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Our grandchildren will judge us May 17, 2024 Emor • 9 Iyyar 5784 • Vol 23, No 17
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They’ll ask, ‘What did you do after Oct. 7?’ Hoenlein tells YIW
Malcolm Hoenlein speaks a full house at the Young Israel of Woodmere Monday night, as Yom HaZikaron transitioned to Yom HaAtzmaut. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
R’dale optimism amid sorrow By Ed Weintrob Riverdale marked a somber Yom HaZikaron on Monday night, with several hundred people filling the SAR HS auditorium to listen to SAR choirs, the chanting of Tehilim, words about soldiers and hostages and, at the program’s end, a message of hope. Among those attending were leading Bronx elected officials who organizers praised as standing firm with the borough’s Jewish communities — and with Israel — in all the days since Oct. 7. Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson, Rep. Ritchie Torres, Councilman Eric Dinowitz, and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz sat respectfully in the front row for the full hour-and-a-half length of the service; none spoke. Riverdalians were praised for their quick and ongoing response to Oct. 7 by the Riverdale Y’s director of community engagement, Rabbi Scott Kalmikoff. “You’ve shown up” over these seven months, participating in Manhattan rallies, riding 500 strong on buses to Washington, and raising over $120,000 to buy an embu-
lance for Magen David Adom, he said. “I saw someone post on Twitter, ‘Can anybody share some positive news in all this darkness?’ And someone responded to that post, ‘We’re Jewish.’ For me, that was very powerful,” Rabbi Kalmikoff said. “In the last few months, it has been hard to be a Jew. People are scared to wear their yamaka on the street or to wear a Magen David necklace on the subway. But we need to be proud of who we are always,” he continued. “Our ancestors used to say in Europe, it’s hard to be a yid, it’s hard to be a Jew. And we had hopes that the creation of the State of Israel is changing that.” “We know that the world is challenging, but we have to stay positive,” he said. “We have to stay together and stay united and love our fellow Jews no matter what — to take care of one another in the bad times, in the challenging times, but also in times of goodness and in times of joy. “Let’s continue to love each other and be there for each other and continue to feel hope.”
Rabbi Scott Kalmikoff, community engagement director at the Riverdale Y, concluded SAR’s Yom HaZikaron program with words of chizuk. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
By Ed Weintrob Just as many have asked, “Where were America’s Jews in the 1930s and during the Shoah?,” our grandchildren will ask, “Where were you after Oct. 7?” That’s the message voiced Monday night by Malcolm Hoenlein to a full house at the Young Israel of Woodmere, in an event bridging Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut. “This is a time when each of us has to make the declaration — ‘no more, never again’,” Hoenlein said. “Make that promise to your grandchildren and their grandchildren, because they will turn back and judge you. They will ask what did you do, just as we judge the generation of 80 years ago and ask what did they do?” Hoenlein, vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has been an articulate Jewish communal leader for decades. “Today you know everything,” he continued. “You see it on your computers, you can get access to all the information instantly. The question is what do you do about it. “Do you rise to the challenge? And will you bring many others with you — so that when your grandchildren look back and they judge you and ask you what did you do at that critical time in Jewish history, they will praise you and thank you for making it a safer world for them. With the very existence of the Jewish state and the lives of its seven million Jews threatened, and with life in American Jewish communities becoming more precarious, “you can’t do everything, but you can do something. This is a time when each of us is going to be measured.” Hoenlein referred to Oct. 7 as “a watershed in Jewish history” whose full impact has yet to be felt. When he addressed the Young Israel of Woodmere more than 10 years ago, “I spoke about the danger of antisemitism, about what was happening on campuses and about Iran. People were skeptical and came to me and said, we don’t experience it. This was 10 years in the making. This didn’t just happen — neither what happened on the borders of Israel or what’s happening on the campuses in America.” Not long after Oct. 7, Hoenlein visited Sderot, the closest city to the Gaza border. He said he didn’t want to go, but wounded soldiers insisted he needed to be a witness so he would later be able to personally recount what had happened there. “I saw it,” he began, describing how he was escorted “by a young soldier who said, don’t step there because we’re looking for DNA, they burned a little baby in that location.” The soldier asked him to follow, but “I couldn’t walk past this brick wall, which wasn’t there. It was the smell, something so strong I literally couldn’t penetrate it. He pulled me through it and opened the door of a truck and there were already See Hoenlein at YIW on page 6