Sitting at the dinner table on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, my Aunt decided to lead an intriguing conversation. With the anniversary of October 7th around the corner, she asked, “How has the tragedy of October 7th changed you or your personal Judaism?”

The responses interested me and got me thinking about how that traumatic day had affected me, a Jew living thousands of miles away from Israel. I was starting to resonate with the echo that the horrors had truly brought the Jewish community together. 

I thought back to an important discussion I had with my AP Human Geography (APHG) class a year prior on centrifugal and centripetal forces. What are they? A centrifugal force includes “factors that tend to pull a country or region apart,” while centripetal forces are “factors that unite people within a state or region” (Google). From the perspective of October 7th, Hamas was a huge centrifugal force, literally dividing innocent civilians from their families. As also stated in my APHG class, with every centrifugal force comes a centripetal force. In this case, the centripetal force consists of the massive coming together and bonding experienced within the Jewish community. The remarkable and breathtaking ability of the Jewish and Israeli people to endure a massive trauma while still being able to come out stronger demonstrates the strength and resilience of our population. 

Starting on October 7th, I noticed how blessed I was to be a part of what I would argue to be one of the strongest and most bonded communities in the world. From that day on, I decided to wear my glimmering gold Star of David necklace everywhere I went. I was no longer afraid of the hatred I would potentially receive as a consequence. By not wearing the Star, I would essentially be letting the ignorance ‘win’ by being afraid of my own identity. 

Shielded by the bubble of the many Jews living in my town, I was always lucky not to experience an overwhelming amount of hatred. Unfortunately, not all Jews are as lucky as I am. Some undergo significantly more hatred than I do daily. Wearing my star was a symbol of me revealing my Judaism to the world without any care for what people might negatively say about me. 

My decision to wear the star had opened the floodgates to the positive experiences I had with other Jews around me. One of the most remarkable encounters was when I had a substitute teacher for my math class. Unbeknownst to me, my substitute happened to be Jewish. During work time in the period, he noticed my star and went up to me to ask about where I like to get my bagels from. While this seems like only a fraction of a moment to most, it made me comforted to be able to openly talk about my opinion on bagels and bond with my substitute about being Jewish without either of us directly talking about being Jewish. Even while writing this article, I encountered a video on my TikTok ‘For You Page’ using a trending sound and touching on the subject of noticing another Jew and smiling at them, telling so much, without literally saying any words.

By putting on my Star of David each morning, I am exposing my identity to an unpredictable world full of hatred and malice but also one full of love and connection. Wearing my star has led me to an incomparable amount of positive experiences as compared to negative ones. It is important to remember that it is always possible to find love, acceptance, and connection in a world full of resentment.