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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.