Marking Anniversary of the Oct. 7th Attacks with Community-Wide Event
Lander College For Men Beis Medrash L’Talmud Leadership Share Messages of Torah, Hope and History
On the one-year anniversary of the October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel, Lander College for Men-Beis Medrash L’Talmud (LCM) hosted a community event, Faith in Times of Crisis to commemorate the tragedy.
It was standing room only for students, faculty, and members of the local Kew Gardens Hills community who filled the campus auditorium to hear the LCM administration and Rebbeim share their thoughts on the Oct. 7th attacks, their historical context, and the relevance to our lives today.
Dr. Henry Abramson, dean of LCM, spoke about the significance of Oct. 7th in Jewish history, providing a historical overview in which he detailed Israel’s communities inside Gaza and its subsequent disengagement in 2005, leading to Hamas’ rise to power. But he also noted how the Jewish people have been discriminated against for millennia, which has two implications.
“The first is that there isn’t another group of people on the face of this planet that has experienced more tragedy and has yet come back from that tragedy with renewed strength and vigor,” he said. “But at the same time, it is something of a challenge that we all have to learn those lessons over and over again every generation.”
HaRav Yosef Sonnenschein, menahel of Beis Medrash L’Talmud, followed, and reflected on whether, after all the violence and death the Jewish people have experienced in the last year, the Jewish people are becoming numb to it all. But he emphasized that while it can feel hopeless, in ways we can’t understand, it’s part of Hashem’s plan for the Jewish people.
“Nothing is happening by mistake. Nothing happens to happen. Nothing is an aside from the mission of Klal Yisrael. This is part of our story,” Rabbi Sonnenschein said. “We may not have the wisdom to be able to look at October 7th and explain all the different pieces of the very complex world that we live in today, but just the knowledge that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is guiding us, that we’re not a ship without a captain, that there’s a direction and a meaning and a future that leads to Yemos HaMashiach is a nechama for us.”
HaRav Yonasan Sacks, Rosh HaYeshiva of Beis Medrash L’Talmud, was the final speaker of the evening, and he reflected on the profound anguish of the past year, but noted that the continued existence of the Jewish people while we are in exile is in itself a miracle and one in which we should take comfort. After all, he noted, when a person is riding high, everyone is interested in developing a relationship with that person. But when the person goes through hardship, sometimes those people are nowhere to be seen.
“It’s not who’s with you in the good times, it’s who's with you in the most dire times of any sort of that really is the test,” he said. “But to experience a miracle in the darkness of Galus is something that is absolutely remarkable, because it teaches us that not only in good times, but even in the most difficult times HaKadosh Baruch Hu was with us one step at a time, that he is watching us and he has our back even in absolute Galus.”
Rabbi Sacks explained that the words of Tov LeHodos, the song from Tehillim, exemplify this concept, specifically the words “Lehagid baboker chasdecha, vemunascha baleilos,” We should declare Hashem’s kindness in the morning, and His faithfulness to us in the evening; meaning that just as Jews must sing G-d’s praises in times of light and good fortune, we also need to embrace our trust in Him when we are in the dark and experiencing great hardship. As such, as the program concluded, everyone in attendance joined together to sing Tov LeHodos, after which the students rose and returned to the Beis Medrash for night seder.
