As people across the world mourned and prayed for those killed, wounded, and taken hostage in a violent surprise attack by the terrorist group Hamas in Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, so too did the South Fork’s Jewish community, joined in solidarity by members and leaders of other religious organizations.
On Oct. 11, four days after the attack, hundreds of voices, singing and praying together in Hebrew and in English, filled the sanctuary at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons. Rabbis and members of five local synagogues were in attendance.
Angry, sad, disgusted, hurt, crushed — Rabbi Josh Franklin of the Jewish Center said he was feeling all that and more as he began the evening service. He described the days that had elapsed since the attacks as “some of my hardest days in my 10 years as a rabbi.”
“No, I’m not okay,” he said.
But, he implored, “Join me in not letting hatred seep into your souls. It will poison you.”
As of yesterday morning, the Israeli death toll from the Oct. 7 attack had climbed above 1,400 — including at least 22 Americans, and many unarmed women and children — with another 3,000 people wounded and 97 confirmed taken hostage, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Since then, the number of hostages is reported close to 200. Israel has since retaliated against Hamas by targeting Gaza, with CNN reporting that 3,478 Palestinians have died there and at least 12,000 have been wounded since the conflict started on Oct. 7. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled Gaza City.
On Tuesday, there was a deadly explosion at a hospital there, where many civilians had been sheltering; each side has blamed the other for the attack.
“Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli airstrike, an assertion that was forcefully disputed by the Israel Defense Forces, which blamed an errant rocket fired by an armed Palestinian faction,” The New York Times reported yesterday. “Neither side’s account could be independently verified, and the cause of the blast and its death toll remained unclear.”
President Joe Biden traveled yesterday to Israel. He previously pledged “unshakeable” support from the United States, saying in an Oct. 10 speech, “This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by a millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people. So, in this moment, we must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”
At the service in the Jewish Center sanctuary, Rabbi Franklin was joined by colleagues from Sag Harbor’s Temple Adas Israel, Bridgehampton’s Gesher | The Bridge Shul, the Center for Jewish Life in North Haven, Chabad of the Hamptons, and the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach. The Rev. Ben Shambaugh of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, as well as the Rev. Rob Stuart, retired pastor of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, were also in attendance. Several elected officials, including East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen and Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, also attended.
Rabbi Jan Uhrbach of The Bridge Shul explained why certain psalms, Psalms 121 and 142, were chosen for the evening’s service.
They are a “traditional Jewish way of calling out to God for help in times of crisis,” she noted. The Jewish community is dealing with trauma, she added later, and “We are all affected differently, but we are all affected. . . . We all need care now in different ways.”
“We discover, in the psalms, that there is absolutely nothing we are feeling now that hasn’t been felt” by Jews throughout the centuries, Rabbi Uhrbach said. “We’ve been here before.”
Rabbi Avraham Bronstein of the Hampton Synagogue called upon the packed audience in the center’s sanctuary, and those watching on Zoom locally and internationally, to tap into empathy as a way to support Jews worldwide and invoke “a wellspring of Jewish resilience.”
“It’s the recognition that when we see others in distress, we are also in distress,” he said. “Our empathy defines us. Their lack of empathy defines them.”
The Jewish Center’s rabbi cantor, Debra Stein, and a soloist, Lauren Lebowitz Feldman, led the audience in a moving Hebrew and English performance of the song “Lu Yehi,” written by Naomi Shemer, which Rabbi Dan Geffen of Temple Adas Israel explained was based on the song “Let It Be” by the Beatles:
“If from the dark of night about us, there shines forth a blessed star / then may all our prayers come to be. / May peace abide within our land and strengthen all those near and far, / May it come to pass; may it be.”
The prayer service concluded with the singing of Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”). “Our hope is not yet lost, the hope of two thousand years,” the audience sang, “to be a free nation in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
Charlotte Sasso, a board member of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, said after the service that she was very grateful for the chance to be together. “It’s really hard to put into words how I feel. I’m just so sad for the state of the world, that there could still be so much hatred between people who should be able to come together.”
Ms. Sasso is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and has friends in Gaza. “This hits me on a very deep level,” she said. “My mind just travels all over, to what my family had experienced and what people are experiencing now. . . . There are so many innocent people who just want to live in peace, and it’s so distressing that people don’t seem to learn that we have more similarities than differences. We should be able to find bridges, rather than blowing them up.”
This story has been updated since it was first published Oct. 8.
