On October 7th 2023, a major escalation in the long-standing Israel-Palestine conflict occurred when Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist militant group, launched a large-scale attack on Israel killing 1,200 people. In response, Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza strip, leading to mass casualties and destruction. This Monday, 7 October 2024, marks the one-year anniversary of the attacks.
Jake Shindler grew up in a Jewish community in North London before coming to York. Jake soon realised that there was a lack of Jewish community at the University compared to other universities such as Leeds, Nottingham and Birmingham.
Vision asked Jake how he got involved with the society. Jake explained: “The first week I went to the JSoc there were about eight of us and we realised we wanted to change the society for the better by bringing in more people and building it up.”
Jake added: “We have now got about 70 people and still more joining this year. Last week we had over 30 people attending our weekly Friday event. I came into this thinking I want to create a bigger place for Jewish students to feel welcome and bring as many people in to feel that community that we do have in London.”
To mark the anniversary week, Jake said: “we’re going to commemorate the lives that were lost, the people that were harmed. We’re going to light candles for those who are still hostages right now. Because the community is quite small, a lot of people know people who were murdered or harmed or are still in Gaza. We’re going to do a service for them, pray for them and make sure that they hopefully come home safe whilst also remembering those that lost their lives.”
Vision asked Jake what the society does and what its aims are. Jake explained: “Our aim is to create a community of Jewish students where there is a place that everyone feels welcome, everyone can be Jewish there.
“Especially when times can be isolating so especially at the moment we felt it was quite important that there’s a place on campus where you don’t need to think about what’s going on in the outside world, where you can just be.”
Jake explained that to commemorate the events of October 7th, the society had a memorial service for everyone who died and was impacted. Jake described: “we came together, there were more people attending that week than we have ever seen in that room before; it was the idea that no matter how affiliated people were to Judaism when they saw that happen they thought ‘we need to be there, we need to go to a space where there are Jewish people because this is a feeling we’ve never had before and we want to be with each other in this time of hardship’.”
Jake added that he thought it was one of the most fateful days in terms of modern Jewish history.
Vision asked Jake about the impact of the conflict on the Jewish Community in York and their sense of safety during this time. Jake explained: “definitely as a society we are on much higher alert, we’ve been working with the Uni a lot to keep our members safe and we are in direct contact with the University and the security team at York.”
When Vision asked Jake about how the Jewish community has been supported by the University, he stated: “we have met with the University multiple times to discuss things and at the moment, although the discussions seem to go well, we have felt that the actions put in place aren’t always matching up to what they say. They have put us in contact with the right people but we think that there is more that they could do to help Jewish students.’’
Vision asked Jake about how he feels about the future of the society. Jake said: “we hope to just keep on growing, create a space with more and more events where Jews can feel comfortable, hopefully we get to a point where it’s not a need but for some people now it definitely is, they need that space to continue to live their lives, hopefully the mood can change, we look forward to a time where we are a society that can thrive openly and not just behind closed doors.”
York Vision reached out to other sources for comment but have not heard back.