A memorial from the publisher of The Boston Report.
Three years ago today, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 hostages into Gaza, the Associated Press reports. This October 7 memorial is for them, for the families still grieving, and for the people in Boston whose lives are tied to that day.
Remembering the Victims of October 7
It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history. More than 350 people were killed in and around the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, and border communities such as Nir Oz and Holit were overrun. At the festival site Wednesday morning, relatives embraced at 6:29 a.m., the minute the first rockets were fired three years ago, according to AP’s report from Re’im. Anya Davitashili, whose 25-year-old son, Sean, was killed there, told the AP: “Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing.”
This is the first anniversary with no hostages left in Gaza. The remains of the last one, Ran Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer who was killed fighting on Oct. 7, were recovered on Jan. 26, 2026, the AP reported. The war that followed the attack has also taken a heavy toll on Palestinians in Gaza, where the territory’s Health Ministry says more than 74,000 people have been killed.
Boston Families Touched by October 7
For some people here, Oct. 7 was a phone call they will never forget. Ilan Troen, a Brandeis University alumnus and the Stoll Family Professor Emeritus in Israel Studies in Waltham, was on the phone with his daughter, Deborah “Shahar” Mathias, when gunmen reached her home on Kibbutz Holit. Deborah and her husband, Shlomi, were killed while shielding their 16-year-old son, Rotem, who was wounded and survived, Troen wrote in an account published by Brandeis. Troen, a former Boston resident, told NBC10 Boston that Deborah had just celebrated her 50th birthday. He told the BBC that his daughter and son-in-law “created a life of light and vibrancy.”
In Needham, Jason Greenberg lost two relatives taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz: Carmela Dan, 80, and her granddaughter Noya Dan, who were killed in captivity, WBUR reported. His cousin Ofer Calderon and Calderon’s children, Erez and Sahar, were also kidnapped. The children came home in November 2023, and Ofer Calderon was freed on Feb. 1, 2025, after 484 days, according to The Times of Israel. While the family was still waiting, Greenberg told NBC10 Boston: “Not a moment goes by that there’s not a heaviness in our hearts and a hopefulness that our family will return.”
Elsewhere in New England, Sagui Dekel-Chen, a U.S.-Israeli citizen whose father, Jonathan, grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut, was taken from Nir Oz and released on Feb. 15, 2025. He met his youngest daughter for the first time after he came home, NPR reported.
How Boston Is Marking the Day
Harvard Hillel is holding an October 7 memorial from 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday at Science Center Plaza, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge. Its calendar says the gathering is meant “to remember the lives lost, to honor those who were taken hostage and those who did not return, and to support one another.” On Tuesday night, The Boston Synagogue in the West End hosted “Together in Remembrance,” a free evening of music and reflection for the Jewish community, friends and neighbors.
Combined Jewish Philanthropies, synagogues in Brookline and West Roxbury, and Newton’s public memorials are also marking the anniversary. Times and places are in our guide to October 7 anniversary events in Greater Boston.
Boston and Haifa, Side by Side
Boston’s ties to Israel are personal as well as communal. CJP and the City of Haifa started the Boston-Haifa Connection in 1989, and it has paired the two cities’ communities ever since, CJP says. The federation’s Boston-Israel director, Lior Krengel, became the first CEO of the Israeli Children’s Fund after the attack, leading support for more than 500 children orphaned on Oct. 7, according to CJP. The institutions that make up that community, from CJP to Beth Israel to Brandeis, are covered in our history of Boston’s Jewish community.
Candles, Kaddish and “Never Again”
Across Greater Boston tonight, many families will light a yahrzeit candle, the memorial flame that burns for a full day, and say the Mourner’s Kaddish with a minyan. Others are marking the day with acts of kindness, charity and study in the victims’ names. In Jewish tradition, the dead are remembered with the words zichronam livracha: may their memory be a blessing.
“October 7th is not yet history — it is a living, breathing present,” Yishai Goldflam of Hillel Israel wrote last week for Hillel International. That is true in Boston too. Not far from Faneuil Hall, the six glass towers of the New England Holocaust Memorial stand as a reminder of what “Never Again” was meant to prevent. Antisemitic incidents in Massachusetts remain well above pre-Oct. 7 levels, as detailed in our report on Massachusetts antisemitism data, and the publisher’s view is in this morning’s October 7 editorial.
Three years on, Boston remembers the people killed on Oct. 7, the people taken from their homes, and the families who waited for them. May their memory be a blessing.