For much of the past two years, Israeli society was deeply divided over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, to the point where those who disagreed with each other began to vehemently and, in some cases, violently loathe each other. However, on October 7th, 2023, on what was supposed to be the happiest day in the Jewish calendar, Simchat Torah, Hamas terrorists conducted a brutal massacre in Israel resulting in the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. One would expect in the immediate aftermath for there to be many Israelis evacuating the country, as was the case in countries like Ukraine, yet when war struck, there was an unprecedented influx of Jews and non-Jews from around the world coming to Israel to help. This project aims to investigate the attitudes of both Israeli and American Jews towards their connections to Judaism and Israel before and after October 7th. Through conducting interviews, I plan to learn how the October 7th massacre changed the lives of Jews in the diaspora (specifically in the United States), including myself, and compare it with how it changed the lives of Israeli Jews. To explore this topic, I will be leading a discussion with high school seniors in a Holocaust and Genocide Studies class at Central Cabarrus High School in Concord, North Carolina. Then I will go to Israel for a month, where I will spend three weeks volunteering for non-combat duties on an Israeli military base, alongside people from around the world. During this time I will be able to speak to Israelis and interview them to hear about their experiences and perspectives. In our darkest hour, we watched the world turn its back on us and rush to justify the barbarous terrorism of October 7th. Personally, this was a wake up call that made me embrace my identity as a Jew against the crowd of those who call for people’s eradication, and I hope to find other Jews in the diaspora with similar experiences and bolster their voices.
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