Jewish Penn community members remember victims, hostages on anniversary of Oct. 7 Hamas attack

Hundreds of Jewish students at Penn participated in a variety of events commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Penn Hillel, Chabad House at Penn, and the Penn Israel Public Affairs Committee held a full slate of programming throughout the day to commemorate those killed and taken hostage during the Hamas incursion. The events, which primarily took place at Hillel’s Steinhardt Hall, included a memorial service, a five-hour reading of the names of the 1,200 victims of the attacks, and a community dinner.

Hillel also held an all-day art installation in memory of the lives lost, a processing space, and a screening of a film titled “Screams Before Silence,” which depicts the events at the Nova Festival — the music festival where Hamas attacked thousands of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

Hillel President Maya Harpaz wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the memorial service was “such a special and meaningful event for our community to come together.” She cited the room being situated in a circle with candles in the shape of a Jewish star in the center — a format which she described as “a powerful way for our community to feel united.”

“The anniversary of October 7th is a day of mourning and grief, but every day since October 7th, 2023 has been,” Harpaz wrote, adding that the day was a reminder of the Hamas attack and “an intensified reminder that we must get all of the hostages remaining in Gaza home.”

The 6:30 p.m. memorial service was attended by Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) Fetterman has maintained an outspoken pro-Israeli stance since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack and throughout the ensuing Israel-Hamas war.

In an interview with the DP prior to the event, Fetterman said that he was “invited” to take part — adding that he was “delighted to show up” and describing Oct. 7 as “a very solemn anniversary.”

Fetterman also spoke during the service, telling the community members in attendance that he is “so sorry” that they, even on their own campus, have had to reckon with the attack and its aftermath. He added that his “voice and [his] vote” will remain on the side of Israel “so things arrive in a better and more peaceful place.”

“As not a member of your community, it’s not my place to speak about the kind of trauma and persecution and things that you've been [through]. You probably have been touched directly by what happened on Oct. 7, or you have relatives that are in the IDF right now or in Gaza,” Fetterman said.

Speaking before a crowd of students and community members at Penn Hillel, Noah Rubin — a Wharton and Engineering senior who has been outspoken about antisemitism on college campuses since Oct. 7, 2023 — told the stories of a number of victims of Hamas’ attacks on Israel, underscoring that approximately 97 hostages from Israel remain unaccounted for in Gaza. 

“Walking through the exhibit downstairs and when standing in front of pictures of the victims, I am reminded [that] we don’t gather to mourn statistics,” Rubin said, pointing to the art installation in the Hillel lobby which commemorated the lives lost during the Hamas attacks.

The artwork included a series of panels with the faces and names of victims of Oct. 7, 2023 in Israel, as well as an installation of the #MilkCartonProject, which has been used to spread awareness of the hostages who remain kidnapped in Gaza by echoing the milk cartons that did the same for missing children in the United States in the 1980s. 

PIPAC President Ben Messafi praised the Hillel ceremony, calling it “beautiful.”

“Most importantly, it was peaceful,” he added. “Instead of calling for violence, we gathered together as a community to pray, mourn, and reflect."

Harpaz wrote that Penn’s “Jewish community came together and showed up for each other today.”

“I am so proud today and every day to be the Hillel President and see how much our community has come together,” Harpaz wrote. “There is so much Jewish pride on our campus and I really felt that today, even when we were in such deep pain.”

Hillel Vice President of Shabbat and Holidays Jake Zubkoff told the DP that, despite the pain felt by the Jewish community today and throughout the past year, he is grateful for the events and programs that have allowed students to come together and share their feelings. 

Zubkoff mentioned informal programming at Hillel that included a kumzits, a Yiddish term for a gathering where people sit in a circle and sing together. He noted that many participants find this experience to be “very cathartic.”

“This past year has been obviously a very difficult one for Jews and for the Jewish community at large, and I found a lot of those feelings of pain, frustration, and sadness that I felt at different times of the past year definitely coming up today,” Zubkoff said. “It’s very weird and almost surreal to revisit that feeling that I think so many of us had waking up on that day to the news of what was happening in Israel.”

Zubkoff also mentioned the increase in “violent rhetoric” in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, citing a personal experience in which he was verbally accosted on the street for wearing a yarmulke — while also noting that various different Jewish institutions around campus were threatened and vandalized.

“I think for some people it heightened a sense of unsafety. For others, a sense of discomfort,” he said. “I think that mutual support and recognition of hurt and pain is so important. I think that the rhetoric on campus, sometimes from the University or from outside groups, has made it sometimes very difficult to come together.”

Penn Chabad hosted an event at the Lubavitch House titled “Israel’s Resilience and Strength,” in which two reservists in the Israel Defense Forces spoke to a crowd of about 50 people about their experiences rescuing Israeli citizens and fighting Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023 and in Gaza. Those rescued by one reservist, Daniel Harel, included an 88-year-old woman who became the oldest victim of the Hamas attacks when she succumbed to her injuries two weeks later. The kibbutz where Harel was called to saw 9% of its residents killed and another 30 abducted to Gaza on Oct. 7.  

Sonny Eisenberg, the other reservist, spoke about the loss of his two cousins, one on Oct. 7, and another fighting in Gaza. He sought to propose an argument to Penn students based on his experiences and understanding of history to explain Israeli sovereignty, United States-Israeli relations, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

College first year Spencer Buten, who attended the Chabad event, acknowledged that there would be people who “disagree” about Oct. 7, 2023 no matter the cause or what is explained to them. He said it was particularly interesting to hear from speakers who had been in Gaza. 

“It’s really just about teaching others who are uninformed more so than convincing the people who are informed but still disagree with facts,” Buten said. 

Members of Penn Chabad also displayed a Mitzvah Wall on Locust Walk by the Compass, which encouraged participants to channel their grief for the victims of Oct. 7, 2023 into a “mitzvah,” a Hebrew word that refers to a religious duty often in the form of a charitable act.

“This wall enabled students, professors or any passerby to visualize the image of an October 7th victim or hostage – who may have been their age, or from their hometown or shared a common hobby – and pledge to do a mitzvah, a good deed, in their honor,” Penn Chabad President and Jewish Heritage Programs board member Alexa Gribetz wrote in a statement to the DP. “While we have been drowning in tears and agony for a year, the Jewish students at Penn stand strong and united.”

“We are channeling our emotions into positivity and good deeds, a strongly rooted Jewish value and something our nation has done for over 3,000 years,” Gribetz added.

Later in the evening, PIPAC held a screening and speaker event in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall which was attended by over 200 community members. The room watched “The Last Recordings” — a documentary depicting victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack trapped in a bomb shelter. Afterwards, attendees heard from the aunt of Alon Ohel — one of the individuals taken hostage by Hamas — who presented a photo album of her nephew and thanked the attendees for watching the film.

Jewish Voice for Peace at Penn, which announced its formation last week, marked the anniversary by focusing attention on the humanitarian consequences of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, which has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. That cause was also championed by a march on Monday attended by some Penn students and organized by the Philadelphia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which began at Drexel Square Park and ended at the University's Pennovation Works campus. 

Messafi criticized the march, calling it “striking that individuals marched through Penn’s campus today cheering ‘down with Al Qassam’ and ‘long live the resistance.’”

“It breaks my heart that members of our community see terrorism and barbarity as a thing to celebrate,” Messafi wrote. “The Jewish community could not even get one day to mourn the lives we lost one year ago. Marching on October 7th specifically was directly intended to target and harass Penn Jewish students.”

College first year Alexa Katz said she was moved to see the Jewish community come together on Oct. 7 despite hate and violence that has threatened to divide it.

“I thought that this day would come with a lot of antisemitism and protests and a lot of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist activities, but I think that the day I experienced was very different because I was surrounded by a very, very strong and connected Jewish community that put a lot of emphasis into today, being together, [and] being a strong, supportive community,” Katz said.

Zubkoff added that “it was very meaningful to see the Jewish community come together in support for one another, but also other communities around campus show support for the Jewish community and recognize the hurt and pain we were experiencing.”