 1,200 people, matching the number killed in the Oct. 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history. Another 252 victims were taken hostage, of which, about 100 remain captive, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The evening was filled with those who spoke proudly of their Jewish heritage and resilience. They spoke of fighting antisemitism, caring for others and bringing the remaining hostages home. They spoke of the victims of the attack, of whom several dozen audience members at Adath Jeshurun knew personally.
“I pray tonight for empathy,” Rabbi Aaron Weininger said. “Each of us rightly seeks different things from this ceremony and will take it in different. We might recognize that the person sitting next to us has different fault lines than our own. That’s what it means to be a human being and to belong to a larger community.”
Commemorations and demonstrations over the Oct. 7 attack and the wider conflict surrounding it have unfolded across the Twin Cities area and the globe in recent days. On Sunday, hundreds of people marched through downtown Minneapolis in support of Palestinian freedom and in condemnation of Israel and its ally, the U.S., for the violence again Palestinians.
The attack by Hamas, an Islamist militant group, came after more than 56 years of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory. In the last year, devastation and loss have expanded through the region.
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