'I've never prayed as much': The world changed on Oct. 7, and so did Rona Kaufman

When Hamas militants blitzed Israel one year ago today, Rona Kaufman immediately feared for her daughter, Naomi Kitchen.

Kitchen had traded Pittsburgh for Israel in 2021. Now, as a 21-year-old soldier in Israel's military, she was 6,000 miles from home, helping repel an armed incursion against a base in the West Bank.

Kaufman's maternal instincts kicked into overdrive. Sitting in her Squirrel Hill home and doing nothing wasn't an option.

"It was really clear to me: I could not bear to be here while she was there," Kaufman, 49, a Duquesne University law professor, said recently. "I did not know if Israel was going to survive. I couldn't eat. I couldn't breathe. I just had to go ... and it was good for my heart to be able to be there."

Kaufman trekked to her daughter's apartment outside Tel Aviv last October. She stayed for two months, delivering a steady supply of fresh Israeli coffee, croissants and doughnuts to Kitchen's unit and bonding with her daughter over brief moments of levity and hand-rolled cigarettes.

Since Kaufman returned home, the world has shifted, and so has she. Kaufman considered herself an engaged member of the Jewish community. But the Oct. 7 attacks amplified that. In her words, "The work has been absolutely on steroids."

Over the past year, the Philadelphia native has embraced her Jewish heritage and become more outspoken about her beliefs amid a war that has triggered spikes in antisemitism, polarized politics and spurred protests at American colleges nationwide.

She also started praying.

"I've never prayed as much as I have in the last year," she said. "This year, I prayed harder — and more. And I really appreciated the prayers of others."

'Loud and proud'

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants stormed southern Israel in a violent, surprise attack. They killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped and injured thousands more in the largest killing of Jews since the Holocaust.

Militants took 251 people hostage, from children to grandparents. Since then some have been rescued, others confirmed dead, and an estimated 97 remain under their captors' control, their whereabouts unknown.

For a time, Israel's plight captured international sympathy. But the mood changed, globally and in the U.S., in line with Israel's unrelenting assault on Gaza. Seeking to eliminate Hamas once and for all, Israel pushed into the stronghold of the terrorist organization, leaving a swath of destruction that has spurred condemnation.

As of Sept. 30, more than 40,000 Palestinians had been killed and nearly 100,000 injured in the conflict, according to the Hamas-governed Ministry of Health.

Over the course of the war, Kaufman started regularly attending protests in Squirrel Hill calling for Hamas to release Israeli hostages.

She found other outlets for her budding passion.

Kaufman voiced her support of Israel in a talk hosted by Duquesne's Jewish Law Student Association. Last month, she started creating and posting testimonial-style videos for pro-Israel groups and others seeking "accuracy in Middle East reporting and analysis." Kaufman shifted her academic research into areas where Judaism and American law intersect. She began studying Jewish intergenerational trauma.

This summer, Kaufman joined the pro-Israel group Stand With Us in pushing the National Education Association to stop calling for U.S. leaders to end military aid to Israel.

Kaufman is hardly alone in her enhanced activism in the Pittsburgh area, according to Julie Paris, the mid-Atlantic regional director of Stand With Us.

"I have been involved in the Jewish community for over 20 years and I've never seen the level of engagement, the level of interest, the desire to help ... that I've witnessed over the last year in Pittsburgh," Paris, 45, of Squirrel Hill, said. "I think Rona is a great example of that: to be a loud and proud voice for the Jewish community."

As Kaufman began promoting her beliefs more openly, others were doing the same about theirs.

In March, bloody handprints appeared on "We Stand With Israel" yard signs in Squirrel Hill, the center of Jewish life in Pittsburgh. Five months earlier, anti-Israel graffiti was scrawled across sidewalks in the same neighborhood.

This summer, vandals spray-painted a red triangle — a symbol Hamas employs to identify who they're targeting with violence — on a Squirrel Hill religious building.

Late last month, the FBI and Pittsburgh police started investigating an attack on a Jewish student at the University of Pittsburgh by a group of six to eight men who used antisemitic language. A day later, Pittsburgh police removed two banners bearing Nazi symbols from city bridges.

There have been 226 antisemitic incidents reported in the city this year — up from 208 at this time last year, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

The Anti-Defamation League recorded more than 8,800 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. last year, the highest number since the nonprofit group began tracking the data in 1979.

The rabbi understands

Kaufman is no stranger to Israel.

Her grandparents fled there from Poland in 1948 after surviving the Holocaust. Both of her parents grew up in Israel.

Kaufman has lost track of the number of times she's visited. But last year's trip was different.

While sleeping in the mamad, or bomb shelter, in her daughter's two-bedroom apartment, Kaufman carried her regular teaching load. Some nights, her lectures on laptop via Zoom didn't start until 1 a.m. because of the time difference.

Kitchen's search-and-rescue unit was transferred to Israel's border with Lebanon. They slept on school gymnasium floors. Kaufman made the commute, an hour's drive each way, most often on Saturdays. The GPS in her rental car was unreliable; she said the Israeli military was jamming signals to confuse Hamas.

Kaufman had always identified as Jewish more in a secular sense than a religious one. The past year has changed that.

She now observes Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, more regularly. She goes to religious services at Congregation Beth Shalom, a Squirrel Hill synagogue whose rabbi, she said, understands the nuances of her situation.

Rabbi Seth Adelson's son, Oryah, a 23-year-old digital marketer who lives in Israel, was pulled from the military reserves last October to serve near the Lebanese border.

"It was nerve-wracking — but, being aware there were people with kids sent into Gaza, I felt I didn't really have the right to be as nervous or as anxious as them," Adelson said.

Oryah served for four months and was released.

Last week, as the Israeli military marched into Lebanon, the military called him to what could become a new front in a Middle Eastern war.

"He's located a few miles from the border, and I don't know if he will be called to serve in Lebanon," Adelson said. "I haven't even had the time to process this."

Not like 2018

Like Kitchen, Ari Gilboa graduated from Allderdice High School and moved to Israel in 2021. Gilboa joined the Israeli Defense Forces, serving for six months in Gaza before being sidelined by a torn ACL. He plans to return in January.

Gilboa said he tries to avoid political arguments stateside while embracing the range of opinions in Pittsburgh's Jewish community.

"There's just no way for Jewish people in Pittsburgh, or in the United States or the world, to present a unified front," said Gilboa, 22. "We argue about everything, we have varied opinions — and I think that's a strength. But it also creates tension [even though] everyone wants things to come to an end."

A Pew Research Center survey released in April supports Gilboa's perspective. While more than 90% of Jewish American adults said the way Hamas carried out the 10/7 attacks was unacceptable, there was a distinct split between younger and older Jews in how they view the war.

More than half of Jewish adults, especially those under 35, felt Israel's actions were acceptable; 42% deemed them unacceptable; 6% were unsure.

By comparison, better than two-thirds of Jews ages 50 and older said Israel's conduct has been acceptable.

Most Jewish adults say Hamas' reasons for fighting Israel aren't valid, the study showed. Younger Jews, in contrast, are three times more likely than their elders to say Hamas' fight is valid.

Gilboa admits views about Gaza among his peers can be divisive but he thinks much of the vitriol is fueled by news coverage and social media.

"Online, everything is so one or the other," Gilboa said. "But there are so many people who just want things to work out but aren't sure what's going on."

Not Jeffrey Finkelstein. He knows all the gritty details.

The president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has visited Israel three times since the 10/7 attacks. He toured the kibbutzim, or communal settlements, where Hamas militants slayed Jews and burned down their homes.

Back in Pittsburgh, Finkelstein recently reflected on how the local Jewish community felt beaten up last year after weathering the trial of the man who killed 11 Jewish congregants in a Squirrel Hill synagogue.

"It's just been a frustrating, traumatizing year," Finkelstein told TribLive. "I think we've had a good number of our allies who stood up on Oct. 7 and continue to stand with us. But it's not like after Oct. 27, 2018, when the whole community rallied around us."

A tighter circle

Duquesne has been largely isolated from the tumult and occasional clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters at universities across the country.

The hilltop campus of the private Catholic university where Kaufman teaches in Pittsburgh's Uptown neighborhood remained fairly quiet while nearby Oakland roared.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators pitched tents in Schenley Plaza for a week in April and demanded the University of Pittsburgh divest itself from war-related investments in Israel.

Three men were arrested in a separate June protest that teetered on violence near Pitt's Cathedral of Learning. Another protest occurred in September, shortly after college students returned to class.

Kaufman said she responded by keeping close to those with similar beliefs.

"I've really tightened my social circles after Oct. 7," Kaufman said. "It was so raw for me that I totally have avoided any scenario where I'd be in a situation that was hard. ... It's interesting, because I'm talking about this all the time. But I don't want to fight anyone."

'I want this over'

As Jews in Pittsburgh and around the U.S. mark the year anniversary of the attacks, Kaufman is in Miami engaging in her passion, Jewish advocacy. She will be speaking with lawyers about sexual violence during the 10/7 attacks.

Her daughter has no special plans for the day.

"I believe in memorializing things but it's not over yet. And when it's done, it will be different," Kitchen said in a phone interview last week from Italy, where she's been hiking since her release from military service last month. "Every day is Oct. 7."

With the Israeli assault on Lebanon, Kitchen was told she'd be returning to duty, though she doesn't know when or where.

Kaufman supports an end to the war. She said she backs Israel but is not inherently anti-Palestinian.

"I want the Palestinian people to have self-determination and live in peace and freedom — and I think that's what they want, too," Kaufman said. "But I also want that for the Jewish people."

If anything, the situation in the Middle East appears more unstable than ever. Israel has struck Lebanon, Syria and Yemen in recent days and endured a missile barrage by Iran.

"I want a cease-fire now," Kaufman said. "I want this over now. I wanted this over yesterday."