‘One Year Since’ exhibition & memorial honors lives lost on Oct. 7

Michigan Hillel hosted a day-long exhibition and memorial service on the Diag Monday to mark the one year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The exhibition aimed to memorialize those killed by Hamas since the Oct. 7 attack and call attention to the 101 hostages still being held in Gaza. Throughout the day, the exhibition displayed photographs taken of Israel before and after the attack, posters of missing and dead Israeli and American citizens on large cardboard boxes made to look like milk cartons and Israeli flags in the shape of the star of David on the Ingalls Mall knoll. 

More than 400 U-M students and community members gathered for the memorial service following the exhibition, which featured speeches from U-M students, rabbis, Israeli visitors Noa Reuveni and Shay Raz and Jewish community members. 

The memorial was opened by Marla Linderman Richelew, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor. She welcomed the crowd to the service and called for remembrance and compassion.

“We gather together this evening — students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, local citizens, people of all faiths and ethnicities — to remember, to comfort, to bear witness and to pray for healing and peace and to hope for a better future,” Richelew said. “Commemorating the significant and tragic event calls us together for consolation, unity and strength.”

Richelew was followed by LSA senior Ryan Silberfein, Michigan Hillel president, who emphasized the importance of honoring those killed throughout Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, not just on Oct. 7.

“While we’re here to mark the unprovoked terror attack (on) Oct. 7 against Israel and that is the primary focus of this gathering, we hold in our hearts all of the innocent civilians in Gaza and now Lebanon who have been killed or injured in these past 12 months,” Silberfein said. “In the coming year, may our communities learn to hold space for and embrace one another.”

After the two opening speakers, speeches were interspersed with other forms of remembrance such as videos of Israel and Israeli citizens, poems, Hebrew music and prayers. 

One such prayer was led by Rabbi Nadav Caine from the Beth Israel Congregation, who read a prayer for the state of Israel. Caine explained the significance of the prayer in the context of the day.

“We pray for the state of Israel in this devastating time of war, of shock and of deep grief,” Caine said. “Our hearts are breaking. We pray for the lives of the hostages captured by Hamas, the civilians and the soldiers. Watch over them, shelter them, bring them home. We pray for the souls of the innocent victims who were brutally murdered. … We pray for our family in Israel in this time of crisis and tragedy.”

LSA junior Ryan Finlay told The Michigan Daily that, as a Jewish student, he felt attending Monday’s event was an important way to commemorate the events of Oct. 7, 2023.

“I had to come out today in order to remember Oct. 7 because this truly is a monumental day for the Jewish people in the worst way,” Finlay said. “Today, there’s no place I would rather be than outside on the Diag, helping to remember the atrocity that happened one year ago and to help unite the Jewish people on campus.”

Finlay said that since Oct. 7, 2023, he has been increasingly aware of his identity as a Jewish student, describing a shared sense of loss experienced by the Jewish community, as well as changes in his interactions with his peers. 

“I had never really thought much of being a Jewish student on campus before Oct. 7 last year, and then everything changed after Oct. 7, because first of all, the Jewish community came together like never before,” Finlay said. “We felt this shared sense of loss, and then we felt this shared sense that we were being opposed by so many people who didn’t care about our suffering. … The people that we used to know, people we used to have as friends, people that we’ve been going to class with, look at us in a totally different way.” 

The final speaker, LSA senior Evan Cohen, president of Wolverine for Israel, called for hope despite the tragedy of the circumstances.

“In the darkness, we find glimpses of light,” Cohen said. “We see joy when hostages are rescued through seemingly impossible missions, we see strength as Israelis come together to support each other and we see unity at home, as the Jewish community and our allies fight for what’s right.”

Daily Staff Reporter Lyra Wilder can be reached at lyrawild@umich.edu.

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