‘They can never defeat us’: Jewish students commemorate Oct. 7 victims at George Washington University

‘It still feels like Oct. 8, because we’re still missing our loved ones,’ GW Chabad president Sabrina Soffer said during an interview on Monday.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Jewish students at George Washington University in Washington, DC came together on Saturday to commemorate the lives of the kidnapped and deceased ahead of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, a tragedy which claimed more Jewish lives in one day than any since the Holocaust.

Organized by Chabad GW, the event — titled “Remember, Resolve, Rededicate” — was held at Kogan Plaza, a section of campus that has seen both memorials to the victims of Hamas’s barbarism and celebrations of their afflictions led by pro-Hamas activists.

On Saturday, however, a generation of Jewish students whose lives and conceptions of self have been upended by the events of the past year claimed the space as exclusively theirs, transforming it into a realm of healing and perseverance.

Speaking to The Algemeiner on Monday, several students who attended the gathering remarked on the swiftness of the passage of time and why, one year removed from Oct. 7, it still feels like only the day after.

“It still feels like Oct. 8, because we’re still missing our loves ones,” GW Chabad president Sabrina Soffer said during an interview on Monday.

“Israel is such a small country, and there, everyone is like family. We’re still missing over 100 people; we’ve lost so many, people are displaced from their homes — and the war is still ongoing and only escalating from here. I just hope that Israel will achieve victory. I want the war to end, but Israel must win.”

The presence at the vigil of those seemingly hostile to those gathered in support of Israel and the Jewish community also shrunk the distance between one year ago and now.

At one point, a young woman wearing a keffiyeh roamed through the crowd, taking pictures of the students as they listened to speeches and comforted one another. She did not disclose what the pictures were for nor which media outlet she represented.

“It was an amazing visualization, the more I think about it,” freshman Nate Neutstadt told The Algemeiner. “We’re here together as a community celebrating life, celebrating love, and on the other hand, there were people coming up to us trying to fuel the fire and spread hate.”

A native of San Diego, California, Neutstadt chose to attend GW — which he described as his “dream school” for its highly reputed school of international affairs — fully aware that every day on campus would see his Jewish identity scrutinized and maligned.

Resisting any notion that Jewish identity can be driven underground, he accepted the challenge. The unknown woman was one of many obstacles against which he, as well as other first-year Jewish students, had steeled themselves long ago.

Soon, she became an afterthought. No one photographed her in return.

“We were all just here in the moment, celebrating. And I think all of our mindsets at this point is that they’re going to do what they’re going to do and we’re going to be here celebrating life and love,” he added, explaining that he intends to fight hatred with Jewish pride.

“There’s so much hate going around towards Jews just over our existing, and I think the best way to fight against it is to be a proud Jew, to live Jewish life in the face of hate. Because no matter what these antisemites try to do, chanting in the streets ‘intifada, intifada,’ they can never defeat us.”

Others, such as senior Ari Shapiro, have experienced an awakening of Jewish identity in the post-Oct 7. world.

Throughout most of his life, Shapiro explained, Jewishness was an overlooked component of his identity, a detail of his biography which entitled him to a bar mitzvah but was attenuated by the comfort and banality of suburbia.

“I’m in a different boat than some of the others Jewish students you’ll talk to,” he said.

“Before Oct. 7, 2023, I had never really considered what it meant to be Jewish. I never really felt an attachment to the identity or had even considered it to be a barrier between me and anyone else who wasn’t Jewish. That’s ironic, I know, given my name, which doesn’t get more Jewish than that. But seeing how Hamas butchered and slaughtered thousands of people, many of whom were part of the kibbutzim, which is usually the farther left group in Israel; and then seeing people on this campus demonstrate in support of their killers — that forced me to realize that no matter how much I made being Jewish as part of my identity, I would still share in the fate of others whose Judaism and Jewishness is the basis of how they are perceived by the world.”

For Natasha Halbfinger, who lived in Israel for four years during adolescence, Oct. 7 affirmed values in which she has always believed.

“We, as the Jewish people, will continue to be proud of our identities,” she proclaimed during a speech delivered on Saturday night. “We will not be Jews with trembling knees. We will continue to turn horror into beautiful celebrations of life — because Am Israel Chai.

George Washington Universityjewish studentsOct. 7th memorial