For Jews and Latter-day Saints, tragedies can be a foundation, not a weight

For Jews and Latter-day Saints alike, memory is never simple. It carries not only heritage and covenant, but also the weight of violence, exile and loss.

For Jews, that history stretches across millennia — expulsions, pogroms, the Holocaust and, most recently, the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023. That day, more than 1,200 Israelis, Americans and others were slaughtered or taken hostage, and in its aftermath the world has witnessed an alarming rise of antisemitic acts: vandalized synagogues, students harassed on campuses, mobs chanting slogans that once seemed confined to Nazi Germany.

Many Jews now feel a dread that recalls the darkest chapters of the 20th century. As Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, put it bluntly , antisemitism in America is “worse