Under heavily armed guard on the so-called Day of Rage, October 13, 2023, we attended Shabbat dinner in Prague where we marked the first sabbath since 10/7 with people from across the world – predominantly but not exclusively Jewish people from the Czech Republic, Israel, Yemen and the United States. In the midst of singing and celebration we acknowledged the tragedy that had occurred just days earlier and, for our local group – 22 people, including several family members of survivors traveling through central Europe to visit Holocaust sites and sites of Jewish memory – there was a profound sense of the layered importance of our travels.

Among those we met that night was a young Israeli man. He was a student at the university and that day he had been given the option to attend his classes as normal or to stay home if he felt unsafe. He shared with us that he was the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor – one of the 300 individuals who staged the uprising at the Sobibor death camp and one of the 50 of those resistors who was still alive by wars end. He told us that if his grandfather could do what he did in 1943, that he could go to school that day. It was a profound statement that connected the moment to the continuum of history – a remarkable look at how one person was making decisions about how to conduct himself in that singular moment.  

By the time we returned to the US, we were seeing the extreme increase in antisemitic incidents and beginning to realize their affect. Hatred that was already creeping to the center from the fringes was allowed into the open to flourish. I remember speaking to survivors who, because of the antisemitism that was unleashed following 10/7, did not feel comfortable in their own community. A particularly dark moment for our survivors occurred just a month later, on the eve of the Kristallnacht anniversary, when a Viennese synagogue experienced an arson attack. With each reported incident making international news, a sense of dread revisited them, and they were not sure how to balance their sense of duty to speak with their fear.

We have always lovingly joked that there are three things that survivors universally love: their families, Harry Truman, and Israel. For survivors, Israel represents many things, but above all it represents the safe space that was not afforded them in the 1930s and 40s. If their neighbors and national governments failed them again; if the people of the world turned their backs and refused safe haven again – there would be Israel. October 7^th and the ensuing antisemitism robbed them of their sense of safety both at home and abroad.

The human impact of October 7 and the year of incidents which followed is undeniable. For survivors, it comes late in their lives. It has tested their faith in the value of having spent decades sharing their testimonies and suffering in the hopes of creating a safer world for their families. Today I share with you what I have told many of them. Yes, we live in difficult and dangerous times. Yet I see hope in the aftermath of 10/7.

In the days following October 7, I walked the streets of Europe and saw the Israeli flag raised alongside the national flags of the countries we were visiting – a statement of solidarity. I saw world leaders make unequivocal statements rejecting antisemitism and violence and reaffirming Israel’s place among the nations – something unthinkable in the 1930s and 40s.

Paralleling the dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents, we have seen an unprecedented number of requests for information about antisemitism. We have experienced outreach from every segment of our community asking for credible information, wanting to truly learn and discuss, and voicing their steadfast commitment to not allowing antisemitism to take root where they have influence. Just last week a non-Jewish woman came to my office for no purpose other than to acknowledge the situation she sees in the world today, to voice her support for the Jewish community, and to discuss tangible ways she can be of service to demonstrate that support. She is not the first and she will not be the last person I have that conversation with – it speaks to the success of the education that has been conducted in our community and the strength of the allyship created that these conversations are being had nearly a year after the triggering event.

What we at MCHE have learned this year is that 30+ years of Holocaust education – predominantly serving the non-Jewish community – has created a public that recognizes a problem and wants to address it. What we also know is that you cannot fight what you cannot clearly recognize and name. So, over the last year, much of our work has increasingly been to teach people to recognize modern antisemitism, to understand the historical continuum of which it is a part, to question and challenge false equivalencies, and to empower them to intervene when they see it.

We acknowledge the pain of the last year. We contemplate the loss of human life and the potential in each of those lives. As we do that, I suggest that we also contemplate one of the greatest lessons given to us by our survivors – a lesson that was so beautifully articulated by the young Israeli man in Prague. The lesson is this: having come through tragedy, we have the choice of how we move forward into the future. Our survivors taught us to face and embrace the pain, but then to use that experience and to shift our focus outward to creating a better world. We can draw strength from their example, for there is much work ahead for each of us to do.