Since antiquity, Jews have separated the elevated days of Shabbat from the regular week through a ceremony known as havdalah. This year, in commemoration of the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, George Washington University (GW) Jewish students marked a profound separation between the world before and after that tragic day.
This past Saturday, October 5, Chabad GW held a havdalah ceremony on GW’s Kogan Plaza in commemoration of the massacre. Our theme “Remember, Resolve, and Rededicate” memorializes the tragedy that befell the Jewish nation on that dark Saturday and reminds us that the resolve for peace must be fought through a spirited strength and rededication to our traditions, faith, and national home.
Havdalah’s rituals encompass this theme and send a profound message for all Jews in the post-October 7 world. The word “lehavdil,” meaning to separate, calls us to distinguish between light and darkness and the sacred from the everyday. In the same way, we must separate the darkness of October 7 from the light we will carry forward in its memory.
As we gathered around the multi-wicked, braided candle, we felt compelled to absorb the lessons from that tragic Saturday in October. These lessons, imbued with holiness, must inspire Jews worldwide to channel hope not only through care, but moral courage.
Pogroms against Jews and efforts to eradicate Israel through terror are an old story, as is the pipeline of hate fostered by BDS’s insidious permeation into campus life and academia. October 2023, however, marked “the year that American Jews woke up,” as New York Times columnist Bret Stephens noted.
I can personally affirm Stephens’s words. Before October 7, my family in the US and in Israel, along with many of my Jewish peers, believed that despite the relative silence on campuses, everything was alright. In the aftermath, my personal experiences with antisemitism and pro-Israel campus activism were taken far more seriously after October 7.
Now that Jews around the world have awakened, we must commit to shining a constant light on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate by bringing antisemitism and anti-Zionism to the attention of our peers, institutional leaders, and policymakers. Even if we think that the series of congressional investigations into America’s elite universities and suspensions of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters are quieting our campuses, the roots of this issue remain prevalent.
But we cannot let them remain permanent, because it is this “quiet” that enabled the outpour of antisemitism after October 7. This “quiet” about the moral rot in our hallowed institutions including academic censorship and sexual assault cover-ups has enabled perverted values and normalized abuses of power to flourish. Antisemitism is always indicative of a bigger issue in society. As Jews, our biblical “chosenness” symbolically calls upon us to seize this pivotal moment in history to fulfill this critical mitzvah not just for our people and nation, but for humanity.
The courage implicated in this mitzvah naturally leads us to gratitude. Regardless of one’s level of religious observance, Jewish tradition teaches that our human faculties are endowed by God. During havdalah, we engage all five senses: seeing the candle’s flickering light, tasting the wine, smelling the sweet spices, listening to the melodies, and feeling the traditions passed down by our ancestors.
These senses represent deeply personal gifts of life – those which the soldiers fighting for the Jewish nation on the front lines use to their full capacity daily, and those from which the hostages have been deprived— – starving for food, air, light, and love in nightmarish tunnels. Gratitude for our human faculties, and for our freedom, must be reciprocated through the exercise of free will, which is a uniquely human gift. Human will – rooted in resolve – is our greatest, and only, saving grace.
While human will may be an individualized gift, it is not an individualized task. The senses may only be five, but havdalah unveils a sixth. Represented by its multicolored braided candle carrying a vibrant flame, that sixth sense is that of Jewish unity despite disuniformity. After October 7 – not unlike many episodes in Jewish history – Jews of all strands have sought something akin to a guide for the perplexed: How did this happen? Where was God? Which tenets did we violate? How do we move forward?
As Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America, said, “The Jewish heart has always starved unless it was fed through the Jewish intellect.” The Jewish intellect has been the Jewish people’s glue and guide to our future and finding God.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, Judeans grappled with questions of faith and worship. Rabbis and various sects of Judaism emerged, interpreting history and biblical stories in response to this existential question.
When antisemitic pogroms ravaged our communities, Jews developed diverse strands of Jewish philosophy and Zionist thought with different conceptions of how to live in a world where the odds would never be in our favor. Colorful ideas ranging from Theodor Herzl’s conception of a political state, Ahad Ha’am’s Jewish educational centers with no state, or Simon Dubnow’s global autonomous communities surfaced.
But in the aftermath of the Holocaust – our ultimate tragedy – the Jewish people were left with no choice but to keep their eyes on their protection and prosperity in Zion, turning unimaginable suffering into unwavering strength and by infusing our restored homeland with the ideas conceived in the 19th and 20th centuries and the philosophies of Jewish medieval thinkers and biblical figures.
Jewish leadership has demonstrated that from dark ashes, we have always built wellsprings of life. That source of life is personified by the many heroes, some of whom I’ve met, in the wake of October 7: Soldiers who have lost limbs fighting in Gaza and have returned to serve their country after recovery; artists who have made jewelry using pieces of rockets; survivors of the Nova music festival massacre who have become more pious in the wake of tragedy; rescued hostage Noa Argamani, who told me that she and I were no different, both students who relish in learning with families tied by the hip; brave and bereaved parents who bear 10/7 in their hearts yet continue fighting for the return of the hostages, victory for Israel, and the end of the war.
Diverse yet united, and burdened by the loss of loved ones and the weight of trauma, our heroes struggle to separate darkness from light – to elevate holidays, Shabbat, and havdalot – fully engaging their five senses. One mother, whose son was killed in action when defending an entire kibbutz from a dozen terrorists after losing an arm at the Nova festival, shared with me that she cannot shower, eat, sleep, or fully feel her emotions without her son. The numbness she feels is as if her very senses and soul have been taken away by a higher power.
Yet, in many conversations with these heroes and with my family back in Israel, one thing that gives them a flicker of hope is knowing that Jews in the Diaspora care. But care alone is not enough, nor is it sufficient to simply be Jews and Zionists. For the heroes we have lost, and in solidarity with those overseas, we must live and breathe the courage Judaism and Zionism instruct, embodying their values and attributes in our daily lives.
The writer is a senior at George Washington University and serves as the president of Chabad GW.