Sarah Wapner, 27, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, compared the attack to pogroms and genocide in Europe in the last century. Unlike many others her age, she didn’t get the news on her phone; Ms. Wapner, who grew up Modern Orthodox, spent that morning at services, observing the Sabbath prohibition on using phones and other devices.
But since then, Ms. Wapner has experienced “a state of horror, numbness, grief, fear, that is quickly giving way to rage.”
Some of this rage was directed at organizations, including some Jewish ones, that have been marching in support of Palestine — Ms. Wapner called these groups “poisonous.” Generally, she said, the streets of New York, where she lives, feel unsafe for Jews as of late.
“Jews have a new responsibility to arm themselves,” she added.
Ms. Mahalel, the New York City high schooler, has been reflecting on Jewish history. Her great-grandmother escaped Germany for Israel, where her father was from and where she was born before coming to the United States as an infant.
“Experiencing war and atrocity and murder is very much embedded in Jewish history and Israeli history,” she said.
But she and her peers, born in the 21st century, have never lived through horrors on such a scale — until now. “People don’t know how to react.”
