This fall in Isla Vista, there is something in the air–something warm and bright that rolls in with the fog each morning. I have spoken with many members of our Jewish community and know a lot of you feel it too. I am a first-year student at UCSB and was told upon arrival that the Jewish community here is strong. Strong is an understatement. I was welcomed with such open arms and immediately understood these are the people who will always be in my corner. I’ve gathered many anecdotes of being Jewish on campus last academic year. You were forced to process the grief of October 7th while defending your right to simply exist in this space. There were days you were scared, and days you were furious. You experienced things a college student should never have to endure. The silver lining: you didn’t go through this alone. In every recounting of the past year, it is emphasized how close you all became . Your Jewish pride and care for one another have carried into this year.  All in all, the start of this year has been kind to us. We were able to commemorate the anniversary of October 7th in a tremendously touching way. We had public displays and tabling on campus, as well as a vigil for our community to come together and reflect. We have also been celebrating the High Holidays with immense intention and joy. Coming from Fresno (with a Jewish population of  >0.4%), it has been phenomenal to celebrate these holidays with hundreds of Jewish students. Rosh HaShanah was a much needed reset, where we were able to celebrate new beginnings and express gratitude for all of the sweet things in life. Yom Kippur was a chance to search our shortcomings and consider how we can contribute to our personal growth and surrounding environments in the months to come. Sukkot has been a gorgeous celebration of the will and circumstance that has allowed our people to thrive for over 3,000 years. Between the services and meals,  I’ve had laughs that left me breathless, as well as the most meaningful conversations of my life. Jewish life aside, Santa Barabara is a place of opportunity. There is truly something for everyone here and constant occasions to seize. The people are friendly, easygoing, and uniquely creative. They take inspiration from one another and are skilled in the art of reaching out . This has been a month filled with coffee chats, ocean plunges, and local adventures. Of   ‘What’s your story,’ ‘Please get involved,’ ‘I want to take you with me.’ People have told me that I look so happy–and I am–but on a deeper level, I am living as my most authentic self in this space, and I have not felt this elated since I was a child. I know for a fact that I’m in the right place at the right time. It has been dominos of decisions and coincidences that have brought us together. I am so glad to be in Santa Barbara, to be Jewish in Santa Barbara, and to be here with you.  So far, so soulsome , and looking forward to everything to come!  With love, Maya Kaye

The elimination of Yahya Sinwar days ago—over a year since October 7th—is the most recent in a series of high-profile killings of key figures in the so-called “Axis of Resistance”. The Islamic Republic’s 7-front war against Israel has inflicted death, sexual violence, displacement, and injury on hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians. The complex entanglement of Russia, Turkey, and the Arab States only enlarges what has proven to be the most engaging topic in global relations since the Iraq War.  Fully understanding Israel’s action, spirit, and motivation in this war must start with understanding Jewish history. A long series of historical catastrophes form a canon of intergenerational stories that are passed through religious tradition and continual reminders of the past. The cultural blueprint of the Jewish understanding of hardship comes in the story of Exodus: Jews come in search of better lives, are tolerated, and can flourish and rise to achievement—before they are resented, attacked and enslaved. This story repeats itself in our memory of the Babylonian captivity, under the Roman yoke, and across the Pale of Settlement. We each carry these stories. We pass them to our children—contributing to a uniquely powerful cultural memory. In Jewish memory, the most powerful stories center on singular antagonists who embody shared experiences of suffering and survival—figures who mark a history of resilience handed down through generations. These villains are not just enemies; they anchor a tradition that links individual and collective resolve. Each Haman, Tsar, and Eichmann forms part of an inherited knowledge and a tool for survival, turning past tragedy into the very fabric of the lived Jewish experience. This layering of memory hardens into a permanent, heritable culture. The mistakes that led to each villain's rise are remembered, alongside the successes that brought about their eventual fall. With this body of applicable oral history, the Jewish people have continued to survive. Pharoah is the archetype. Passover stories, passed from elder to younger for thousands of years, are etched into memory as the original oppression. They present a people with a history of survival—of lessons shaped through suffering and carried forward into a dark wilderness. His is the model of tyranny from which a deeply ingrained vigilance arose: a refusal to surrender identity, dignity, or hope, even under bondage, even for hundreds of years. The ancient exodus from Egypt was not merely a liberation but the inception of a body of knowledge that would resurface across centuries. Each retelling strengthens this foundation, instilling in every generation the understanding of what it takes to survive. After Pharoah, the Jewish people promised to Never Again be slaves, as they had been slaves in Egypt. Hitler came the closest, among a host of historical villains, to annihilating the Israelites. The holocaust was the logical conclusion of European antisemitism, in its waxing and waning faux-tolerance and street beatings. Where the pogroms of old Poland and Russia were mostly spontaneous, popular, and manic expressions of antisemitic hysteria, the Nazis had learned to mechanize, industrialize, and stimulate the nearly-endless European appetite for murdering Jews. In flames, rape, and gunfire Hitler’s men whipped a continent onto the march to total war. Contrary to popular sympathies, these men largely fought for the promise of ridding the world of Jews. But Hitler, too, was defeated. After five years, the Jews left alive were delivered at the hands of Soviet and American soldiers as an afterthought prize-of-war. No nation had offered to save Europe’s Jews—though many would go on to claim piecemeal credit.  After Hitler, the Jewish people promised to Never Again leave their lives in the hands of foreign soldiers and benevolent nations. Sinwar and his savages must represent a new lesson: Hamas’ October 7th was possible only through the complacency of the Jewish State. A decade of perceived military invincibility, combined with years of political unrest and a rapidly unwinding social fabric presented an opportunity to kill too good to pass up. For years, the army watched Gazan terrorists prepare for October 7th—running drills, building mock kibbutzim, and storming walls—and did nothing. For years, Israel’s perception of Hamas as a serious threat degraded into a condescending smugness that they would quietly fall, if not go out in a blaze of civil war against rival factions. Sinwar did not expect to succeed, of course. His plan was far crueler. From the beginning, the leaders of Hamas had planned to drag Israel into a years-long counter-insurgency in Gaza, combined with occupation politics and devastating international consequences. Pharoah had been a slaver defeated by the will of the Jews to just leave , and Hitler a mass-murderer defeated by their will to just survive . Sinwar is a butcher who was defeated by the Jewish will just to fight . Sinwar’s death was not a carefully-orchestrated special operation. It had not been a targeted assassination, nor a precise airstrike or luckily placed bomb. Sinwar’s death was statistical. Sinwar died as all Hamas’ men will: killed by regular Israeli infantry, operating under standard doctrine, with that assistance which was spontaneously available. Perhaps the lesson of this antagonist has already begun to sink in. Perhaps, after Sinwar, the Jewish people will promise to Never Again underestimate their enemies.