Jewish community leaders prepare for first anniversary of Hamas attacks

He still remembers the smell, the fires extinguished, the lingering, acrid tang of smoldering rubble.

Cellphone in hand, Rabbi Sanford Akselrad is sharing pictures he took during a January trip to Israel, where he visited some of the sites attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, including the Nova music festival grounds.

Among the scenes of destruction, one stands out: a particularly harrowing image of a child’s teddy bear in the window of a charred house, both just sitting there, abandoned.

“It breaks your heart,” Akselrad says, eyeing the photo while seated in his office at Henderson’s Congregation Ner Tamid, where he’s served as the temple’s spiritual leader for over three decades.

He shares a video taken at a kibbutz — a small, communal settlement in Israel — ravaged during the attacks.

“It was a very vibrant kibbutz when Hamas came,” Akselrad narrates. “Even now I can still smell — it smells like there was something that was burning.”

In the background, we hear a loud boom.

The war rages on.

Akselrad traveled to Israel along with around 25 other rabbis from the U.S., meeting with some of the hostages’ families and members of the Israeli parliament in addition to visiting numerous areas ravaged by the ongoing conflict.

As the first anniversary of the attacks approaches, Akselrad, who’s also the president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern Nevada, has helped put together “Marking One Year,” a community-wide observance at 6 p.m. Monday at Midbar Kodesh Temple, 1940 Paseo Verde Parkway.

“I think it’s going to be an event that will have a lot of poetry and readings and music that reflects the tenor of the occasion,” Akselrad explains, “and things that have been written subsequent to October 7 by Israeli poets and writers, in addition to other people who might come from our community who have been impacted, people who have family members in Israel, for example.

“There’s a time and place for various emotions,” he continues. “This is going to be one that reflects back, recounts some of the horrors, reminds us of what happened.”

“Marking One Year” is among several events remembering the Oct. 7 attacks, including a memorial arranged by the Israeli American Council of Las Vegas at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Las Vegas City Council chambers and a candlelight vigil at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the UNLV Student Union amphitheater, organized by the school’s Jewish and Israeli student organizations.

“About a year ago, we experienced one of the worst attacks on the Jewish people in our history,” says Gaia Steinberg, president of the UNLV chapter of Students Supporting Israel. “It was the most amount of Jews killed in one day since the Holocaust.

“Obviously, there’s still the war ravaging on,” she adds, “and Israeli and Jewish people have not been given a chance to grieve and to mourn our loss, because it’s a tremendous loss that we are still experiencing. It’s hard to grieve what’s happened when you’re still in the middle of it.”

‘We’re still very much in the midst of a war’

She remembers an especially difficult phone call with her husband.

“He said, ‘I’m not scared for your safety,’” recalls Congregation Ner Tamid Cantor Jessica Hutchings. “‘I’m scared for your heart. I’m scared that you will break from this. What you’re going to see is going to change your whole life. And that’s what I’m really afraid of.’ And I said, ‘I guess I’m afraid of that, too.’”

A few months after Rabbi Akselrad visited Israel, Hutchings did so in June, joining a pair of fellow cantors to visit the region and put on a concert celebrating Jewish music in a display of solidarity from abroad.

“It brought a lot of comfort to the community, to show our support from the diaspora, that we stood with them,” Hutchings explains.

Toward the end of her trip, Hutchings toured portions of the “Gaza Envelope,” a series of towns near the Gaza border. The region was among the first attacked during Hamas’ assault, and it remains a volatile area — hence the call with her spouse.

“We saw shrapnel falling from rockets that were being intercepted,” Hutchings recalls from Akselrad’s office. “It was scary and eerie and difficult.”

One of the homes she visited reminded Hutchings of the first place she and her husband shared in California.

“It was this little, tiny house, and we walk in, we see flip-flops on the floor and dishes in the sink,” she recalls, “and to know those people — two of them were captured and two were murdered — it makes you realize that this is something truly horrible and unimaginable, and in those moments, we find how strong we are.

“Instead of breaking me, I think it actually strengthened my soul to know that I was seeing this resilience within the community,” she continues. “I was hearing stories that were both miraculous and heartbreaking.”

That resiliency remains at the heart of the various Oct. 7 remembrance events over the next few days.

“I think that none of us expected to still be in this situation 365 days later, and the events of 10-seven have forever changed our Jewish world,” says Stefanie Tuzman, president and CEO of Jewish Nevada. “They have forever changed the way Jews will engage with Jewish life, and we’re still very much in the midst of a war and an ongoing conflict.

“But it’s not just what’s happening in Israel between Israel and its neighbors,” she continues, “it’s what’s happening around the country and even in our own community, where we’re seeing an increase in anti-Semitism and we’re really fighting for our survival, essentially. So there’s no way we would let the one-year anniversary of 10-seven go by without commemorating that horrific day.”

Leaving Congregation Ner Tamid, Hutchings prints out a poem she wrote following her trip to the Gaza Envelope, after showering off the dust from all the ruins she encountered earlier in the day.

It’s titled “This Dust.”

“At the funeral, we say, ‘The Dust returns to the earth as it once was.’ This dust is different,” the poem begins.

“This dust remains with us,” it continues a dozen stanzas later. “This dust will never settle, but in time, an olive tree will grow.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram.