Jews who unplug on holidays grateful to hear haphazardly about Sinwar

(JNS) One congregation of Modern Orthodox Jews, who unplug and refrain from all sorts of biblically- and rabbinically-defined “work” on holidays, found out that Israel had killed Hamas terror leader Yahya Sinwar in an unusual way.

“Yesterday morning, during Sukkot, I went to a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Riverdale, which I proudly represent. None of the congregants had heard the news about Sinwar’s death until I announced it,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media on Friday, the second day of the holiday.

“Announcing the news of Sinwar’s death to an audience that felt an approaching sense of closure is a moment I will never forget,” the pro-Israel congressman wrote.

Orthodox Jews, who also found out about Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack via word-of-mouth on the Shemini Atzeret chag nearly a year earlier, told JNS that it is refreshing to avoid their phones and computers on Shabbat and holidays.

“Shabbat and chag are all about disconnecting from the weekday world,” the Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who runs an eponymous research group and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told JNS.

“In D.C., there are folks who don’t disconnect completely. I learned about Sinwar’s death that morning from a gentleman who sits near me in shul, who in turn had been told on his way to shul by a neighbor, who happens to be an Army colonel,” Mellman said. “Another guy, who sits near me, leaves the radio on in a small room in his house, so he could confirm the news.”

Mellman learned about Oct. 7 when he picked up the newspaper in front of his house. “By the time I got to shul, everyone knew,” he said. “In a media soaked world, it’s hard to be behind. But that regular disconnect keeps me sane.”

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin, a Jewish educator, told JNS that “nowadays, even within frum communities, news trickles in.”

“There’s certainly no worry you’re going to miss anything of significance,” he said. “If anything, it’s honestly refreshing to discover the news unmediated by your phone.”

Bashevkin added that on Shabbat and holidays, “this lifestyle, which I think has taken more urgency in recent times, is not a state secret but a gift offered to all Jews to experience the communal sanctification of time.”

Kassy Akiva, a video journalist at the Daily Wire who used to be a JNS editor, found out about Sinwar’s death from a neighbor, who came over in the morning on Thursday.

“I usually will share info with my shul but the reports then were saying the IDF was still trying to confirm, so I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to be inaccurate—journalistic ethics in shul too,” she told JNS.

“Later at dinner, word came in from someone else’s neighbors that he was dead, and everyone was talking about it and felt like it was such a great thing to happen on Sukkot—a day where we are supposed to be joyful,” she said.

Akiva told JNS that many were worried that someone worse would replace Sinwar, but she just wanted to get on social media and “join in on the party and read the details.”

“Being happy with my Jewish community in a sukkah was the best revenge—especially after seeing all of the abandoned sukkahs in Sderot two weeks after after Hamas forced Jews to flee on their attack last year,” she said.

Gil Student, an Orthodox rabbi and businessman in Brooklyn, N.Y., told JNS that he “heard literally on the street.”

“As we were leaving shul, someone non-Jewish walked by and told us about Sinwar. The next day, someone from the community, who receives delivery of a daily newspaper, filled us in on more details,” he said. “After the holiday was over, the shul I attend said together Psalm 100, a song of thanksgiving, before we said additional Tehillim for the safety of Jews in Israel.”

Student told JNS that it is “liberating to be away from the news and social media.”

“Particularly over a three-day period, it’s like life before the internet,” he said. “You are just in the present, able to relax with friends and family.” (Observant Jews outside of Israel marked three days sans electronics, as the two-day holiday was on Thursday and Friday, followed immediately by Shabbat.)

Student, who is author of the new book Articles of Faith: Traditional Jewish Belief in the Internet Era, told JNS that on Oct. 7, he heard only rumors about the attack and didn’t know what to believe.

“It was a complete shock to learn what actually happened, two days after everyone else,” he said. “I was still processing the horror while other people had moved on to taking action.”

Eli Steinberg, an Orthodox rabbi and co-host of the Mishpacha Magazine podcast FourCast, told JNS that he learned about Sinwar’s death from the aide of a shul member’s father, who was with the family over the holiday.

“He told someone, who then told the others. Because of Yom Tov, and the inability to go and ‘get’ further information, the news was short on details,” he said. “So there is a fog of war aspect to it.”

“Obviously you want to know what happened,” he said. “But the reality that you can’t is sort of liberating.”

David May, the research manager and a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that “the contrast could not have been more stark.”

“Last year, observant Jews had to process the devastating news that came crashing in waves over a two-day holiday, while disconnected from the modern world, unable to understand the extent of the evil that had occurred,” he said. “A year later, we received tremendous news and had to wait two days to understand the implications of a world rid of a terrorist monster.”