Students, faculty, and community members gathered at the Rohr Center for Jewish Life last Friday for a Shabbat service labeled a “Shabbat of Light and Hope”. Organized by the Bi-College Chabad, the event honored the hundreds of Israelis who were killed or taken hostage following the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023.
Following typical Shabbat rituals of candle lighting and group prayer, Autumn Shemitz BMC’28 spoke on the gravity of the massacre, and the importance of community support on campus. She explained that, in the days following, “many students were not met with compassion and time to process grief, but rather with hatred.”
Shemitz said that “In a time when college campuses have turned into anti-semitic hot benches,” she wears her yellow ribbon and blue square pins to show her “pride in being Jewish and a Zionist.”
Rabbi Eli Gurevitz of the Chabad house also spoke, beginning by commemorating the lives lost in the recent attack on a Manchester synagogue this Yom Kippur. He explained that in such times, the Jewish community “cannot surrender to a world that is dark,” encouraging them to “chase away violence not with sticks or anger, but rather by adding light.”
The Rohr Center also invited Nova survivor, Shoham Cohen, aged 22, to recount his experience of the massacre. Cohen also spoke at last year’s memorial service.
“[I am] from the south of Israel, so [I was] used to rockets and alarms and chaos,” Cohen noted, describing the earliest signs of the attack. He spoke of his escape, during which he constantly moved between open fields and thick brush, witnessing trucks of Hamas militants opening fire on police vans and civilians.
“I was getting shot at by terrorists… as I was running across the fields,” Cohen said. After hours of fleeing attack, Cohen was taken by Israeli police and soldiers to a safe location.
“After this when [I] tried to sleep, [I] couldn’t… lots of thoughts, dreams,” he explained as he described how he felt in the months following the massacre. Despite these emotional hardships, however, he was inspired to begin sharing the story of his experience after being invited to a summer camp in the United States, where he saw other survivors doing the same.
Cohen was met with unwavering sympathy from the audience, who offered words of solidarity and support throughout his speech. One audience member, who did not identify themselves, asked Cohen about his experiences speaking at different institutions across the U.S., to which he responded, “it has been mostly positive… but sometimes there are people who… make faces like they do not believe me.”
Rabbi Eli Gurevitz returned to offer some closing words, saying, “we deserve to have a moment to breathe; we deserve to fight for who we are… it’s not normal that sometimes we have to justify our existence.”
Several days after the memorial service, Shemitz, on behalf of Chabad, shared further sentiments. “Oct. 7, 2023 was a horrific day in Israel and for all Jews around the world… Two years since this horrific massacre, it is important for students to have a safe space where they are allowed to process this grief and trauma,” she asseverated. In regards to the event, Shemitz explained that it was “about honoring the stories of those who experienced the massacre, like Shoham… and [remembering] the 48 hostages who have been held captive for the last two years.” She continued by addressing the recent news of ceasefire and the immediate release of all hostages, which she said “[is] all [she has] been praying for these past two years.”
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