700 Days of October 7 — Hatikvah Magazine

700 Days of October 7th
Two years into an endless war, it is more apparent every day that October 7 was not a singular event, but an accelerator.

By MAX BERGER
Founder, Editor-in-Chief
Pub. 7 October 2025 in partnership with EDA magazin

The Jewish world, 700 days after October 7th

October 7 was not a singular event, but an accelerator that closed distances between Israel and the diaspora, and between politics and daily life. It sped up changes already underway: most notably, the declining authority of mainstream Jewish institutions, the rise of self-organized support networks, the growing willingness of Jews to see themselves as a people bound by duty, not just identity, and demands by elements of Israeli society to exert control over the Palestinians and their territories.

Those shifts have unfolded inside a world itself in realignment. In the United States, the post-October 7 landscape has been shaped as much by national politics as by the war in Gaza. Policies framed as “combating antisemitism” have canceled billions in federal grants, deported foreign students involved in protests, and brought new scrutiny to immigration, all while intensifying suspicion and resentment toward Jewish students on campus and sending political and legal shockwaves throughout the country. But campuses are just one of countless arenas where Jews have faced a sharp, generationally unprecedented rise in antisemitism — the eﬀects, in many ways, of a globalized intifada. Offices, grade schools, hospitals, streets, music festivals, synagogues, and a U.S. governor's residence have seen antisemitism, too.

The war has placed Jewish communities within the political crossroads of their host countries. It has ignited significant debate over matters of Israeli security, and indeed returned to age-old questions of the Jews' right to exist and defend themselves, which will have reverberating eﬀects on public opinion, antisemitism, and Jewish identity for years to come. Jews today are blamed for government policy, targeted in protests, and drawn into conflict.

The speed with which events far away have become their responsibility reveals something far older than this war: the enduring perception of Jews as a single, bound collective, and answerable for one another across every border.

The wounds of October 7 are most raw in southern Israel. I heard a loud silence resonating through the empty homes in Kibbutz Be'eri — their residents killed and taken hostage 700 days ago — but occasionally, a muﬄed explosion in the distance. Crayons, books, picture frames, clothing, and other fragments of existence were strewn on the charred ground. Will they have anyone to return to? Nearly a million Israelis took to the streets to protest for the release of the hostages as their fate remains uncertain. The past 700 days, and no doubt, the days ahead, are critical to defining our future.

Peoplehood, indeed, asks something of us. The contraction of our social circles has made both the boundaries and the tensions of Jewish life more visible, and more defended, than at any point in recent memory. It reflects a community less preoccupied with being embraced by the world, and more intent on enduring within it. In that, we are only continuing an old work.

Jewish life on American campuses, 700 days after October 7

The psychological eﬀects of October 7 on Jewish students and campuses have been deep and sustained. Many describe a 'perpetual state of emotional jet lag' tethered to Israeli news, hostage updates, and a rolling sense of crisis. Scholars note that what makes this period distinct is not only the threat itself but the traumatic invalidation of having one's pain denied, dismissed, or reframed as culpability, a dynamic that compounds stress, depression, and isolation on campus.

The hostage crisis has been a central psychological communal anchor. Students across the country react to each delay in hostage release deal, propaganda video, or protest in Tel Aviv. They send shockwaves of hope, dread, anger, and fear through both communities and individuals, and, in many cases, fuel political engagement (or at least awareness); most visibly in Israel advocacy or confronting antisemitism, often through the immediacy of social media. For many, it feels like the only contribution possible from so far away.

This has pulled Jewish students into the tension over the Israel-Hamas war as a matter of course. The war has become the dominant moral and political lens through which they — and their faculty — are interrogated. In some cases, they are compelled to respond to questions about Israel's military actions in Gaza as a precondition for acceptance. On many more occasions, they are simply iced out: unfollowed, blocked, excluded from spaces and communities, or sidelined in academic and professional opportunities.

In the face of a growing feeling of not knowing who we can rely on, Jewish students have become more responsive to each other's needs.

At Northeastern, communal support networks help us find friends and roommates, organize events and Shabbats, share opportunities, and fight antisemitism. Sometimes on WhatsApp, other times at communal events, a very tight sense of community attracts wandering Jews into its fold. The friendships, communities, and organizations borne of these networks have expanded to include students across the entire nation.

Students and faculty have taken to challenging their universities in court for their failures in protecting Jewish students, and in cases, they have won. Others won, in ways, by rallying popular action against antisemitism. There is also a growing segment of Jews who rally against the war, indeed influenced by the images emerging from Gaza. They, in true Jewish fashion, are passionate advocates for their cause, too. These debates and segmentation have greatly increased the exposure of these issues to the populace.

Seven hundred days later, we are less certain of our place and more certain of one another.

How the hostages have transformed Jewish life in America

The hostages have, in many ways, become the center of gravity for Jewish life. They've reorganized time and ritual. We, in New York, California, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and beyond, leave empty chairs at Shabbat and Passover tables, wear yellow ribbons, and recite names in Mi Sheberach and Psalms. They have become a focal point of tragedy, hope, and community. They have inspired activism and remembrance, and critically, have brought Jews from the fringes of the community together around the same mission.

"Bring Them Home" found its way all across America, from posters to vigils, Run For Their Lives chapters that persisted even after one was firebombed. Families of hostages have told their stories at synagogues, campuses, and on Capitol Hill, and stood on the floors of both major party conventions in 2024. In each venue, they catalyzed awareness and action not only for their families but for Israel as a whole.

Even the 'KIDNAPPED' flyers have become an instantly recognizable, and increasingly ubiquitous, remembrance — and indeed, they are torn down just as often as they are put up. There is no better symbol for the hostages and our relationship to them.

For many, the hostages have become the metronome of this war. Their faces have hung in city squares, on protest banners, on embassy gates, and been found in art; their names have been read aloud in parliaments, stadiums, and vigils from Sydney to Buenos Aires; in Tel Aviv stands a clock counting their days in captivity that has just surpassed 700 days. They have come to stand for the war's brutality in its most concentrated form, in that every hostage is a family, and a life, held in suspension.

They have turned grief into a movement, and made the question of their return a question the whole world must answer.

Max Berger is Hatikvah’s founder and editor-in-chief.

Two years into an endless war, it is more apparent every day that October 7 was not a singular event, but an accelerator.

The Jewish world, 700 days after October 7th

Jewish life on American campuses, 700 days after October 7

How the hostages have transformed Jewish life in America

Every voice builds the global Jewish consciousness.