Days after the devastating terrorist attacks in Israel, about 800 people gathered at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue (SWFS) on the Upper West Side Wednesday for a communal gathering in unwavering solidarity to comfort each other and demand justice.
On Oct. 7, the militant terror group Hamas shocked Israel and the world when it invaded Israeli towns, kidnapping and killing unassuming Israelis celebrating Simchat Torah and firing a barrage of rockets at Israeli cities.
So far, more than 1,300 people have been killed, and another 3,300 injured. Some 200 Jews, including children and 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yaffa Adar, were captured by Hamas terrorists and taken to the Gaza Strip.
The bloodshed hit close to home for many in New York City, which has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel.
In his address to the congregation, SWFS Senior Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch said it was a “sad, devastating week for the Jewish people and all decent people who value life.”
“We lost more Jews in one day this week, the Shabbat of Simchat Torah, than any other time since the Holocaust,” Hirsch said. “On no day, from the end of World War II, have more Jews been murdered. Jewish history will remember this week forever.”
Hirsch compared the massacre on Oct. 7 to Kristallnacht in November 1938, when Nazis destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses around Germany; some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
“We saw in vivid reality what a pogrom looks like,” Hirsch said. “Mass mayhem and murder. Make no mistake, Israeli civilians were massacred because they were Jews.”
Hirsch said the days of murdering and massacring Jews without consequences were over. Since the attack, Israel has been intensifying its response after the terrorist attacks, preparing for a ground assault in Gaza.
“We will be masters of our own fate,” Hirsch said.
Addressing non-Jews, Hirsch asked them if they knew what Saturday’s massacre, 80 years after the Holocaust, when six million European Jews were killed, did to Jewish people.
“To see, once again, 80 years later, Jews massacred in their homes. Jews taken hostage, Jews dragged onto the streets, beaten, and raped. Mutilated corpses paraded in public squares while delirious crowds [inaudible] their crazed approval,” Hirsch described the horrific scenes many witnessed on television and social media.
“This is not freedom fighting, this is not resistance,” Hirsch said. “It is war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Hirsch said everyone who whitewashed, apologized or defended the “repugnant degeneracy,” whether on college campuses, in the halls of Congress, or the media, was morally responsible and compromised.
“You’ll see it on the streets of Europe and throughout the West. They can’t even bring themselves to say the right words,” Hirsch said. “They call it militancy or grievance, or violence, or some other morally empty phrase. And soon ‘whataboutism’ and words like disproportionate will begin to creep into the discussion.”
“How’s this for proportionality?” Hirsch asked. “Don’t attack Israel, and Israel won’t attack you.”
The depth of horror
Deputy and Acting Consul General of Israel in New York Tsach Saar extended his heartfelt gratitude to the American Jewish community and acknowledged President Biden and elected officials for their support.
Saar said given the level of brutality, Hamas was worse than ISIS.
“The horrifying images emerging from the region; they’re a testament to the magnitude of this horror,” Saar said and warned that the terror attacks on Israel were an attack on the values of the free world and humanity.
Saar also addressed the rise in anti-semitism, urging Jews to stay vigilant.
“While there are vocal factions advocating terror and the harm of innocence, their noise is drowned by the enormous wave of support for Israel,” Saar said. “Yet the rise in antisemitic incidents and attacks on Jews intensified by the ongoing conflict is deeply concerning.”
Iris Goodgold said she was shaken to the core and devastated when she learned about the attacks.
“There’s nothing here than barbaric,” Goodgold said. “I fear for the women [who are held] captive. Those are young girls, young women, they’re 20 to 25. [Hamas] have already shown what they’ve done to them.”
Ariel Gold attended the gathering with her mother, Nina Mogilnik.
Ariel Gold, a college student, was frustrated with the volatile atmosphere on college campuses, having to explain to her fellow students that there was no justification for mass murder. Gold attended the gathering not only as a Jew but as someone who wants peace for everyone involved.
“I have friends and family in Israel who are being sent to the frontlines. We’re experiencing this war firsthand,” Gold said. “And I just want people to know that Israelis suffering, Palestinian suffering, it’s all just human suffering.”
Her mother, Nina Mogilnik, is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She said she was heartbroken and tried to avoid the details of the terror attack while “feverishly trying to find ways to help.”
“The idea that people are butchering babies again, and ripping fetuses out of pregnant women and gunning down elderly is just, it’s just too much,” Mogilnik said. “And I have family who just want to live their lives like the rest of us, and they’re never given that chance.”
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