“It is not enough to mourn the Jews and Israelis that have died – we must also mourn the 10s of thousands of Palestinians and now Lebanese people killed in the war that's now lasted just over a year.”
I agree entirely… but… in Judaism we also have the concept of a yahrzeit. We don’t take an ‘all lives matter’ approach to yahrzeits. And it so happens that 7 October 2024 (or Simchat Torah 5785) is, in fact, the first yahrzeit of the Israelis murdered precisely one year earlier. So I see nothing wrong, in principle, with marking the occasion specifically and exclusively in their memory.
My shul did so on 7 October so as to leave Simchat Torah a time for joy, and I framed our 7 October service as the start of a year of yahrzeits, some Jewish, some Muslim, some Israeli, some Palestinian.
But I think it’s unrealistic to suggest that people use the first anniversary of a specific massacre to remember a group of people any wider than that specific massacre’s victims.
Hi Gabriel, perhaps you are right and this was a special case. But in general I think we should not be shy of using the rituals of Judaism to mourn the deaths of non-Jews, especially when they are non-Jews who have been killed by Jews (Plus quite a lot of Palestinians in Gaza were killed ON October 7th, the war began immediately, so it was the 'yortzeit' of them too). And as I have written previously I think the tendency to mourn only our side has the effect of perpetuating the war and adding to the collective blindness to what is happening in Gaza.
“It is not enough to mourn the Jews and Israelis that have died – we must also mourn the 10s of thousands of Palestinians and now Lebanese people killed in the war that's now lasted just over a year.”
I agree entirely… but… in Judaism we also have the concept of a yahrzeit. We don’t take an ‘all lives matter’ approach to yahrzeits. And it so happens that 7 October 2024 (or Simchat Torah 5785) is, in fact, the first yahrzeit of the Israelis murdered precisely one year earlier. So I see nothing wrong, in principle, with marking the occasion specifically and exclusively in their memory.
My shul did so on 7 October so as to leave Simchat Torah a time for joy, and I framed our 7 October service as the start of a year of yahrzeits, some Jewish, some Muslim, some Israeli, some Palestinian.
But I think it’s unrealistic to suggest that people use the first anniversary of a specific massacre to remember a group of people any wider than that specific massacre’s victims.
Hi Gabriel, perhaps you are right and this was a special case. But in general I think we should not be shy of using the rituals of Judaism to mourn the deaths of non-Jews, especially when they are non-Jews who have been killed by Jews (Plus quite a lot of Palestinians in Gaza were killed ON October 7th, the war began immediately, so it was the 'yortzeit' of them too). And as I have written previously I think the tendency to mourn only our side has the effect of perpetuating the war and adding to the collective blindness to what is happening in Gaza.