Jake Robbins, Contributing Photographer

About 100 people gathered at the Women’s Table Sunday evening for a vigil to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in Israel.

The event was hosted by the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale in partnership with Chabad at Yale, according to a Slifka invite. The vigil — which consisted of speeches, music and prayer — followed a daylong memorial display on Cross Campus of pictures of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and signs calling for their return.

Uri Cohen, the executive director of the Slifka Center, said in an interview after the event that remembrance, rather than a particular political message, was central to the vigil.

“If there’s a message, it’s that of peace. We’re here, we remember, we pray for peace for Israelis, for Palestinians and for the whole region,” Cohen said.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian militants from Gaza attacked Israel, killing over 1,300 Israelis and taking around 250 hostages captive. Israel subsequently invaded the Gaza strip, launching a war in which, the Gaza Health Ministry estimates, more than 67,000 people in Gaza have been killed.

According to the New York Times, Israel’s leaders believe Hamas still holds around 20 hostages and the bodies of at least 25 more. 

At the vigil, students reflected on the events of Oct. 7 and all that has followed.

Elijah Wiesel ’28, who spoke at the event, told the News following the vigil that he sees a connection between the collective memory of Americans and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to the Jewish and Israeli community’s continuing commemoration of Oct. 7. 

“Our generation is called to remember 9/11,” Wiesel told the News. “For a lot of us, this is something we cannot forget. It is something that impacts us every day, follows us home and follows us on campus.” 

During the vigil, Alex Ozar, the campus rabbi and co-director of Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, spoke to the group about the importance of mourning the dead and remembering the hostages. He thanked the approximately 100-person crowd for “doing the hard, impossible, beautiful and transcendent work of the Jewish community.” 

“This is supposed to commemorate the victims, who were murdered on Oct. 7 and those who were kidnapped,” Yossi Moff ’27, a board member of Yale Friends of Israel told the News while cleaning the memorial off Cross Campus. “Both the ones who, thank God, came back, and the hostages who are still being held, some dead, some alive, in Gaza now.”

Last year’s commemoration was similar to the one on Sunday, but it included videos and interviews from Oct. 7 survivors, Moff said. 

Moff said he hopes all the hostages will be released well before the third anniversary of the attacks, and future commemorations will focus on remembering the dead and honoring their lives.

Sabrina Kastner ’26 reflected on the significance of holding the memorial and vigil on a day that coincided with the start of Sukkot, a Jewish fall harvest festival, noting that the community sought to balance mourning and celebration. She said it would not be appropriate to hold a formal mourning during the holiday, but that the events on Sunday created a shared space for reflection and remembrance while many students were still on campus. 

Kastner added that being at the vigil brought back difficult memories from the past two years, including the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks and the ongoing hostage crisis in Gaza. She emphasized the importance of coming together as a community to remember and find strength, describing the vigil as part of a long tradition of resilience in Jewish history. 

The Slifka Center for Jewish Life is on 80 Wall St.