![\"\"](\"https:\/\/res.cloudinary.com\/ouwp\/images\/v1726761852\/Jewishaction\/Newsletter_HO7CM\/Newsletter_HO7CM.png?_i=AA\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In commemoration of the first anniversary of October 7, we asked readers to tell us how they were impacted by a day that will live on forever in our hearts and souls.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Live More Jewishly<\/strong><\/p>\n By Ariella Silberman, as told to Barbara Bensoussan<\/em><\/p>\n In the aftermath of October 7, I am living my Judaism in a much more open way, wearing a Magen David necklace, studying Jewish history and feeling more connected to Israel as our indigenous homeland. I think about aliyah.<\/p>\n I did not grow up Orthodox and my ex-husband isn\u2019t Jewish. But since October 7, I\u2019ve tried to have a daily infusion of Judaism in my life and in my children\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n A few days after the massacre, I saw a post for a program called \u201cJust One Thing,\u201d in which you try to do one Jewish thing in the merit of a specific soldier. I began saying Shema every night along with a Mi Sheberach for \u201cmy\u201d soldier, and I started bringing in Shabbat fifteen minutes early.<\/p>\n I signed up with Partners in Torah as a merit as well. I was paired with Raquel from New York and felt that I\u2019d found my sister. We study the teachings of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on the parashah.<\/p>\n October 7 changed my relationship to Judaism, to the non-Jewish world, to Israel, to parenting, to everything.<\/p>\n To me, the response to October 7 is to live more Jewishly.<\/p>\n Ariella Silberman lives in Dallas with her family.<\/em><\/p>\n Barbara Bensoussan is a writer in Brooklyn and a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Countering the Hate<\/strong><\/p>\n By Abraham Bree, as told to Barbara Bensoussan <\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m a marketing professional, so social media is my bread and butter. After October 7, as I scrolled through X, I couldn\u2019t believe what I was seeing. \u201cYou Jews deserve it,\u201d some people wrote. \u201cStop occupying Palestine!\u201d said others.<\/p>\n The haters clearly had no grasp of the facts. How do you counteract a flood of anti-Israel narratives that have more likes on social media than a cat meme?<\/p>\n I sat down and began replying to these posts. But I\u2019m no Ben Shapiro\u2014I don\u2019t have all the facts on the tip of my tongue. After an hour, I realized I\u2019d only managed to reply to about four posts. There were hundreds<\/em> of posts I wanted to respond to!<\/p>\n Then it occurred to me that I could enlist virtual help. I\u2019m a typical Flatbush guy who runs a no-frills ad agency out of a Brooklyn storefront. Recently, I\u2019d begun using AI tools for marketing campaigns in my business. Why not create an AI engine to give factual, cohesive responses to social media? <\/em>I thought. Why not harness the power of AI to negate the hate?<\/em><\/p>\n I posted my idea on LinkedIn and on a few WhatsApp groups. Almost a dozen people from different points on the Jewish spectrum volunteered to help: a Chassidic developer in Toronto; a non-religious Sephardic full-stack coding engineer in Tel Aviv; a Modern Orthodox copywriter in Teaneck.<\/p>\n Our group held sessions on Zoom to create the app. The goal was to train a data set to give forceful, fact-based, pro-Israel responses to hate posts, circumventing systemic blocks to pro-Israel content. After four sleepless, caffeine-powered days, we had an app called ProjectTruthIsrael.com up and running.<\/p>\n I said to our group, \u201cUnder other circumstances, our paths would probably never have crossed. Yet here we are, all of us fellow Jews, giving our time and resources to help the Jewish nation.\u201d<\/p>\n I sent out our app experimentally to a bunch of Jewish WhatsApp groups, expecting to garner a few hundred responses. Within one night, I had 3,000 users. After one month, 41,000 people were using the app, generating over 80,000 response points.<\/p>\n The app was really working well, churning out compelling factual messages to counteract misinformation and antisemitism. Then, a few weeks ago, I opened my computer on Motzaei Shabbos to find a message: \u201cYour AI token threshold is over the limit.\u201d \u201cHacktivists\u201d from the Middle East had bombarded our site to the point where they shut it down. I have been working ever since to find a way to get my site up again and circumvent further attacks.<\/p>\n Despite this (hopefully temporary) setback, I am very proud of what we accomplished. While we made a small dent in the social media world, I think we made a much bigger dent in the heavens: a diverse group of Jews came together to help our brothers and sisters in Israel.<\/p>\n Abraham Bree runs a marketing agency in Brooklyn, New York.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n By Maxine Clamage, as told to Steve Lipman<\/em><\/p>\n I was born in Chicago eighty-seven years ago.<\/p>\n In the 1930s and \u201840s, as the Holocaust was unfolding, I would listen to my American-born parents speaking about the German atrocities and about the Jews suffering in Europe.<\/p>\n But back then children were supposed to be quiet.<\/p>\n Dad was drafted into the US Army when I was six years old. He was captured by the Nazis and sent to a slave labor camp for Jews only. He was liberated and, thank G-d, came home.<\/p>\n We were not religious, and did not observe any holidays except for Passover. We never belonged to a synagogue.<\/p>\n October 7 made me feel more Jewish. I felt I had to do something for the Jewish people. I realized I had to speak up.<\/p>\n Now I spend my time on Facebook and Instagram, sharing pro-Israel videos on a daily basis.<\/p>\n I bought a siddur with English translation; I don\u2019t read Hebrew. I bought more Jewish books. I\u2019m paying more attention. I must. I couldn\u2019t speak up in the 1930s as the Holocaust approached, so I\u2019m speaking up now on behalf of Israel and my fellow Jews.<\/p>\n Maxine Clamage is an eighty-seven-year-old retired paralegal living in Mill Valley, California.<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Lipman is a frequent contributor to the magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cPointing\u201d the Way to Simchah<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n By Dr. Arnold Berlin, MD, as told to Barbara Bensoussan <\/em><\/p>\n As I sat on a plane to Israel last winter, October 7 was fresh in everyone\u2019s minds. I knew there were thousands of suffering families\u2014victims of terror, victims of tragedies, and families who had been forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods. I wanted to do something.<\/p>\n I work as a physician in Williamsburg, with a largely Chassidic and Hispanic clientele. My work has led me to become involved with Miles for Life, an organization that funds medical travel for foreign patients who need to come to the US for medical care. I am often asked to write statements attesting to the necessity of medical travel so that patients and their accompanying caregivers can apply for visas. Miles for Life collects unused travel and credit card points from donors to pay for the patients\u2019 travel.<\/p>\n While on the plane, I thought, \u201cIf we can use points to benefit patients from South America and other countries, why not use them to help Jews ravaged by the war in Israel?\u201d It seemed like an easy, cost-free way to give tzedakah<\/em> and lend support to our brethren in Israel who desperately need it.<\/p>\n The flight passed quickly as I sketched out a plan. I didn\u2019t want to fund trauma relief only. Life goes on after trauma, and challenged families still need to make simchas<\/em> and celebrate holidays even when the usual funds have dried up. I wanted to channel unused miles and points to fund bringing joy into difficult lives. I was sitting next to an accountant who became so interested in my idea that he stayed in touch to check on my progress after I got home!<\/p>\n Simchapoints.org, now under the Chibuk Foundation, is open for business, with the aim of helping challenged Israeli families afford the bright spots in their lives: bar mitzvahs, weddings, yamim tovim<\/em>, even camps for their children. Donors can earmark funds for a specific event\u2014for example, a family making a bar mitzvah can donate money for an Israeli family\u2019s bar mitzvah expenses.<\/p>\n Before we Jews were the Startup Nation, we were the \u201cChesed Nation.\u201d October 7 opened our eyes to the need to empathize with our fellow Jews in Israel and extend a helping hand as best we can.<\/p>\n Dr. Arnold Berlin is a clinical assistant professor of medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Working for the Jewish Community<\/strong><\/p>\n By Asher Butler <\/em><\/p>\n When October 7 happened, I was a high school teacher in a non-Jewish charter school in Brooklyn. In the days that followed, we were given a mandatory curriculum for our advisory students that sought to \u201ccontextualize the conflict\u201d and denied any historical ties between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland prior to the nineteenth century. As a direct result, I started looking for new, meaningful work, ways I could invest my time and energy into the Jewish world. I was lucky enough to be hired to write security grants by Project Protect, a division of the OU’s Teach Coalition, which secures and implements government funding to protect our Jewish institutions. Through this job I’ve had the privilege to talk to stakeholders across the entire spectrum of Jewish communal life, find out their histories and the risks they face in their neighborhoods, and help them address their urgent need for safety. This work has been a profound source of personal pride for me and has made me feel more connected to the Jewish nation than I ever felt before.<\/p>\n As I write, a week from today I will have my interview with the Jewish Agency, and, G-d-willing, I will be making aliyah<\/em> shortly. My greatest hope is to continue doing this security work for the Jewish community here in the United States while finding new ways to connect and give of myself in whatever way I can in Eretz Yisrael. Before October 7 and its aftermath, I did not understand the overwhelming imperative of achdut<\/em> and ahavat Yisrael. <\/em>While I’m ashamed it took something so evil to teach me, I will never forget the lesson.<\/p>\n Currently living in Queens, New York, Asher Butler hopes to be making <\/em>aliyah in the fall.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Baked with Love<\/strong><\/p>\n By Carol Ungar <\/em><\/p>\n When we learned that October 7 survivors, most from secular and anti-religious kibbutzim<\/em>, were staying in a hotel near our Chareidi town, a group of us drove out to see them.\u202fAt the hotel door, a social worker barred our entry:\u202f\u201cThey don\u2019t need anything. Go.\u201d<\/p>\n We went home crestfallen and puzzled.<\/p>\n Was there really nothing to do?<\/p>\n Then one of us had an idea: \u201cLet\u2019s send them challah rolls, candles and notes of support.\u201d<\/p>\n A WhatsApp message went out, and dozens of volunteers responded. By erev Shabbat<\/em> we had received so many packages that we needed additional volunteers to deliver them to the hotel.<\/p>\n We left them with the hotel staff. But we weren\u2019t sure. Would our lovingly assembled packages end up in the trash?\u00a0Had we mobilized the entire community for nothing?<\/p>\n When we returned days later, we found out that our packages had indeed been delivered.<\/p>\n \u201cWe ate them,\u201d said an elderly male evacuee, \u201cbut don\u2019t send them again.\u201d Our gesture had fallen on its face. Was there something else we could do? \u201cYes,\u201d a heavily tattooed kibbutz<\/em> woman piped up. \u201cWe can use\u202ffour cakes every day for our coffee room.\u201d That was clear enough. Since then, we have been baking and sending our cakes to evacuees\u2014yeast cakes, kokosh cakes, batches of cookie bars, et cetera. The cakes are delivered to a central collection point, where volunteers pick them up and deliver them.<\/p>\n It seems trivial, but it\u2019s not. The evacuees value our initiative. \u201cYou are angels. We feel your love in your baking,\u201d they tell us. They smile, and sometimes they hug us.\u00a0The evacuees have consistently refused our Shabbat and holiday invites. Often the evacuees aren\u2019t around, and the volunteers hang the bag of cakes on the door of the social hall. When we do see them, it\u2019s clear they love our cakes, and because of that they love us.<\/p>\n As I write this, eight months into the war, most of the survivors have returned home to Kiryat Ye\u2019arim, but forty Gaza Envelope families remain at a hotel in our area. And we continue to send them our homemade cakes. They still smile. They still hug us. They still call us angels. But we haven\u2019t (yet) become friends. Though we stand on opposite sides of a deeply religious and sociopolitical rift, we\u2019re no longer anonymous \u201cdespicable dossim<\/em>.\u201d Our cakes have built a bridge of love between us. Maybe this is the way our country will heal.<\/p>\n Carol Ungar is an award-winning writer living in the Judean Hills.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The Depths of Prayer<\/strong><\/p>\n By Adina Hershberg <\/em><\/p>\n I have always been a light sleeper. I usually wake up a few times during the night\u2014which is not uncommon in the over-sixty crowd. In the past, I would turn over and try to get back to sleep. The consequences of the war\u2014murdered and injured civilians, soldiers killed or wounded in the fighting, hostages languishing in captivity, bereaved families, displaced Israelis, many people without a livelihood, et cetera\u2014have turned these nocturnal awakenings into times of tefillah<\/em>.<\/p>\n On our yishuv<\/em>, in the middle of the night, I don\u2019t hear washing machines spinning, telephones ringing, or traffic whizzing by\u2014even the street cats have gone to sleep. It\u2019s an opportunity to daven<\/em> without interruption. There is nothing like war to serve as a catalyst for increased and more heartfelt tefillah<\/em>.<\/p>\n Adina Hershberg is a writer living in Rosh Tzurim, Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Choosing Life<\/strong><\/p>\n By anonymous, as told to Carol Ungar <\/em><\/p>\n I was supposed to be at the Nova Festival; I had badly wanted to go. A month before, I was at another Nova party and had a great time. The DJ at that party\u2014who was also the DJ at the October 7 Nova\u2014offered me a deal: if I sold fifteen tickets, I could go to the next Nova for free.<\/p>\n I\u2019m an Aries, which means I\u2019m stubborn. I contacted friends all over the country and plugged the party on my Instagram stories\u2014but I couldn\u2019t get anyone to buy a ticket. So I didn\u2019t end up going.<\/p>\n When I first heard what happened, I couldn\u2019t thank Hashem enough. But it was also very hard. My world turned over. I had lost a lot of my friends. I went from funeral to funeral. For a long time I wanted to die, too. I prayed to Hashem to take me and bring them back.<\/p>\n When I found out that Elia had died [Elia Toledano had disappeared and was thought to have been kidnapped; the IDF discovered his body in December], my eyes opened up. Elia was a tzaddik<\/em>. He was full of love and light. He hadn\u2019t been my friend for long, but he entered my soul. Knowing him made me want to be a good person in the way that he was. I threw away my immodest clothing. Now I am trying to keep Shabbat and be a good person.<\/p>\n Before October 7, I was self-destructive. I was bulimic. I used drugs. I even attempted suicide. Now I ask myself how I dared to undervalue my life. I want to sanctify my life in his memory and in memory of the other friends I lost.<\/p>\n I realized that I need help. I will be entering a rehab tomorrow. I\u2019ll be done with the program on Simchat Torah\u2014what are the chances of that?<\/p>\n Hashem kept me alive. I still have a tikkun<\/em>. The ones who died finished their tikkun<\/em>, their life mission. I try to dedicate myself to their memory. I feel Elia\u2019s spirit accompanying me. Now I am choosing life.<\/p>\n
\nNo Longer Silent<\/strong><\/p>\n