This past week, various Jewish groups on campus came together to mourn the events of Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel. An estimated 1,200 people were killed at the attack, and over 250 more were taken hostage.
On Monday, Oct. 7, Claremont Hillel, 5C Chabad, the Jewish Chaplain and Haverim hosted a memorial for the victims of last year’s attack. The memorial was held at Pomona College’s Estella Court at 5 p.m., and was followed by a falafel dinner.
Maya Malev SC ’27, a programming intern at Hillel, estimated that there were around 60 to 70 people in attendance. She explained that participants spent time remembering and honoring the victims and praying for the safe return of the hostages and gave her thoughts on the significance of having the event.
“I think mostly the reason [for the event] is just so Jewish students feel supported, especially when there’s so much polarization on campus,” Malev said. “Having a space where they can feel like they can be publicly Jewish is really important, especially because some students have connections to people whose lives were taken on Oct. 7.”
Hillel also hosted a campus trip to the Los Angeles Nova Exhibition on Oct. 6. According to the exhibition’s website, the installation serves as a way to remember last year’s Oct. 7 attack at the Nova Music Festival.
“The installation sets out to recreate a festival dedicated to peace and love that was savagely cut short by a terrorist attack on that fateful day,” the website reads. “This groundbreaking installation is presented as a way to empower visitors to responsibly explore & bear witness to the tragic events of October 7 and its aftermath.”
Additionally, Hillel kept its Hillel Room, located off-campus, open on Oct. 7 as a “safe haven” for Jewish students, according to a newsletter sent to members on Oct. 10.
“Our goal remains clear: to ensure the well-being of Jewish students and to create an environment where they never feel ashamed or afraid to express their identity,” the newsletter reads.
Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Nishmat 5C and Claremont Muslim Student Association commemorated the lives lost on Oct. 7, 2023 — along with those lost in the preceding and ensuing conflicts — in a different way: through a series of mourning ribbon distributions. The distributions were inspired by Nonviolence International’s campaign, “Every Life, A Universe.”
Those who chose to participate wore black mourning ribbons, which were distributed around the colleges on Oct. 6, 7 and 8, to grieve the different lives lost.
On Oct. 6, these participants condemned the “violence of the apartheid, displacement, confinement, and persecution” inflicted upon Palestinians prior to Oct. 7, 2023. The next day, participants did the same for the actions of the Palestinian militant group Hamas the year before. On the last day of the series, participants grieved the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by Israel.
They also hosted a community processing space at Pitzer College’s Grove House Outdoor Classroom on Monday night.
“[W]e cannot grieve selectively,” the groups announced in a shared Instagram post on Oct. 4. “[J]oin us in grounding our resistance to oppression, war, and genocide in the sacredness of every life.”
Ezra Levinson PZ ’27, a member of JVP, reiterated the idea that people cannot grieve selectively.
“That’s what I’ve been feeling for weeks, even for the entire past year, and what I heard from so many other students — Jewish and otherwise — during the ribbon distribution and at the processing space we held,” Levinson said in an email to TSL. “It felt important and powerful to hold open a space that can grieve all death, and acknowledge the value of all life, without obscuring the circumstances that led up to October 7 or ignoring Israel’s horrifying genocidal response which continues to escalate a year later.”
They then quoted the Kotzker Rebbe, a Hasidic rabbi and spiritual founder, who said “there is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”
“Sometimes we hide from complex pain and grief by ignoring power dynamics or by grieving some deaths and not others,” Levinson said. “But then we’re not whole, and it’s harder to act with integrity.”
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