On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas led attacks on an Israeli music festival that killed about 1,200 people, now marking a year of the Israel-Hamas war. To commemorate the events of Oct. 7, members of the Ithaca College community organized and attended gatherings to remember the tragedy and its aftermath.

A newly recognized club, Ithacans for Israel, gathered at the Free Speech Rock on the evening of Oct. 6 to hear from students, faculty and members of the college community about their experiences over the past year. Cornell junior Mel Schwartz, a member of Cornell University’s Cornellians for Israel, was in attendance, as well as Chana Filler, a director of Chabad at Ithaca College.

Along the wall of the Free Speech Rock, the club taped posters of the hostages taken by Hamas, hung the Israeli flag behind where they stood and lit small candles toward the end of the vigil.

During the vigil, seven speakers addressed the 30 people in attendance about their experiences since Oct. 7, 2023 and the impacts the attacks had on them. The club’s president, sophomore Ben Epstein, began the gathering and said the past year has been hard for him and other members of the Jewish community on campus.

“No amount of hatred, no amount of erasure of our history, no amount of antisemitism, no number of tents on our campus lawns, no level of intimidation of our students and faculty and no number of defamatory attacks on our people will ever stop us from being here because the Jewish spirit is unbreakable,” Epstein said.

Between 2022–23, Hillel International recorded 290 instances of antisemitism on North American college campuses. In 2023–24, the organization recorded 1,854 instances. At Ithaca College, all hate crimes reported in 2022 were labeled as religious bias. In 2022, eight swastikas were found, as previously reported by The Ithacan. Four swastikas were found on campus in 2023, and there was one swastika found on campus in Spring 2024.

Epstein said members of the group at the vigil would be staying together until 11 p.m. EST, around the time the attack happened in Israel.

While the vigil was organized by Ithacans for Israel, members of other local Jewish organizations, like Filler, spoke.

“Unfortunately, the Jewish people have a lot of experience when it comes to having to deal with these types of situations,” Filler said. “When we talk about the continuity of the Jewish people, … our legacy is in the joy that we experience … and in praising God and focusing on the ways of hope rather than focusing on the past.”

After she spoke, Filler passed around a coin jar and a wallet of pennies. She said that when the Oct. 7 attacks initially happened in 2023, campus community members gathered in the Muller Chapel. She said they passed around the same coin jar to symbolize tzedakah, a Hebrew word for charity.

“Here is a very practical way that we could channel everything that Judaism is, [and how it is] changing the world, spreading goodness, spreading kindness, spreading light in a very [tangible] way by taking a penny and putting it in a charity box and designating it for someone else,” Filler said.

On Oct. 7, Hillel at Ithaca College organized a gathering where about 20 attendees painted stones and sang prayers of remembrance. After gathering inside Muller Chapel, attendees headed out to the pond where Cantor Abbe Lyons led the group in prayer.

Lyons chanted Psalm 118, which is chanted as a part of Hallel typically on celebratory holy days. According to a document handed out at the gathering, chanting the Psalm served as an important reminder of freedom.

“In times of crisis, the psalmist reminds us that we can and should cry out to God,” the document said. “There is a place for wailing and gathering with others. But we must also allow ourselves to get quiet to hear an answer.”

Attendees prayed for the hostages, the Palestinian people and for all mothers affected. Afterward, the gathering moved to the chapel, where students painted stones of remembrance. In Jewish tradition, stones or pebbles are typically left on graves for remembrance. According to the document, the stones serve as a physical reminder of the people who died Oct. 7, 2023.

On Oct. 8, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life organized an interfaith gathering for the campus community in the Muller Chapel. During their speech, Lauren Kelly Benson, director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, said that while the gathering was to acknowledge the Israel-Hamas war, it was also organized to hold a space for any and all grief.

“We’re grieving the last year, young people came to know humanity’s harshest realities,” Benson said. “We’re here for specific happenings to serve the region of the world, one that holds sacred, holy space for old and ancient religions and peoples, one that is divided by war.”

Benson led the event and welcomed people to speak from a wide range of faiths, like Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Paganism. After a member from each faith spoke, a moment of silence was held by candlelight.

Sophomore Emerson Cook said he has felt stuck hearing his own thoughts about the Israel-Hamas war and attended the gathering to see how other people had been coping and what other peoples’ experiences of the past year have been.

“I think that we’re all allowed to feel what we feel, because we’re human, and we’re allowed to have our feelings, our politics and just be very angry, as long as we can come together like this,” Cook said. “So can we please just take a moment to learn how to live with each other?”

First-year Juliet Mitchell said they grew up as an activist and are part of the Unitarian Universalism faith, which encourages its followers to find their own beliefs and truths through values of interdependence, pluralism, justice, transformation, generosity and equity. Mitchell said the faith is also dependent on the idea of human dignity.

“When I see war, when I see genocide … it’s a mix of anger and sadness,” Mitchell said. “Coming here, it’s a feeling of hope and commitment to people, and also experiencing other peoples’ faith and prayer is so moving, and it’s very important to show that and to show support through all religions that have a common peace and love and wanting the world to be better.”

Each speaker invoked sentiments of peace from readings of different religious texts to those in attendance. Throughout the service, treya lam, a folk musician and friend of Benson’s, played the guitar and piano. lam played barefoot and had a handwritten sign on their guitar that said “Peacefire.”

President La Jerne Cornish swayed to the music lam played to begin the service. Cornish was the first to speak and asked that all those in attendance use the gathering as a way to communicate and hear from others.

“Let us choose to show love and compassion in this place,” Cornish said. “Let us sit with our thoughts and share our feelings in this place. Let us choose to support one another in this place. Let us choose to pray for the hostages who remain captive …, and let us choose to hold dear the families and friends of all whose lives were lost or taken over the past year as we sit in this place.”

In an interview with The Ithacan, Cornish said the gathering served as a gift for campus community members to sit with others, no matter faith or tradition, and hear about each others’ grief.

“I have never experienced anything like this before,” Cornish said. “We talk about wanting to be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This is a reflection of who we are and what we can be. This is us.”

Editor’s Note: Captions in this article were changed to more accurately reflect the intentions of the Interfaith Gathering held by the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, which did not invite political discussions, but was a space for anyone to grieve the tragedies of the past year.