JERUSALEM (RNS) — Like many religious Israeli Jews, Rabbi Reb Mimi Feigelson has been wrestling with her presumptions about God and suffering since Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists infiltrated Israel and massacred more Jews in a single day than any time since the Holocaust.
“I’ve been struggling theologically from the first moment,” said Feigelson, a spiritual mentor and senior lecturer in Hassidic thought and death studies at the Schechter Institutes in Jerusalem. “I think the most immediate way to look at it is, how can I live with God after what happened? But without God, I can’t live with what happened.”
Feigelson said Hamas’ cruelty during the yearlong war, which began on the ordinarily joyous holiday of Simchat Torah, has shaken her belief that Jews would never again experience such brutality and inhumanity.
“I always imagined God sitting shiva for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and getting up from shiva,” the period of Jewish mourning “when the last survivor left this world. Yet the morning after Simchat Torah — I say Simchat Torah and not Oct. 7 because it keeps God in the equation — I said, God, in my lifetime, you are not going to get up from sitting shiva.”
In a world “that is bleeding, where God’s children are bleeding,” Feigelson said, “one of my bigger challenges is to keep my heart open in compassion. We are all God’s children.”
Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kossoy. (Courtesy photo)
Like Feigelson, Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, head of the Beit Midrash at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, said she does not want to lose touch with her humanity, despite the atrocities committed by Hamas and other terror groups, which were felt in her own circles. Her son was in the same high school class as three of the young men murdered by Hamas over the past year, including an American Israeli taken hostage by Hamas, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Hersh’s mother, Rachel Goldberg, was working at Pardes when Hamas kidnapped Hersh and 250 others.
Hammer-Kossoy’s son was called up to IDF reserve duty on Oct. 7. “When my son was a soldier in Gaza, he was looking for Hersh. At the same time, he was trying to hold onto his humanity and his profound respect for human life, even when encountering the enemy. That has been the profound challenge, for all of us.”
Rabbi Donniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, believes that, for many Israelis, Hamas’ attack has created a greater challenge to Zionist ideology than it did to Jewish theology.
“The Jewish people are well trained in dealing with our theological reality,” Hartman said. “Bad things happen to good people throughout Jewish history. We give God a pass on that. Either we look at Job’s suffering, say God’s ways are hidden, or by thanking God for what we have and leaving the rest aside.”
In the view of Hartman and others, the attack shook Israelis’ belief that having a sovereign state after 2,000 years of exile and persecution would keep them safe.
Rabbi Donniel Hartman. (Photo by Noam Feiner)
“Israel was supposed to be the answer to diasporic insecurity. Oct. 7 was a diaspora experience, and many have called it a pogrom. We thought that we had moved from the Holocaust to Redemption, but this doesn’t feel like Redemption.”
As war continues to rage, both Israeli and diaspora Jews are searching for “anchors to restore their sense of security. We are still looking,” Hartman said.
Rabbi David Stav, chairman of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, which provides religious services and tries to create dialogue with the broader Israeli population, said, “The challenge has been the attempt to understand why God did this to us, or where was God on Oct. 7?”
Stav rejects the claim, mostly from ultra-Orthodox Jews, that the victims of the attack at the secular Nova music festival that took place on Simchat Torah were punished by God. “Is it proper to say this? How do they know this?”
Stav said he is certain of one thing: The attack was a wake-up call about the dangers facing Jews both from without and within. The massacre “wasn’t a punishment, but it was an alarm telling us that if we don’t change our ways, we might find ourselves without a homeland,” he said.
“We must focus on being better people, caring more about each other, being more united, on creating a leadership that shows empathy to one another, not ones that are arrogant, who keep insulting one another. We must change our ways.”
To promote a sense of Jewish unity, Tzohar has drafted a special prayer to be recited during the High Holidays in hundreds of synagogues around the world.
Meanwhile, Hammer-Kossoy reminds herself that the Jewish people have survived difficult challenges while maintaining their faith in God.
People light candles during a vigil in memory of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Jerusalem, Israel, Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
“There is a story, recounted in the book “Hassidic Tales of the Holocaust” by Yaffa Eliach,” she said. “Rabbi Israel Spira, the Grand Rabbi of Bluzhov, recalled how one night during the Holocaust he and other Jews imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp were ordered to try to jump over a large pit. If they fell into the pit, they would be shot immediately. If they managed to jump to the other side, they would live another day,” Hammer-Kossoy said.
“Rav Yisrael stood next to another man, a companion who was not religiously observant. His companion said, ‘Why are we even trying? We are giving entertainment to the Germans. Let’s lie down and die with dignity.’ Instead, the Rebbe said, ‘Let’s jump to the other side,’ and they did.
“The non-observant man asked, ‘How did you do it?’ The Rebbe replied, ‘I was hanging onto the coattails of my father and grandfather and great grandfather.’ The Rebbe asked his friend, ‘How did you do it?’ His reply? ‘I was holding onto you!’”
At Pardes, Hammer-Kossoy said, the students and the faculty “have been holding onto each other.”