2025 YIR: Memorials Mark Anniversary of Oct. 7 Attacks
Several hundred people gathered at Ahavath Achim Synagogue to remember the 1,200 murdered and 250 kidnapped that day.
On Oct. 5, two days before the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks in the “Gaza envelope” section of Israel, several hundred people gathered at Ahavath Achim Synagogue to remember the 1,200 murdered and 250 kidnapped that day.
Resilience in the face of the unimaginable was a theme of the program. There were prayers for Israel, prayers for the hostages, and prayers for the IDF. Memorial candles were lighted by relatives of Israelis killed on Oct. 7.
Rabbi Adam Starr, senior rabbi at Congregation Ohr HaTorah, delivered the Misheberach, a prayer for healing. His 19-year-old nephew was one of three soldiers wounded when Hamas fighters attacked their unit’s position in Gaza. They were airlifted to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva.
The recently concluded High Holy Days “felt like the first time I could breathe in two years,” Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal of Ahavath Achim said.
“We might be able to breathe a little bit,” Rosenthal said, acknowledging that the shaky nature of the negotiations requires patience.
Eitan Weiss, Israel’s Consul General to the Southeastern United States, said, “We all are hostages to the whims and brutality of those vile terrorists who play and taunt with our emotions.”
As he spoke in the Ahavath Achim sanctuary, Harris held a picture of Omer Neutra, his cousin, who was born in New York one month after 9/11 and died on Oct. 7, 2023, a week before his 22nd birthday.
Neutra, an American Israeli who enlisted in the IDF as a Lone Soldier (without family), was serving as a tank platoon commander when he was killed battling Hamas terrorists who had invaded Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Approximately 30,000 people filled Yarkon Park in an emotional memorial coordinated by Kumu (“Rise Up”), an organization founded by survivors and families of the victims and hostages of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
“Oct. 7 is not only a day of remembrance for those we lost,” said Kumu founder Yonatan Shamriz, brother of hostage Alon Shamriz. “It is a day of remembrance for negligence, for failed leadership, and for the abandonment of responsibility. On that day, a new commitment was born … to lead the State of Israel to a better reality — a far better one.”