Six Months On: How October 7 and the Gaza War Transformed Jews Across the Globe

For Daniel Korin, life will never be the same. On the morning of that Black Saturday, his beloved older brother was killed by Hamas terrorists, but he would not know that for sure until the body was eventually found several days later.

Avi Korin, 56 and a father of triplets, had served as head of the security squad in Holit, a tiny kibbutz on the Gaza border that suffered devastating losses that day. Fifteen members were murdered, along with two foreign laborers, while four Bedouin citizens working on the kibbutz and another two members were taken hostage to Gaza.

"We never even knew that he had volunteered as head of the kibbutz security squad," says Daniel, 52, who lives in Buenos Aires, where he serves as regional director of advertisement sales for a television service.

For Argentine Jews, the Hamas attack hit particularly close to home. Many of the kibbutzim on the Gaza border were originally settled by Zionist youth movement members from Argentina. Avi was one of nine Argentine-born Jews killed that day, while another 20 were taken hostage.

"It felt like it had actually happened to us here in Argentina," says Daniel. "And it made us feel even closer to our brothers and sisters in Israel."

The Korin family is well known in the Argentine Jewish community, with Daniel's parents, Moshe and Sara, having served as top administrators at the famous Scholem Aleijem Jewish day school. His father was also employed as cultural director of the AMIA Jewish center.

Like many kibbutzniks living in the region, Avi was a peacenik, his brother recounts. "He never wanted war, but he also always said that the government didn't care about people living in the south and the threat of Hamas, and that he and his fellow kibbutzniks always felt very alone and vulnerable there."

Although he was terribly shaken by what happened on October 7, Daniel says it hasn't altered his view of what needs to be done to resolve the conflict.

"I still believe that the Palestinians need to have their own state, and you can't stop them from wanting that," he says. "It's not an easy situation because there's no one to talk to right now. But in the long run, that's what needs to be done. Obviously without Hamas, and I do believe that Hamas will be a passing chapter."

"But right now," he adds, "the main priority has to be bringing the hostages home."

For nearly two years, up until October 7, Elizaveta Sherstuk lived in a war zone in Ukraine. Ever since, she has been living simultaneously in two.

Like many Ukrainian Jews, Sherstuk has relatives in Israel, In her case, the closest kind: Her father, daughter and granddaughter.

"My daughter and I always spoke a couple of times a day," says Sherstuk, 53, who runs the Hesed social welfare center, part of a network of centers that provide social services to Jews throughout the former Soviet bloc and is run by the Joint Distribution Committee, in the northeastern city of Sumy. "Now, it's even more than that."

Sherstuk's daughter and grandchild live in Ashdod, a prime target of Hamas rocket fire. Her father, who is largely immobile, lives in the central Israeli city of Rehovot. For the past six months, she says, she worries about them constantly.

But this would not be the first time in her life she has come close to danger. On February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, one of its first targets was her hometown, which is located barely 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border. Within a matter of weeks, Sherstuk would oversee the rescue and evacuation of 250 members of the local Jewish community.

In recognition of this life-saving endeavor, she was chosen to serve as one of a dozen torch-bearers (symbolizing the 12 ancient Israelite tribes) at Israel's annual Independence Day ceremony two years ago – one of the highest honors bestowed by the state.

In deference to Jewish tradition, Sherstuk would normally not answer the phone on Shabbat or on a Jewish holiday. But when she saw that it was her daughter on the line on the morning of Simchat Torah, which fell this year on Shabbat, "I immediately realized that something bad had happened."

Her daughter warned Sherstuk that she would see terrible things when she turned on the television, but that she should rest assured that her family was fine. The telephone went dead at that point, and Sherstuk spent the rest of the day waiting for it to ring again.

"It seems that my life since that day occurs between air-raid sirens here and air-raid sirens there," she reflects wryly.

As a Greens voter who is also deeply attached to Israel, Adam Levy has always felt like a bit of an oddball in his native Australia.

After all, there aren't that many Zionist spaces left in the country where progressives can still feel welcome, and not that many progressive spaces left where Zionists can still feel welcome. Since October 7, the situation has only worsened.

It has reached a point, says the 22-year-old doctoral student in Linguistics, that he and his Israeli-born parents even stopped speaking for a lengthy period over what he describes as some "very rough arguments" about Israel's response to the Hamas attack. No less disturbing, he says, was listening some of his Jewish friends "justifying the bombings of hospitals."

But Levy, who grew up in Sydney and campaigned for the Greens in the last elections, also feels betrayed by his fellow activists on the political left.

Not long after October 7, he tried to get the Greens to pass a resolution that not only condemned Israel's response to the Hamas attack, but also stipulated that antisemitism had no place in Australia and that Jews in Australia should not be taking the blame for Israel's actions.

"It was very difficult to get anyone to support this resolution, and in the end, I just figured it wasn't worth the fight," says Levy.

When a prominent Greens lawmaker – a woman he knew and had worked with – used a common antisemitic trope to attack the Jewish lobby in the country, referring to its "tentacles," he decided he needed a break from the party.

"I've kind of left the Greens," says Levy. "At least I've taken a step back. I'm not going to subject myself to the presence of people who think these sorts of things."

As a mechanism for coping with his frustration and despair, this former Jewish student leader has taken the radical step of tuning out of social media. "I had these two groups in my feed living in totally different realities," he says. "I would've gone crazy continuing to read what they had to say."

Being Jewish in many countries is not easy today – all the more so in a country like Turkey, whose leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is openly supportive of Hamas.

"We realize once more that we are not liked and not welcome here," says Rivka Bihar Waldman, 43, who has lived in Istanbul nearly her entire life and works for the Uruguayan consulate there and is an independent scholar specializing in the literary works of Sephardic Jews, mainly in Turkey.

"Obviously, everything would be fine if we kept silent, but what kind of home is that if you can't speak out?" she says.

The Jewish community in Turkey is very small, constantly shrinking and generally keeps a very low profile, which means that most Turkish people, says Bihar Waldman, have never encountered a Jew in their lives.

"For them, Israelis and Jews are the same, and because they consider Israel an enemy, we have been living in a lot of fear here since October 7," she says.

It could explain the impulse of many Jewish parents, in the immediate aftermath of October 7, to keep their children home from school, as she did. It could also explain why she encouraged her father, a synagogue cantor, to skip services in the weeks immediately following the attack.

If, in other places around the world, the Hamas attack brought Jews together and strengthened their sense of community, in Istanbul, it has achieved just the opposite.

"A lot of people stopped going to synagogue, and we've had to cancel a lot of events, like Israeli folk dancing, a children's choir and a play we were supposed to have," says Bihar Waldman. "We can't have any community events today without private security, and that's very expensive, so this has kind of dismantled our Jewish community life."

As bad as things look in Israel today, Bihar Waldman says she is aware of Turkish Jews who have made aliyah since October 7.

"To be honest, if my husband said 'yes,' I'd be there tomorrow as well," she says.

Soccer broadcaster Hernan Feler is one of the best-known voices in Argentina. What wasn't common knowledge about him until October 7 was his close connection to Israel.

Feler is the nephew of Ofelia Roitman, a 77-year-old member of Kibbutz Nir Oz who was taken hostage that morning by Hamas. Until she was released in a hostage deal 53 days after her abduction, he began every broadcast talking about his aunt, the plight of the hostages, the cruelty of Hamas and the need to wipe out the group.

"For those 53 days that she was in Gaza, I was terribly distracted and could think of nothing else but how to bring her and the rest of the hostages back home," he says. He exploited the huge platform at his disposal fully. "I always said in my broadcasts that I am speaking on behalf of many who cannot right now," Feler recounts.

Not all South American sports fans liked the monologues he would deliver at the start of every game, "but compared with all the wonderful feedback I got, that was trivial," says Feler. "And my employers and colleagues gave me full support to say what I felt needed to be said."

Explaining how the events of October 7 changed him, Feler, 48, says: "I feel more Jewish and prouder of being Jewish than ever before."

Although always connected to Israel, he adds: "I never really showed it this much before – but obviously, nothing like this has ever happened before."

Since his aunt returned to Israel on November 28, he continues to use his microphone to advocate on behalf of the hostages. "I don't intend to stop until they are all home," he vows.

To pay tribute to Hernan's efforts, the World Zionist Organization invited him to Israel for a reunion with his aunt on the day she returned. "I feel grateful to have been in Israel at that time," he says.

As a boy, 61-year-old Steven Schwartzberg recalls his "profound sense of identification with the United States and Israel" after learning about the atrocities committed against Jews during the Holocaust.

The historian has since grown deeply disillusioned with both countries. In the case of Israel, that process came to a head after October 7.

"The first thing I thought when I heard what had happened was that this was for Israel what 9/11 had been for the U.S.," recounts Schwartzberg, an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago. "The second thing I thought was that the Israelis are probably going to make the same mistakes that we did. They're going to respond with force and violence and overreaching militarily, and that is, indeed, in my opinion, what they have done in Gaza in the past few months.

"After the initial shock of 9/11, the sense of horror and solidarity with my fellow Americans was eroded because of what my fellow Americans were complicit in doing. And now my sense of horror and solidarity with the Israeli people has been eroded because of what they are complicit in doing."

Last year, Schwartzberg's book, "Arguments over Genocide: The War of Words in the Congress and the Supreme Court over Cherokee Removal," was published by Ethics Press in Britain. Watching events in Israel and Gaza from afar, he says, he could not help but see parallels with his research topic.

"I think of the Hamas attack on October 7 as a genocidal attack on Israel, and I think of Israel's retaliation as a genocidal attack on Gaza, and I find no justification for either," he says.

For years, Schwartzberg has been vehemently opposed to what he describes as "Israel's apartheid policy toward Palestinians, and its failure to take the initiative in pursuing a two-state solution."

What has changed since October 7, he says, is that he no longer feels a personal or special connection to the country. "I feel horrified by what Israelis experienced, but I no longer see Israel as having a natural relationship to the Jewish Diaspora – and that's a hard thing for a Jew like me to say."

Asiimwe Rabbin has good reason to hold a grudge against Israel. For years now, the state has refused to recognize him and another roughly 2,000 other members of the Abayudaya community in Uganda as Jewish. Time and again, their applications to visit Israel, study in Israel and receive Israeli citizenship have been rejected by the Interior Ministry – some have argued that it is because they are Black, others have argued that it is because they were converted by Conservative, rather than Orthodox, rabbis.

And yet, after October 7 Rabbin asked for a four-week leave from his job as a high school teacher in Kampala, and joined a group of volunteers from the world Conservative movement, who came to pick fruits and vegetables on the border kibbutzim which were evacuated after the Hamas attack.

"When I heard what had happened, I didn't think about how the government in Israel doesn't recognize us," he says. "I thought about the people who had suffered and died, and I thought that my people are not safe and that I have to help them, that that is what I have to devote my energy to right now."

Among the largest emerging Jewish communities in the world, the Abayudaya began practicing Judaism about 100 years ago but were only officially converted in recent years. Like many of his friends and relatives, Rabbin underwent conversion 15 years ago.

He led the first, and to date only, Birthright trip to Israel from Uganda in 2018, and in early 2020, he and his wife Rivkah became the first Ugandan Jews to hold a wedding in Israel. In attendance at the ceremony, which was held at a Conservative synagogue in Jerusalem, were many prominent rabbis from the non-Orthodox movements in Israel.

Rabbin and his wife both attended the Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem, and he was meant to return there after the Jewish High Holy Days to begin his rabbinic studies. But his plans to become the first Ugandan rabbi trained and ordained in Israel have been put on hold because of the war.

He is grateful to have been in Israel, very much around the time he had originally planned, even if not for the same purpose. "It was meaningful to feel I had done something to help people, even if not very much," says Rabbin.

Given its hostility toward Israel, Vanessa Hites was not surprised that Chile's leftist government supported South Africa's genocide case in the International Court of Justice. Nor was she surprised when her government banned Israeli companies from an aerospace fair it is hosting.

In a country that is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the world outside the Middle East, such a backlash to the war in Gaza could be expected.

What shocked Hites, an attorney and former Jewish student leader, was the response of the feminist movement she was once proud to call herself part of.

"Their silence about the sexual violence committed against Israeli women has been deafening," says the 29-year-old native of Santiago. "For me, it has been like a sock in the stomach. I mean, there's not another case in the world of feminist movements ignoring the victims of rape and even justifying these crimes. I find this double standard horrifying."

But that was not the only reason she was shaken up by the events of October 7. "I was part of a generation born into the reality of a strong and secure Jewish state," says Hites. "People like me tended to think our parents and grandparents were exaggerating when they talked about their fears because we had never experienced any threats to our existence. Now, all that has changed."

While some Chilean Jews may be tempted to flee the country given the political environment, Hites says that running away has never been her modus operandi. "We've always had reasons to fear, but I don't believe in fleeing," she says. "Rather, I believe in fighting to make society better. People like me will simply have to fight harder for our space in progressive circles and intellectual circles."

Hites was part of one of the first solidarity delegations to visit Israel after October 7. "It was a devastating experience," she says, "but what gave me hope was seeing how full the plane was on the way there and how empty it was coming back."

Before October 7, 68-year-old Brigitte Enriquez always felt more French than Jewish. Her sole connection to the Jewish community was the synagogue where she attended services once or twice a year on the High Holy Days.

"I even ate ham," admits this veterinarian, who moved to Paris from Tunisia with her family when she was a young girl.

The Hamas attack on Israel brought out the other part of her identity in a way she never could have imagined. Within days of hearing the news, relays Enriquez, she began devoting a big part of her spare time to helping raise awareness of the plight of the hostages, pasting their photos around the city and attending rallies.

"But at some point, I felt that wasn't enough and that I need to take real action," she recalls. "So, I signed up for an organized volunteer trip to Israel and spent New Year's Eve on a flight to Tel Aviv with 50 other French Jews who I'd never known before but who are now my dear friends."

It had been 10 years since Enriquez last visited Israel. To her great surprise, she discovered she felt safer there than she did in Paris. "I know it's insane, but that's how we all felt," she says. "It's very scary seeing all the anti-Israel protests all around us here in Paris. I'm in a relatively good situation because I don't have a Jewish-sounding name, but my sister does, and I am genuinely afraid for her and her family."

The events of October 7 and its aftermath, she says, have also made her understand who her real friends are. That's opposed to the other friends, who made strange comments when she told them she was going to volunteer in Israel and gave her odd looks when she came back wearing a dog tag around her neck as a sign of solidarity with the hostages.

These days, Enriquez finds herself torn between her strengthened identity as a Jew and a Zionist and her concerns for her personal safety. "I've never before felt the need to wear a Star of David around my neck, but ever since October 7, I do," she says. "But more than ever now, I also feel the need to hide visible signs of my Jewishness."

"So it's a complicated situation. On the one hand, I'm very proud of my Jewishness. On the other hand, I can't show it."

Living in one of the tiniest Jewish communities in the world can be a lonely experience. But to be a Jew in Iceland after October 7 has made Andrea Kasper feel, in her words, "super alone."

Kasper, who was born in Israel and grew up in the United States, lived for several years in Japan before getting married and moving with her husband to a rural fishing town in northern Iceland, around 30 miles south of the Arctic Circle. After spending five years in Iceland, they moved back to the United States, only to return to the land of fire and ice three years ago, this time with four children in tow.

Now based in Reykjavik, Kasper and her family are active in the local Jewish community, participating in organized Shabbat and holiday activities on a regular basis. Iceland's Jewish population has been estimated at some 250 people, almost all of them transplants from other countries.

But rather than find comfort in this tiny community during such a trying time for Jews worldwide, Kasper says she often feels even lonelier because hardly anyone she knows shares her nuanced view of the situation.

"I don't feel better hearing people say things like 'every Palestinian is evil' and 'they should all be killed,'' she says. "I feel lonely in a conversation that doesn't acknowledge human suffering beyond our own."

At the same time, she also feels outraged that there has been no outcry over the sexual violence inflicted on Israeli women in a country admired worldwide for its record on gender equality.

"I feel there's a lot of ignorance here and not a whole lot of curiosity," she says. "I find that in non-Jewish spaces, just like in Jewish spaces, there's a tendency to oversimplify the narrative."

As a matter of policy, Kasper says, she does not engage on social media with her non-Jewish friends "who suddenly have a lot to say about something happening very far away that they know little about."

But in one instance, she recounts, she could not restrain herself and was pleasantly surprised by the response.

"After I sent a private message, she apologized and told me I was right and that she would not post these things anymore. Then she asked me how my family was doing. It was exactly the kind of human-to-human interaction you dream about, and I wrote her back to tell her how deeply I appreciated it."

Rabbi Rebecca Zlochower's relationship with Israel has known ups and downs over the years. On October 7, she says, it ended for good.

Ever since, and for the first time in her life, Zlochower, a transgender woman, has begun attending pro-Palestinian rallies. She has also joined Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group strongly aligned with the pro-Palestinian movement.

"Right now, as I see it, Israeli society is totally on board with the onslaught in Gaza, and that is not something I can accept," says the 54-year-old rabbi, who serves as chaplain in a home for the elderly near Philadelphia.

Zlochower grew up in Pittsburgh in a home she describes as "Zionish," where she attended schools run by Chabad, the Orthodox outreach movement. Before transitioning, Zlochower received rabbinical ordination from the Orthodox movement at Yeshiva University.

Long before many of her Jewish friends, Zlochower became convinced that territorial compromise was the only way for Israel to survive. "I had a liberal Zionist outlook even before the Oslo Accords," she says, referring to the agreement that was meant to pave the way for an independent Palestinian state.

The Palestinian suicide bombings of the early 2000s caused a hardening of her views. But subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza – both in 2008 and 2014 – swung Zlochower back to the left.

"I was still convinced then that there were enough people in Israel willing to negotiate a compromise that could lead to a peaceful resolution of the conflict," she says. "But I did start to question that when I saw how popular Donald Trump was becoming in Israel and how far the country was swinging to the right."

Zlochower was starting to draw hope again last year when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest the government's planned judicial coup. But when she saw many of the same protesters supporting the war in Gaza, she sunk into despair yet again.

"It seems to me that all Israelis, with few exceptions, are caught up in this rage and this desire for revenge and have no consideration for the families that have been killed and the kids who are starving to death in Gaza," she says. "I don't get the sense that there is any compassion for what the people of Gaza are going through, and it has shifted my entire perspective on this project called Israel. In fact, it has turned me into an anti-Zionist."

For Jews elsewhere in the world, October 7 was supposed to be a happy day, falling as it did this year on the festival of Shemini Atzeret. But for Italian Jews like Serena Di Nepi, Shemini Atzeret has long been a day marred by tragedy.

On this day in 1982, Palestinian terrorists carried out a deadly attack outside the Great Synagogue of Rome. Using submachine guns and grenades, they wounded 37 Jews who were leaving the sanctuary, and killed Stefano Gaj Taché, a two-year-old boy.

Di Nepi, who was not much older than the victim at that time, knew him personally because their parents were close friends. The incident left an indelible scar on her.

"It is the saddest day of the year for our community," says Di Nepi, 45, a professor of early modern history at Sapienza University in Rome.

As someone whose profession requires her to keep track of important dates through time, she recalls another tragic anniversary marked around the same time: The 1943 deportation of the Jews of Rome to Auschwitz.

"When we heard what was happening in Israel on October 7, it seemed like history was repeating itself," says Di Nepi.

Although many months have since passed, it has been difficult for her to move on. "There is still a feeling that we are stuck on October 8 – that this is one long, endless day."

But perhaps most disturbing, she says, have been the responses of non-Jews in her country, particularly those on the left.

"There were attempts during International Women's Week to get the leading feminist organization in Italy to condemn the sexual violence carried out against Israeli women, but they refused to do so," she says.

"That same week at my university, a well-known Italian-Jewish journalist was invited to give a talk about gender equality. A group of students disrupted the event and wouldn't let him speak, calling him a fascist."

Fortunately, she says, the university did not succumb to the protesters and summoned police to make sure the event was held as planned. But since then, the University of Turin announced an end to all cooperation with Israeli academic and research institutes.

"For the first time I can remember, I'm seriously concerned about what is happening in my country," says Di Nepi.

When the Six-Day War broke out in 1967, David Cooper was in the middle of his undergraduate studies. Like many South African Jews at the time, he stopped what he was doing and boarded a plane to Israel to volunteer his services wherever they were needed.

He ended up spending the better part of the next year on a kibbutz affiliated with the socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. After returning to South Africa, he says, he pretty much lost touch with Israel.

Cooper would serve for many years as a professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town, where he combined his academic interests with trade union activism.

"October 7 woke me up," says the 75-year-old retiree who lives in the Cape Town beach suburb of Muizenberg.

What shocked him in particular were all the left-wing South African Jews he knew, including members of his own family, signing statements demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. "These statements made no mention of the Hamas massacre," he explains.

As a South African Jew, he says, Cooper has found himself feeling increasingly alienated since October 7, "caught in the middle of left-wingers attacking Israel and right-wingers supporting Netanyahu and his government."

It has got him thinking more and more, he says, about mobilizing Jews from around the world who share his views.

"I believe that this is an opportunity for progressive Jews living in the Diaspora, like myself, to link up with Israelis of similar minds – people like my old kibbutz family who were against settling the West Bank – to try and promote a political solution. Only now have I begun to realize how isolated progressive Israelis have been feeling all these years, and only now have I begun to realize how much we in the Diaspora have let them down."

Cooper recalls when non-white South Africans were prohibited from swimming on the beach near his home. "I now look out at Muizenberg beach, and it's wonderful to see everybody swimming there together," he says.

"And when I hear about what's going on in Gaza, I feel so sad, because we in South Africa managed by luck to escape what Israel is now facing. We were so lucky here, and luck seems to have gone against those like my kibbutz family in Israel. It makes me incredibly depressed."

For Oren Rubinstein, a commercial real estate executive based in San Francisco, it was like salt being poured on open wounds.

Rubinstein has many cousins in Be'eri, the Gaza border kibbutz that suffered the deadliest losses on October 7. Five were murdered, and two spent 56 days as hostages in Gaza before they were released.

When he decided, for the first time in his life, to attend a meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he says, he could never have imagined the hatred he would confront. Rubinstein didn't come with a prepared speech. His intent was to tone down the non-binding resolution that had been prepared, which demanded a unilateral cease-fire from Israel without mentioning the hostages.

When he finally got his turn to speak, after waiting for three-and-a-half hours in line, pro-Palestinian activists made pig noises and shouted "liar," while making dramatic thumbs down gestures, as he shared the stories of his murdered and captured relatives.

"I was in shock," he says.

A short video of Rubinstein, 52, trying to make his voice heard among the jeering crowd, went viral on X, prompting an unusual warning from San Francisco Mayor London Breed that antisemitism was becoming "real and dangerous" in the city famous for its progressive values.

Before October 7, Rubinstein had devoted much of his life to his two daughters and his job. "Since then, I've become an activist in a way I never thought I'd be," he says.

At first, he spent his spare time hanging up posters of the hostages and spray-painting the sidewalks of San Francisco with anti-Hamas slogans.

"Then I started thinking about what I could do that would really help the people I care about," he recounts. "I'm not a soldier, so I can't fight, and I'm not a doctor, so I can't heal the wounded. I suddenly remembered the summers I would spend as a kid in Be'eri riding around the fields there on bicycles with my cousins. And that's what sparked an idea."

A few months ago, Rubinstein set up a charity called "Bikes for Be'eri" to raise money to buy bicycles for all the children of the kibbutz who were displaced by the war. He has raised nearly $50,000 since then, and all the money has been used to support the kibbutz's own bike shop.

"I guess you could say this project has helped me more than anyone else because it's made me feel useful," says Rubinstein.

The meeting place for the pro-Palestinian marches that regularly take place on Saturdays in London is Speakers' Corner, in Hyde Park. It is less than a minute's walk from the Western Marble Arch Synagogue.

The marches typically begin at noon, about the same time that Shabbat worshippers are leaving the synagogue to make their way home. Although the synagogue was never specifically targeted, says Ilana Epstein, the rebbetzin of this historic Orthodox synagogue, it has certainly been in the eye of the storm since October 7.

"For members of our shul, having to walk home into that huge crowd of people wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags is highly intimidating," says Epstein, who runs the synagogue, which was founded in 1761, together with her husband Rabbi Daniel Epstein.

"We have had to change the time of services and start at 8:30 rather than 9:15 on Shabbat morning to get people in and out as quickly as possible, which is not something we like doing," says the 49-year-old rebbetzin, who also serves as an educational consultant to various Jewish organizations in the United Kingdom.

"But our numbers do decrease on days when there is a protest happening because the experience can be frightening," she adds.

Not only do the Epsteins run the synagogue, which recently hosted Prince William, but they also live on the premises with their younger children. As Orthodox Jews, they do not use electronic devices on Shabbat or speak on the phone, and so, they were not aware in real time of what was happening in Israel on October 7.

"What we did hear was cheering and fireworks outside," recounts Epstein. "It was coming from a highly populated Muslim neighborhood right nearby. I didn't know what the party was all about. In retrospect, I asked myself what were they celebrating? The fact that people had died? It was really hard for me to come to terms with that."

Both her husband and son normally wear yarmulkes when they walk around outside. "I've asked them to wear baseball caps instead, because it makes me feel less anxious. But they both said that they don't want to hide the fact that they're Jewish, so while I'm anxious as a wife and as a mother for their wellbeing, I also support and love them for not wanting to hide their identity."

Addressing recent reports that the United Kingdom has become an unsafe place for Jews today, Epstein says: "Are there incidents? 100 percent. Has it escalated? It has. Are we running away? I don't know."

For most of her life, Irina Venden Bosch was surrounded by Jews. Born in Kyiv, she moved to Israel with her parents as a young girl, and 25 years ago, the family picked up and relocated to Toronto, where they lived among many Russian-speaking Jews like herself.

During the COVID outbreak, Irina and her husband, who is not Jewish, decided they needed more space for themselves and their four children, since they were all stuck at home. They moved to a much bigger home in a town called Cobourg in rural Ontario, located about an hour-and-a-half east of Toronto. As far as she knew, there were no other Jews around.

The events of October 7, she says, "shook me to the core, and not being in Israel didn't make it any less painful."

"I didn't understand why I was feeling so alone, so upset, and so hurt about something so far away," adds the 42-year-old bank executive.

She wondered whether there might be other Jews around who felt the same. To find out, she put up a post in a local Facebook group. The response surprised her. Slowly but surely, she would discover more and more Jews who lived right nearby coming out of the woodwork.

"For two-and-a-half years, my family and I lived in Cobourg, and I did not know until then that there were any other Jews here," says Vanden Bosch.

The first thing she did was create a virtual community for them – a Facebook group called Cobourg Jewish Community – which by now has close to 50 members. But she soon started receiving requests for face-to-face gatherings.

Members of the group, says Vanden Bosch, now regularly get together for Shabbat meals, and such a large number attended their recent Hanukkah party that they needed to rent a hall.

"It turned out that people were really looking for something like this, a space where they could feel that they're not so alone," she says.

The group itself is diverse, with Jews who have transplanted themselves to rural Canada from places as far as Ethiopia, France and Turkey.

"As someone who grew up most of her life around Eastern European Jews, this has been an added bonus for me, meeting Jews from so many places," says Vanden Bosch.

Many of Maya Benton's Jewish friends have been shocked by the rise of antisemitism in the United States. She has not.

"I am saddened in a way that is suffocating, but not surprised," says the 48-year-old New Yorker, who works as an independent photography curator. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I was raised by Holocaust survivors, while most of my friends are fourth and fifth-generation Americans."

But while others might be able to tune out during the day, as someone deeply engaged in the highly politicized world of art, Benton does not have that luxury.

"It's not just the calls to boycott Israeli artists since October 7, it's the fact that the people behind such campaigns are being celebrated by those I once considered to be my friends," she says.

"Being in the art world has been excruciating, and every day a fresh hell. I've lost many friends – friends who felt like family, not just acquaintances, people who were like kishke friends. And one of the things that's most painful for me is all the gaslighting that's happening. When you tell these people that what's being said is antisemitic, they say you're imagining it.

"If I were a trans culture worker describing anti-trans bigotry that I'm experiencing in a museum, or a gay curator talking about homophobia, or if I were a Black or brown person describing racism that I was enduring in the art world, none of the people on the progressive left – which happens to be my art community – would dare say that. But as a Jew, when you say that you're experiencing antisemitism, there's a constant, consistent response that it's in our heads."

The level of frustration and despair, she says, have reached the point that she and her husband have begun mulling the idea of relocation.

"We've actually had conversations about moving to Israel that we never had before," she says. "I don't think we're going to because our lives and jobs are here, but I would be more likely now to pick up and move than I would have been before. Yes, I'd rather be in Israel where no one tells me I'm imagining antisemitism."

Having spent her childhood in Israel, Ora Bar feels deeply connected to the country in an almost visceral way. A premonition that something terrible was happening there on October 7, she says, is what suddenly woke her up at 3:30 in the morning.

"When my little sisters finally got up, I told them not to go online," she recounts. "I didn't want them to see any of the pictures." She would later learn that a childhood friend had been murdered at the Nova music festival.

A journalism and film student at Concordia University in Montreal, Bar felt isolated from friends and family in Israel and immediately sought out other Israelis. "We spent the first few weeks sitting together in silence," recounts the 26-year-old, who moved to Quebec with her family 15 years ago.

After this initial mourning period, Bar sprang into action, becoming an outspoken advocate for Israel at what has become one of Canada's major battleground campuses since October 7. She has organized students, held conferences calls with concerned parents, faced threats and bullying when trying to advocate for the Israeli hostages on campus, and even been silenced, she says, by some of her professors when she has tried to defend Israel in class.

"When you go to university, you don't think you need to be a fighter, but it feels right now like I'm performing a service," says Bar.

In May 2021, the last time there was a major flareup between Israel and Gaza, Bar had been visiting Israel. "While huddling in a bomb shelter with friends, I had people I knew back in Canada putting out messages on social media saying that I basically deserved to die," she recounts. She returned from that trip shaken and depressed.

"It took me more than two years to get back to myself, and then October 7 happened, and I thought, 'Oh my god, this is all going to crack open again. I'm not ready to face it.' But you know what? I discovered that I'm a lot stronger than I thought, and I've learned that the best way for me to endure experiences like this is to speak up, connect with members of our Jewish community and do what I can to empower them."

As a child of Holocaust survivors, Denise Tamir was immediately triggered when she woke up and heard the news from Israel on the morning of October 7.

"It was just like in the Holocaust, with children being taken out of their beds, families being dragged out of their homes and shot, and even worse, as we would learn later," says Tamir, 62, a mediator from Miami, Florida.

An active member of her local Jewish community, Tamir, who is married to an Israeli, serves as Florida regional director of the Israeli-American Council, an organization that serves the Israeli expat community in the United States and is funded largely by right-wing donors.

Feeling a need to bear witness, she joined one of the first solidarity missions from Florida to Israel in early November. But there was something even more urgent driving her, she says.

"Within 48 hours, there were already people out there denying what had happened, and that can be very triggering to survivors. My family's history has been denied, but that took a few generations. With my Israeli family, it was just a matter of days. And for me, there were tremendous parallels here."

Growing up, admits Tamir, she tended to view her survivor parents as a bit paranoid. "They were always sleeping with one eye open, always saying that it could happen here, that it could happen anywhere," she recalls. After October 7, she says, "I've come to understand that maybe they had a point."

"So, all that Holocaust-level pain and trauma [on October 7] played to my worst fears growing up in a home like that."

Recently, a friend confided in Tamir that she felt like she was living through "the first chapter of my grandfather's Holocaust story."

"That quote has stuck with me," she says. "It's exactly how I feel. This is my parents' story. This is how it all began. Knowing they hate you and want to kill you just because you're a Jew. It's all the same."