The global Jewish community is still reeling from the Hamas fighters’ Saturday attack on the southern territory of Israel near the Gaza Strip.
As of Tuesday morning, the death toll has surpassed 1,200, with 22 being American citizens, according to USA Today.
The onslaught, which happened on the exact same weekend the Yom Kippur War started 50 years prior, was the deadliest day for the entire Jewish people since the Holocaust, said Alex Shapiro, executive director of the United Jewish Federation of Utah.
“It was a horrible, savage, unprecedented attack that cut to the core of not only the population in Israel, but also the Jewish community around the world and North America and in Utah,” he said. “It just tears at the core of our hearts and our minds. It has shaken our community terribly.”
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the October War, was a conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, which ran from Oct. 6-25 in 1973.
Adding to the pain, Hamas planned Saturday’s attack on not only a Shabbat, a Jewish day of rest, but also during two holidays — Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah — where many Jews were celebrating in synagogue, Shapiro said.
“Instead of that day taking shape as it should have, we ended up coming together as a community Saturday night to take comfort from ourselves and the broader community around us,” he said.
One of the earliest targets of the attack were attendees of the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, also known as the Nova Music Festival, a weekend event set in the Negev desert, which is about three miles from Gaza–Israel barrier.
At 7 a.m., Hamas launched a rocket attack, and armed militants chased festival goers through the desert, killing at least 260, and taking hostages.
CNN reported that Hamas fighters have abdicated as many as 150 people, some confirmed festival attendees, during the attack.
Freelance journalist Bari Nan Cohen Rothchild, a noted figure in Park City’s Jewish community, put things in perspective Tuesday during a Park City Rotary Club meeting.
“Imagine you are at a music festival — an outdoor concert at Deer Valley or the Canyons, communing with your neighbors, enjoying music, and armed terrorists start dropping bombs on your family and friends,” she said. “It’s unthinkable, but that’s exactly what happened when Hamas attacked Israel last weekend.”
The magnitude of the killing, torture and kidnapping of Jews during the ongoing attack is agonizing, and doesn’t just affect Jews, said Rabbi Yudi Steiger of Chabad Lubavich of Park City.
“The mass-terror attack was carried out by barbaric evil forces seeking nothing but to torture and kill Jewish men, women and children, and sow terror among Jews everywhere,” he said. “Everyone in the Jewish community knows someone who knows one of the victims. This is an attack that strikes to the very heart of the Jewish people. No one in the country is unharmed.”
Shapiro concurred with Steiger.
“Although Israel is a relatively small country with a population of roughly 9 million inhabitants, there isn’t anyone in Utah’s Jewish community who hasn’t had a friend or family member killed, wounded, missing or have been called to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces to fight,” he said.
While there isn’t a hard or fast analytical number, Shapiro’s personal estimate is that the Jewish population in Utah lies somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people.
“We’re in the fastest growing state in the country, and everybody’s moving here, and those who identify as Jewish are moving here as well,” he said.
Rothchild, along with her husband Jeffery and their two sons, like other Jews around the world, are keeping tabs on any new developments.
“This is a developing situation,” she said. “We do not know what comes next, but we do have a few things we can do.”
The big one is to check in with members of the local Jewish community, which is something Shapiro urged as well.
“Reach out to your Jewish friends and the community in Park City,” Shapiro said. “Reach out to the people of Har Shalom and people you know. Ask your friends to do the same, because it’s the broad community coming together to show support for an extremely affected community, like we should do for other communities who are affected by acts of terror, hate or bias aor bigotry. We don’t solve this alone.”
Steiger asked the community to pray.
“We, in Park City, stand firm with our brothers and sisters in Israel and extend our heartfelt prayers and support,” he said. “We pray for the safety, security and well-being of all our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land during this horrible war and forever.”
While there have been signs of support through events such as a gathering at Congregation Kol Ami Tuesday night and at the Utah State Capitol Wednesday afternoon, there have also been bomb threats at local synagogues in Salt Lake City, so Rothchild asked the community to adhere to the “See something, say something” rule.
“… People are often unwilling to report things, because they’ll be embarrassed if it turns out to be nothing,” she said. “But it’s the job of our highly trained, compassionate law enforcement officers to decide what rises to the level of threat. They can’t protect us from things they don’t know about.”
Shapiro also knows that during times of crisis, there are people who want to donate money, so the United Jewish Federation of Utah has established the Israel Emergency Fund.
“It’s going to take a significant amount of resources to help care for all of those affected via increased trauma support or monetary support for victims or the terror or rebuild,” he said.
Donors can be made by visiting tinyurl.com/mrxrzytj.
Steiger also offered some council, and urged those who want to help to visit onemitzvah.org.
“During past conflicts in the Land of Israel, when things seemed bleak, and during times of danger for the Jewish people, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, the most influential rabbi in modern history, made practical suggestions of mitzvahs to elicit God’s protection,” he said. “Among them are coming together in unity for prayer, men putting on tefillin, women to light Shabbat candles, putting a mezuzah on one’s doors, giving charity and doing acts of kindness, and studying Torah. Because every act of kindness is a powerful light that banishes much darkness and will certainly banish this despicable darkness we all abhor.”
Rothschild also asks that the greater community put politics aside.
“I feel it’s important to note that some of the most prominent pro-Palestinian activists stand alongside the most staunch Zionists in decrying this horrific event,” she said. “This is, in large part, because Hamas is not ‘the Palestinians.’ Hamas has in its charter that their goal is the eradication of Jews.”
Lastly, Shapiro urges parents, guardians and family members of all denominations to talk with the children.
“Let them understand that it’s OK to celebrate differences, and that it’s OK to be different,” he said. “We should also find appropriate ways to have conversations about hard history. As soon as we try to escape that, we get on the wrong path and spiral into what we’re talking about right now. It has to start from the ground up, and that’s what we have to do going forward.”
In response to the Hamas attacks and the bomb threats in Salt Lake City, Summit County Sheriff Frank Smith ordered deputies to increase patrols at Park City’s Temple Har Shalom.