On Monday, Oct. 7, when Jewish students entered the Minnesota Hillel building at the University of Minnesota and walked down the main steps to the study lounge on the bottom floor, they could just about hear the Israeli music coming from Hillel’s gym.
The music, a collection of songs written in the aftermath of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel one year ago, was one part of a multi-element exhibit in the gym organized by staff to commemorate the Oct. 7 anniversary.
“We knew that we wanted to create one space where students could explore…mourn, and pray at their own pace, at their own time, with a lot of different mediums,” said Polly Lehman, Hillel’s director of Jewish student life.
Central to the gym exhibit was a display of 19 pieces of art and photography, curated by the Anu – Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, that spoke to the Israeli Oct. 7 trauma.
Pieces ranged from a photo of a flock of birds taken by an Israeli photojournalist killed on Oct. 7, to a series of paintings titled “Night at the Kibbutz” that memorialize the Israeli towns overrun and destroyed by Hamas through images of their street lamps before the attack.
“Despite having no clear direction to encapsulate these events, we mounted an exhibition that looks at life in the war and authenticates what we saw, the music we listened to, and the art created in this chaos,” said a framed statement from the museum.
The table with photos and stories of six Israelis with ties to Minnesota who were killed on Oct. 7 by Hamas (Lev Gringauz/TC Jewfolk)
Lined up against the walls of the Hillel gym were various other tables to engage students. One held an array of photos of hostages taken by Hamas, courtesy of the organization Coming Home Soon, and another memorialized six Israelis killed by Hamas on Oct. 7 with ties to Minnesota.
Students could light a candle and place a stone to commemorate the Israelis. Among the six was Netta Epstein, a member of the Herzl Camp community, who died protecting his fiance from a Hamas grenade.
The memorial table for Israelis connected to Minnesota “brought this whole day and experience from something grand and unrelatable, to right here right now,” said Lehman, reflecting on student feedback. “So we’ve been hearing most about that connection.”
Just outside the gym, a few Hillel staff camped out with free food (several containers of falafel and other treats from Naf Naf Grill) and spoke with students. It was another way to support the varied needs of students on such a heavy day.
“There’s a space to sit and have lunch and talk to a staff member, or talk to a friend, and just be in community,” said Emily Boskoff, the new executive director of Minnesota Hillel.
“Then there’s some students that might just say, ‘Today’s Oct. 7, and I don’t want to talk about it,’” she said. “We also want to make sure that there’s a space for them to be in our building, because they did choose to come here and be with other Jews, and just being in a safe space is what makes them feel like they’re commemorating the day.”
Over the course of the day, about 70 students choose to engage with the gym exhibit. But Hillel staff also knew from student feedback that they needed to offer more structured commemoration options, which drew another 30 students.
So at 5:30 pm, Hillel partnered with Chabad at the University of Minnesota to create a memorial service in the Hillel chapel that mixed together creative readings, traditional liturgy like “El Maleh Rahamim” (God full of compassion) and the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer, and prayers for hostages and the state of Israel.
The service was designed to guide students through the process of mourning, and help them to process some of the overwhelming feelings of Oct. 7.
“We can hold their hand and lead them through and say, here’s a moment to mourn,” Lehman said. “Here’s a moment to ask for thanks, for forgiveness…here’s a moment to end on a note of hope.”
While the service was briefly disrupted by a small anti-Israel protest outside the Hillel building, police quickly dispersed the protestors and the event continued as planned.
People visit Hillel’s Oct. 7 exhibit (Lev Gringauz/TC Jewfolk)
Chabad co-directors Rabbi Yitzi Steiner and his wife, the Rebbetzin Chavi Steiner, spoke at the service, which was also supported by Rabbi Jill Avrin, a member of the Minnesota Hillel board of governors.
For Rabbi Steiner, the goal was “to uplift and motivate the students – Oct. 7 is a very heavy day…there’s a lot of raw emotions and feelings and thoughts,” he said, speaking before the service.
“The question that I have, and the question I think that everybody has is, what do we do with that? What do we do with the emotion? What do we do with the thoughts? How do we channel this into something positive? And that’s really what I’m looking to impart [to] the students.”
Even amid the difficult times on campus after Oct. 7, Chabad and Hillel are focused on core missions of supporting students as they are, whatever their needs may be.
“There’s such a wide array of students that need different things during this period of time,” Steiner said, referring both to the Oct. 7 anniversary and the high holidays.
“Some need a place to pray. Some just need a place to eat. Some don’t want either,” he said. “And the idea is to be able to cater to each and every one of them in a way that they know that this is their home away from home.”
After the memorial service, students then had the opportunity to learn about Israelis taken hostage and killed on Oct. 7 by cooking some of their favorite food, collected in a cookbook by a group called Taste of Memories.
“We knew that was something our students would love to do, and we felt like this particular program would really help lead students from mourning the lives that we lost, to celebrating the lives that we lost, all within the span of two to three hours on this day,” Lehman said.
It was important, as part of commemorating Oct. 7, to make sure to have an uplifting element for students. That also ties into a determination to live and celebrate life that Israelis have in the wake of the Hamas attack, often felt in the refrain “We will dance again,” memorializing the brutal Hamas assault on participants of the Nova Music Festival.
Boskoff hopes that students have three takeaways from the anniversary of Oct. 7: Reflection, memorialization, and finding some semblance of hope to move forward. That last one is likely the hardest.
Votes on the sphere-o-gram showing that students most appreciate a sense of community during tough times (Lev Gringauz/TC Jewfolk)
“It’s hard to think about the positivity because there’s so much grief, and there’s so much reflecting and memorializing – how do we even get to that next step?” Boskoff said. “How do we create that space for our students to feel that sense [of determined hope] that Israelis are looking at?”
Many Israelis have had a renewed determination to celebrate life in the wake of the Hamas attack, often felt in the refrain “We will dance again,” which memorializes the nearly 400 people killed in the brutal Hamas assault on the Nova Music Festival.
One display in the Hillel gym exhibit may show that students are picking up what Hillel staff are putting down: A sphere-o-gram, created by a former Hillel professional, that serves as a makeshift voting machine for students.
The prompt was, “In difficult times, what gives you hope?” Five voting options ranged from “displays of love and acceptance” to “having faith in guides and leaders.”
The overwhelming winner, though, was option four: “Coming together in community.”
