Oct. 7 Anniversary Brings Up Memories, Heightened Emotions for DMV Jewish Community

The approaching one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed over 1,200 Israelis is bringing out a range of emotions and memories from that day for members of the DMV Jewish community, from shock to grief, that turned into months of tireless work for Israel and Jews in the United States.

The attack brought out a level of anxiety, anger and fright that many in the Jewish community had not felt in decades, and the attack felt very close to home despite occurring thousands of miles away due to the deep personal connections that many in the Jewish community have with Israel.

Gil Preuss, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, found out about the attack when he woke up at 6 a.m. on Oct. 7 and had an email from a Federation staff member saying that something horrible was happening and they needed to talk.

“I still have the email because I was going through my old emails, and I got to Oct. 7, and I thought, I can’t delete any of these emails. I mean, this is just too much in terms of history. And it was hard to believe,” Preuss said.

Preuss said he was in shock that something like this could happen, and he immediately began daily meetings with other Federation leaders to prepare and coordinate their response.

Preuss said that initial accountings of the attack listed less than 30 victims, which at the time was unbelievable, but as the days went on the count rose a staggering amount to the hundreds, then over 1,000.

“The disbelief that something like this could happen, that something so horrific could happen in Israel in 2023, could happen to the Jewish people once again, was just astounding,” Preuss said.

Despite Israel being thousands of miles away, it is an important landmark that is the homeland of the Jewish people, and many local Jews have deep personal connections to the country and its people that made the attack and ensuing war all the more important.

Shmarya Gasner, executive director at Berman Hebrew Academy, said that he’s been to
Israel over 20 times in his life, and his parents moved to the country when he turned 18, and have lived there for 23 years.

“I spent a year and a half between high school and college in a gap year there. I’ve had summer camp experiences there, and a lot of family there. There are grandparents who lived there before they passed away,” Gasner said. “So, it’s on a very personal level. There’s a strong connection that I have with the country, aside from just the land itself, it’s also that I have a lot of family and a lot of friends who live there.”

Gasner said that Berman has a trip where they take the entire high school to Israel every four years, and that despite the most recent trip being in 2022, the school sent a delegation to Israel after Oct. 7 to support the country and the Berman alumni who are living there and fighting in the Israel Defense Forces.

He added that being on the trip and showing up to support the people and country they care so much about was a powerful experience and that they were able to hopefully give strength to the people there.

Preuss said that he doesn’t have any family currently living in Israel, but noted that his parents made aliyah when he was three years old, and he lived in Israel for seven years growing up, including during the Yom Kippur War.

Preuss also visits the country often in his official capacity as CEO of the Federation and he and his family have friends that live there, which made the Oct. 7 attack deeply painful for his family, as he said that his son lost two friends in the attack, and another is still held hostage.

And with the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7 coming up, there is a focus not only on the shared grief that is felt across the community, but the pressing matters still at hand with the war still raging and the hostage situation still unresolved.

Gasner said that the ongoing war is always on the minds of people at Berman and that they’re working on an age-appropriate way to commemorate the anniversary with their students.

“The mood is very somber, we’re still dealing with hostages, and there’s still the ongoing war, and it’s very much at the forefront of our minds. When you have the anniversary, you sort of reflect on how the world, from the perspective of a Jewish person, has changed in the last year,” Gasner said. “What it means to be a Jew post-Oct. 7 is different than what it was on Oct. 6.”

Preuss said that with all the sweeping changes to Israeli and American society this past year, it’s important to bring a strong commitment to refocus on the Israeli citizens murdered, and that will be a large part of the anniversary for him.

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