SC synagogue remembers victims of Oct. 7 attack on Israel

COLUMBIA — A year after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 civilians and taking some 250 hostages, a South Carolina Jewish congregation gathered in remembrance.

About 100 people attended the anniversary event at Beth Shalom Synagogue in Columbia Monday evening. Each wore a yellow ribbon, a symbol of solidarity with the families of hostages, calling for their release.

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Attendees sang the U.S. and Israeli national anthem. The synagogue’s interim Rabbi Hillel Norry strummed the guitar, leading the group in “Oseh Shalom,” a Jewish prayer for peace.

“We cannot let this day go by without marking it in some way,” Norry told the SC Daily Gazette.

Those gathered watched video interviews, one from a survivor of the Nova Music Festival massacre. Hundreds were slaughtered as they fled rocket fire from Gaza by militants who blocked escape routes.

Noa Beer of Tel Aviv recounted people being shot as they got out of their vehicles and tried to run. She said she stomped on the gas and managed to escape uninjured, despite driving through bullets that hit the sides of her car. Beer said she didn’t realize until later how lucky she’d been to survive.

In another video, Lee Siegel spoke of his brother, a North Carolina native who was among the Israeli-Americans taken hostage by Hamas. Keith Siegel’s wife, Aviva, was also taken and released in November as part of a temporary cease-fire deal; she spoke at the U.S. Capitol in April.

According to the American Jewish Committee, seven American hostages are still held by the militants.

Small posters hung throughout the synagogue pictured hostages and the message to “Bring them home now.”

And they memorialized one of the victims, Jonathan Rom, who was born in South Carolina and moved to Israel with his family at a young age.

Rom was among the hundreds killed fleeing a music festival that was supposed to celebrate peace and love. His body was found nearby.

“He was helping this girl who was having a panic attack escape,” Rom’s cousin, Daniel Zaken, told Atlanta’s WSB-TV last year. “They entered a vehicle together and started driving off and they sustained a bunch of gunfire from Hamas. They got out of the vehicle and started running.”

Those gathered at Beth Shalom also listened to remarks from members of the state House and Republican Congressman Joe Wilson.

“We cannot be silent in the face of hate,” Rep. Beth Bernstein told the congregation where she was raised.

The Columbia Democrat, the state’s only Jewish legislator, spoke of the wave of protests on college campuses following Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 attack.

Those pro-Palestinian protests at times involved antisemitic chants, such as “go back to Poland,” as reported at Columbia University in New York. (Poland’s Jewish community was largely wiped out by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust.)

And at Northwestern University in Illinois, a student was called a “dirty Jew” and protest signs depicted a Star of David crossed through and the school’s president, who is Jewish, as a “bloodthirsty devil.”

Bernstein called on the congregation to speak out against antisemitism so that the deaths on Oct. 7 will not be in vain.

“Our resilience is our superpower, and our strength comes from our unity,” Josh Levs, a journalist and writer who keynoted the event, said to a standing ovation.

Rabbi Hillel Norry called on congregants to “do something to show you are proud to be a Jew.”

He told the SC Daily Gazette he hoped those in attendance took away a measure of comfort and rededication to their faith.

“A year ago, we thought, ‘This will be hard, but we’ll bring (the hostages) home,'” Norry said.

Monday, the families of those hostages and the Jewish community were still waiting.