Remembering October 7th: A Moral Imperative and Obligation
There is a very dangerous concept and phrase spreading in some American circles, its called “it’s time to move on.”
It’s been three years. The children in our schools were in 5th grade when it happened, and world just moved forward with other concerns and crises.
The concept of lets just move on however well-intentioned, has the potential to destroy us as a society and as a community.
We do not commemorate October 7th because we cherish or love the past. We commemorate it because we want a Jewish future. It is not optional. It is essential because Zachor is a mitvah and obligation, not a feeling.
We are the people of Zachor.
Zachor et Yom HaShabbat. Zachor et asher asah lecha Amalek. Zachor et Yom HaTzeitcha Mimitzrayim.
As a people, we don’t remember because we have good memories but rather rather because HaShem commanded us to remember. Memory is our powerful instrument for survival.
Every enemy in Jewish history tried to make us forget that we are Jews. Pharaoh made us forget we were free people. Amalek tried to make us forget that HaShem protects us; the Nazis wanted us to inhibit the importance of physical resilience and physical survival; and the Greeks tried to make us forget the Torah.
As we know and as history will record, October 7th was the most severe attack on achieniu bnai yisrael for being Jews since the Holocaust. 1,200 Jews murdered in one day because they were Jews living in the Jewish State.
Friends, if we do not actively remember that, we violate the most basic and fundamental Jewish survival skill. As a result, and we will forget who we are, who hates us, and who saves us.
A Jewish day school or a yeshiva that does not commemorate October 7th is not neutral. It is teaching its students to forget. As we know, the world is already trying to erase it from the pages of our history.
I vividly recall the first few days after after October 7th massacre. The world was with us. Presidents lit up city buildings. Universities had vigils and news reports describing the bloodbath on TV were continuous. But by October 9th , only two days after the attack by Hamas, our Jewish communities began to experience a cascading explosion of global Jew hatred, anti-Israel hatred and antisemitism.
By week two, it had started. “Don’t look at October 7th, look at what happened afterwards” “Context.” “Resistance.” “Occupation.” “Colonizing” and “Genocide” became the normative expressions and the centerpiece when describing or justifying the October 7th massacre of 1400 innocent children, women and men. HaShem Yerachem.
Today, three years later, go to any non-Jewish college campus and ask 20 freshmen what happened on October 7th. Half will say they don’t know. The other half will say “something that never happened”. But, they will nevertheless chant “Free Free Palestine” not having any idea whatsoever as to why and what these words actually it mean or signify.
This is how Holocaust denial started. Not with “it never happened.” It started with “it wasn’t that bad” and “they exaggerated” and “let’s talk about something else.”
The Flydubai airline flight last week on September 30, 2026 is proof.
A co-pilot tries to murder 174 Jews in the name of Jihad, and within hours social media is already saying “it was the pilot’s mental health” and “don’t jump to conclusions.“and it was Israel’s fault for not vetting foreign pilots more responsibly.
The world has already forgotten the profound gravity of the crisis and how this act of terrorism could have resulted in the cold-blooded murder of 174 passengers and thousands of others.
In another several days, this event will also be totally lost in the pages of history.
If we do not commemorate October 7th loudly, clearly, with names, with faces, with stories, no one else will.
And if we don’t, in 10 years our own children will not know what happened to their own people.
Today, our children live in a world of moral confusion and cry out desperately for a moral compass with clarity and direction.
Their TikTok platforms inform them that if you are oppressed, any violence is justified. Murder is “resistance” and rape is “decolonization.”
Commemorating October 7th is the moment we say clearly to our children No!
There is no cause in the world that justifies burning a family alive in their home on a kibbutz.
There is no ideology that justifies tying up children and shooting them at point blank.
There is no “context” that justifies kidnapping a 9-month-old baby.
This is not politics. This the difference between good and pure evil. This is what our Torah has taught for 3,000 years.
If we don’t teach our children how to identify evil when they see it then evil with a GoPro, evil that livestreams its own crimes, then how will they even identify the next evil?
October 7th is our generation’s clearest lesson in moral clarity. We cannot waste it.
Every mental health practitioner working in our schools will tell us that if trauma is not processed, it becomes trauma that is passed on.
This means that our children are still carrying October 7th in their bodies.
The 6-year-old who saw too much on a parent’s smartphone. The 14-year-old who has a brother in the IDF now. The 17-year-old who went to a funeral for a cousin she never met but saw on Instagram.
If we don’t give them a structured, holy, safe way to remember, they will remember in unhealthy ways through nightmares, anxiety, anger and disconnection from Judaism because “Judaism makes me feel sad.”
Commemoration, when done right, is healing. It is not just crying. It is saying kaddish together, hearing stories of heroism including the 25 year old who drove 12 times to save people from the Nova festival and the mother who hid her children in a closet for 18 hours,
Its about doing a mitzvah in memory of someone who was murdered or singing Ani Mamin not as a sad song, but as one of defiance, resilience and strength
The Jewish way is not to “get over it.” The Jewish way is to take the pain and turn it into purpose. That is what a commemoration ceremony does.
Unfortunately, October 7th is far from over.
We commemorate the Holocaust because it ended. We can say “never again” and mean it as a hope.
October 7th has not ended.
As we sat last week in our Sukkot, we still have soldiers in Gaza; we still have 200,000 Israelis who cannot go home to the North; and we still have antisemitism in America at levels no one ever imagined.
Last week’s attempted attack on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, during Sukkot, proves that the same hatred that fueled October 7th is still alive and still trying to kill Jews for going home.
We don’t commemorate October 7th as a historical event. We commemorate it as a current event. We commemorate it to say that we are still in this story. And we will finish it with Jewish pride, not with victimhood.
Commemorate October 7th through moments of silence will never ever be enough.
A moment of silence is not enough for 1,200 people.
For every story of murder, tell a story of gevurah. The Yamam officer who fought for 6 hours straight. The Bedouin who rescued people. The civilians who left their Sukkot and drove south with guns and medical supplies.
End every commemoration with a kabbalah. Every child does one mitzvah, one act of chesed, one extra tefillah in their memory. Memory without action is depression. Memory with action is kedusha.
Put the date of October 7th on the school calendar for the next 20 years. The same way we have a Holocaust Remembrance Day, we have an October 7th Remembrance Day. Until Mashiach comes.
Finally, the Torah says about Amalek “Timcheh es zecher Amalek mitachas hashamayim, Lo Tishkach” – Erase the memory of Amalek, do not forget.
Is this not a contradiction. How can you erase and not forget at the same time?
The answer is that one erases Amalek by never forgetting what he did, and by building a world where his ideology cannot live.
That is why we remember October 7th.
We remember October 7th so we can erase the evil and so that we can build a stronger Jewish future
We remember October 7th so that when our grandchildren ask us, “where were you after October 7th?” we can say we remembered. And because we remembered, we are still here.
May HaShem bless acheinu bnai yisrael with continued safety, protection and resilience; and, may we all continue to remember the miracles within miracles which HaShem bestows upon us each and every day.